A virtual University takes shape in Second Life

January 25, 2008

By Kirk Sibbald

The vibrant, three-dimensional world of Second Life has created a virtual existence for nearly 12 million people worldwide, and the alter-universe has many pragmatic uses with education being among them.

First, a quick primer for the uninitiated. Second Life is a website where users create animated depictions of themselves, known as avatars, and set about doing pretty much whatever they want. As a Second Life ‘resident’, they can build disco halls, go shopping, get married, go skating, talk politics, make music and attend classes – all while “teleporting” between spaces created by other avatars.

Second Life even has its own marketplace, supporting millions of real-world dollars in monthly transactions. Money, converted into Linden dollars, the currency of Second Life’s economy, can be used to buy space in the virtual world and purchase clothing, art, vehicles and other miscellaneous items created by users of the site.          Launched by California-based Linden Labs in 2003, Second Life technology is hardly new, but its users are becoming increasingly adept at stretching the application’s potential – and the U of S is taking notice. In fact, campus people have started building a presence for the University on an island in Second Life shared with numerous other universities from across North America.

Although few buildings have been completed so far on the U of S space, the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery is a work in progress. Gary Young, co-ordinator of the gallery, has already constructed a building that somewhat resembles the real thing. It is still fairly bare on the inside, but Young envisions myriad opportunities for the future.

“It expands our exhibition programming, and our territorial activity can expand exponentially,” he said.

One idea Young has is to recreate the Computer Museum exhibition held in the Snelgrove Gallery last November. He also hopes to use the virtual space as an additional venue for certain members of the campus arts community, such as art historians and the drama department.

“It’s an opportunity to bring people into the artistic or gallery process that normally wouldn’t be involved, and that’s a biggie,” he said. “Second Life is a performance venue; it’s ready-made. There are already performances that involve groups who are collaborating on producing choreography, music and visual artists producing the sets.”

With so many possibilities, some people have started transferring the customary classroom setting onto Second Life as well. According to recent news reports, several professors from the United States have been gathering their students into virtual classrooms for online lectures, opening the possibility for similar initiatives to be launched here as well.

Educational Media Access and Publication (EMAP) is keeping its finger on the pulse of this increasingly popular website, ready to offer a helping hand should U of S professors decide to break with tradition and enter the online universe along with their students.

“It’s important to just explore these things, so that when or if these things become required or desired by faculty and students, we are able to move into those areas,” said Colleen Fitzgerald, director of EMAP.

Fitzgerald noted, however, there are a couple of factors currently impeding the educational move to Second Life. First is that people need up-to-date computers to run the website properly, and not everyone has fast enough video cards or processors on their home machines. Second is that many faculty are still reluctant to teach in an online environment.

But as the necessary technology becomes more widespread and younger academics begin entering the faculty ranks, Fitzgerald said there could well be a corresponding demand to move learning environments out of the real world and into the virtual.

Young agrees that the benefits of linking Second Life with education are too obvious to ignore. In addition to being used for lectures, the technology could also be used by, for example, history students to reenact legendary battles, by art students in visiting galleries around the world, or medical students for emergency planning.

In regard to the latter, Fitzgerald said London, England has already created a virtual city and hospital to provide training on the best way to deal with a possible pandemic, and the city of Boston is undertaking a similar initiative.

Young, who has taken part in numerous “webinars” through Second Life, said he will be continuing work on the Snelgrove Gallery, and expects others on campus will add more structures to the U of S space as interest in the technology expands. However, he cautions against expecting to one day find a replica of the real-world campus on Second Life.

“We want to kind of simulate the campus by suggestion, but we don’t want to get caught up in replication,” he said. “You could spend a lot of time laying out a campus … but the question always comes up, ‘Why do something in Second Life that already exists?’”