August 16, 2007
Colleges Are Building in Second Life, but Is Anyone Visiting?
Wired magazine’s editor, Chris Anderson, has gone from an enthusiastic supporter of the virtual world Second Life to a skeptic of its impact. And his reversal might have a lesson for colleges.
Mr. Anderson at first helped encourage the magazine to build its own space in the 3-D online environment, and he even held a talk about his popular book, The Long Tail, there. But after a while he couldn’t ignore how empty the magazine’s virtual clubhouse was. So he assigned a reporter to check out whether any other companies that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars are doing any better. They aren’t.
In a post to his blog last month, Mr. Anderson debates a vocal supporter of Second Life about whether events in the virtual world have value even if attendance is low. But he still defends his decision to close down his magazine’s Second Life office.
The Wired article and the discussion did not talk about colleges that are building campuses in Second Life, but it seems that some people in higher education might be asking the same tough questions that Mr. Anderson is. More than 100 colleges have set up some kind of presence in Second Life, according to officials at Linden Lab, the company that runs the environment. But are those campuses attracting enough visitors to make the investments worth it? Earlier this year we published an article and a video tour of Case Western Reserve University’s virtual campus, which it used to give tours to prospective students. But during more than a month in which Case Western students were on hand to show folks around, only 40 people wandered by, according to college officials.
Perhaps that’s enough to make it worth the effort — they did get some news-media coverage, after all. Are any college officials working in Second Life starting to have second thoughts? —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Thursday August 16, 2007 | Permalink |Comments
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Case Western Reserve and made a 3-fold increase in its presence in SL since its experimental efforts this past spring. Case Western Reserve University will be supporting both regular daily and weekly instruction, performance, experimentation, virtual labs, seminars, panels, and keynote along with dozens of community engagements including regular and ongoing collaborations with the Cleveland Clinic, the Cuyahoga Public Libraries, the Greater Cleveland Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Chamber of Commerce and dozens of other educational institutions in the K-20 space.
— Lev Gonick Aug 16, 11:58 AM #
We have found that while everyone is excited about the technology, fewer are that excited about the implementation. In other words, we believe this concept and method of interaction is here to stay, but that Second Life may not be the platform that launches the revolution. Anyone attempting to do serious work in SL discovers its shortcomings very rapidly.
Lev Gonick’s comment above is typical and indicative of folks in our department who are exploring SL programs. General belief is that if we only spend more money and more effort, more people will come to use the resources. Sadly, Second Life is not Field of Dreams and sooner or later I personally believe that most such people will regret their investments.
It’s good practice for the future, but I don’t think anyone can point to a paradigm-shifting event in SL that launched the revolution. My suggestion would be for organizations to do what they must to gain competency in this area, and then cut their losses and help fix (or rebuild) the infrastructure, rather than expanding their virtual presences in a space that nobody – not even the kids – is taking seriously. It’s like building your castle on the fens. It may be the most beautiful in the world, but nobody is there to see it, and it will have sunk into the mud long before the next generation gets around to discovering it!
— Drew Borgin Aug 16, 12:55 PM #
I am a year old resident of SL. I have seen a lot of mistakes made there. Mistakes are fine if you learn from them. You talk about low attendence at CASE’s site in SL. It took me 5 hours to find it and I was looking for it. So visibility is a problem. That can be fixed. Regarding the usability of SL and weather it’s to be the ultimate future platform are questions developers will have to answer for themselves.
I am certain the highest goals of CASE Western Reserve University can, in a large way, be fuller and richer and far more available through particpation in this event we call Second Life.
Contact me in SL. My name there is Zen Zeddmore.
— Damian Poirier Aug 16, 02:32 PM #
And there you have one of the drawbacks of trying to conduct real education in a virtual world. Rather than interacting with Damian Poirer, you’re talking to some construct of his named Zen Zeddmore. Education is not entertainment… it must be authentic and credible to be valuable. Expecting real learning in SL is like expecting real love to blossom between avatar Gigi Needaman and avatar Voy Yerwindow. The people behind those names might one day marry, but not in SL… they’re going to have to get real first. (I made those names up. Any similarity to actual avatars is purely coincidental)
— Bryan Aug 16, 02:56 PM #
Jeff’s article makes some accurate points about Second Life, as do each of the commenters above — and some inaccurate ones. The New Media Consortium has been exploring all of the various virtual worlds platforms that are available, including Second Life, for a couple of years now, and I cannot resist weighing in on this post.
My observation is that while I agree that Second Life is probably not going to be “the platform that launches the revolution,” it is a very credible first entrant. I find many similarities between its approach and that of AOL, the first place many of us encountered the Internet. AOL is hardly a player today, and is now but a shadow of the powerhouse it was in 1994. The technology moved on, becoming both more open and offering greater facility that was possible in a walled garden.
The essential point I feel needs to be made is this: The fact that Wired decided to leave, and the fact that their expectations were not met does not mean that ipso facto no one’s expectations will, and we all should leave as the platform has no value at all — despite my high regard for that publication. Others have also left, and in each case, I think that is the right decision, because they were trying to make Second Life into something it is not, and spent little or no time trying to understand what does work there.
There are in fact many highly successful educational projects in Second Life — and the Case example, which is carefully proceeding on a well-conceived community-based plan, is one of them. Those that are successful recognize that the essential factors of success much more related to establishing a community than a presence. Socially-based virtual worlds like Second Life provide a natural platform for building community, as they incorporate a very useful and intuitive set of tools for interaction. The success in the Case example is not to be found in the number of visitors to SL, but in the way the Second Life presence has cemented a real-life collaboration that spans Cleveland and has real-life outcomes that will never be measurable if one sees only the space they have built in Second Life. In the Case example, those 40 visitors were not Second Life Residents, but invited visitors, prospective students, who were being invited to a private tour. The island was not open to the public at that time, but if one wants to talk ROI, the conversion rate for those visitors was an easy match for admissions office activities that cost far more.
The NMC’s own project in Second Life has a very vibrant community of nearly 5,000 educators, and there are events and activities taking place there almost every day. Nearly all of these activities are organized by community members to meet community needs. And the community is global — with both students and educators interacting with colleagues from around the globe.
That they find value in their work is the sort of ROI that matters in this case.
I would argue that monetary-based ROI measures are inappropriate for a great many academic pursuits, a great many of which are designed to achieve very different goals.
A great deal of what actually works in these highly social spaces is worthy of study and understanding. Sadly, too many of the high-profile companies —and admittedly some of the university presences — make little use of the things that really make a platform like Second Life interesting. From the perspective of the people we work with, it makes considerable sense that Wired left. They came in with hugely unrealistic expectations and built a presence that had almost no connection to or acknowledgement of the culture.
Their failure is a good thing if it helps to highlight what is valuable here and to distinguish it from what is not. We need to know those things.
— Larry Johnson Aug 16, 04:48 PM #
Second Life has more applications than a marketing perspective. I think it is a tool for companies as well as educators. I bring many more people into SL than I extract out, but extract out still happens.
Anyone entering into SL or any other Metaverse should consider a multi-tiered campaign and have a firm understanding of how residents behave as well as those you bring into SL.
I see many people have a short sighted objective and fail, then to cover their mistake lash out.
— Brian Regan Aug 16, 08:34 PM #
In fact. The key to building a successful education institute is that you got to focus on the education…there’s no solid market for sharing ideas…
— Fox Diller Aug 17, 02:44 AM #
I can certainly understand why SL could be an engaging pedagogical tool for some faculty, but many other purposes? I doubt it. My company advises colleges and universities on Internet strategy and I’ve long been skeptical about the focus on Second Life as a tool for student recruitment, alumni relations, and other recruitment and advancement activities. I just don’t see the ROI, especially when being an SL native takes so much time—the resource, even more than money, that is so lacking on all the campuses where we’ve worked.
— Michael Stoner Aug 17, 08:50 AM #
Is this 1993 and are we talking about the Worldwide Web?
I’m enjoying my exploration of the possibilities of SL; it may not be the revolution but it’s certainly a decent implementation of a compelling medium. Real human interaction? Probably not much more than the usual 200-person lecture, or the average long-distance phone call.
— Joe Clark Aug 17, 10:04 AM #
Second Life is very promising as a new medium but I think it has gained way too much media hype, too soon. I am a high school senior and I play WOW a lot but have tried SL for the last 6 months. I thought the CASE island was cool but Second Life has so much porn that I dont undertsand how colleges find it “appropriate” to associate themselves with it. I wandered around after I checked out the CASE campus and ran into all kinds of crazy stuff just outside their campus.
— Lauren Aug 17, 10:53 AM #
I agree with those who say that there’s terrific potential in metaverses like SL. But I think the current potential is limited to creative course activities that can be carried out in this virtual world. It’s wider academic use will be limited until the issue of authenticity can be resolved.
— Steve Aug 17, 11:19 AM #
The problem with SL, as I see it, is two-fold. One the one-hand, it is pushing too many boundaries all at once, and on the other hand, it is too young to have really become a “platform” for useful apps (like the web has become).
First of all, there are technical boundaries. You need a computer with decent graphics processing, and you need a good internet connection. These are becoming more common, but not common enough that you can assume that everybody has both, or that their experience is going to be good. There is also the time it takes to install the software, create an account, learn the interface, and find the things you’re looking for – all of which is a non-trivial amount of effort.
Finally, there’s only a marginal payoff for your efforts. For some people, just the fact that this is the “next big thing” will be reason enough. But for most people, this isn’t going to be enough – there simply isn’t (yet) any SL “killer app”, which will motivate people to overcome the obstacles. Video games give hours of entertainment, which is motivation to overcome all these obstacles.
For most people, I think, the difference between looking at photos of a campus, and walking around a virtual campus is so marginal that its not worth the effort of getting & learning SL.
— Tristan Aug 17, 03:26 PM #
Bryan did you even try to contact me? I dare ask, “How difficult is it?”
“Education is not Entertainment…” maybe not but some would suggest the best education is entertaining.
Michael Stoner, very true becoming a proficient SL resident is more difficult than intuitive. Care to help change this? An opportunity exists wherever ones sees an unmet need.
Lauren, sorry for your bothersome experience, though this is an aspect of SL, controls do exist for islands ( like those that cleveland_one is situated on ) to exclude all but invited persons or group members, thereby keeping porn or anything that the islands owner dictates, off the island and out of view.
For those that are curious, there are in SL an amazing vast world of constructs by people from all over the world. I interact daily with people from UK, France, Germany, Australia, and others. We discuss culture, world views, technology, designs, systems, plans, and the weather. And we ARE building the future together.
Steve, intriguing post. I get the sense you have some outstanding applications and uses in mind. Which capabilities are most lacking from the SL platform? Feedback is an intrinsic and ongoing part of bringing SL closer to user expectations.
Finally, as an experiment, I went to cleveland_one and saw that build was enabled. I placed a large number of (hopefully useful) items there the night of my earlier post. As of yet, if anyone has been there or noticed, I haven’t been contacted about it. The items are still there otherwise they would have been noticeably returned to my inventory.
Q: Is CASE wasting their money in SL?
A: Only if they insist on it.
— Damian Poirier Aug 20, 11:23 PM #