HIGHER EDUCATION

NOVEMBER 26, 2007

ONDER SKALL: Hello everyone, and welcome to another session of Metanomics, part of

the Metaversed series of events that we hold in conjunction with Cornell University’s

Johnson School. With us today is Chris Collins, known in Second Life as Fleep Tuque, and

Benn Konsynski, whose avatar is called Rejin Tenjin in Second Life. They will be more

properly introduced and interviewed by Professor Robert Bloomfield of the Johnson School

at Cornell in just a moment.

The main sponsor of Metaversed Island is The Otherland Group, making sense of virtual

business. I’d also like to take a brief moment to thank the sponsors of the Metanomics

series and of all the Metaversed events. They are Kelly Services, Sysco Systems, Saxo

Bank, Generali Group, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. And of course, none of this would be

possible without SLCN, who are the best ones to talk to when it comes to working with video

in virtual worlds.

Avatars across the grid at all event partner locations can join the conversation by joining the

Metanomics group. And also remember to join the Metaversed group for all future

Metaversed business events. If you have any questions for our guests today, you can send

them to me directly. My avatar’s name is Onder Skall. Education in virtual worlds has been a

central issue since they came into popular use. Our guests today are experts in the area. So

without further ado, I’d like to introduce our host, Robert Bloomfield of Cornell.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, thank you, Onder Skall. And welcome everyone to another

session of Metanomics, the first of what I hope will be several sessions where we explore

how virtual worlds might change the business of education. The goal of this session is just

to get us started, and to talk about what educational institutions are currently doing in

Second Life from two people who are very actively involved. We have with us today Chris

Collins from the University of Cincinnati, and, Chris, welcome.

FLEEP TUQUE: Hello, hello.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Hi. You wear many hats. Let’s see. So you work at the University

of Cincinnati, leading the Second Life learning community. You are the ambassador to

Second Life of the Ohio Learning Network. Let’s see, and University of Cincinnati

Instructional and Research Computing. Those seem to be the big things you’re doing in RL.

And then you’re also moderating a Second Life list serve. So that is a lot of different hats.

Before we get into talking about what you’re doing, I love your name. Every time I type it or

hear it or say it, Fleep, it makes me smile. I just have to ask: where did that come from?

FLEEP TUQUE: It’s actually--my first internet handle back in 1994 was Deep Purple

because that was what was on the radio when I had to pick my first user name ever. And

friends used to call me Fleep Turple when we were being silly, and the name just sort of

stuck. So I’ve been Fleep on the internet for about, what, twelve years now.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay, well, it’s a very memorable name. But I’ll probably be

calling you Chris for most of the show. I hope that’s okay with you.

FLEEP TUQUE: Yeah.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So tell me how you got into Second Life.

FLEEP TUQUE: Well, I’d been a part of the MUD BBS community in the mid ‘90s. So

virtual world communities, even when they were text-based, were kind of a big thing. And it

was actually my MUD BBS and then of course we graduated to video games like World of

Warcraft and Everquest. And it was one of those folks who sent me an invite to the Second

Life beta. And at the time, my computer was kind of slow, and I didn’t have a very good

video card, and didn’t really see the potential. So it took me another year or so to come back

and really get into it. But it actually came from another virtual community, believe it or not.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So you’ve been doing this a long time. Okay. And let’s see, Benn-

-Rejin Tenjin--welcome.

REJIN TENJIN: Welcome. Thanks.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Benn, you are the George S. Craft Professor of Business

Administration at Emory’s--and I’m always unclear how to pronounce this--Goizueta

Business School

REJIN TENJIN: Goizueta.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Goizueta Business School. And so you’re in the Decision and

Information Analysis Department. And you’ve been at a few different schools teaching, I

guess, at both Arizona and Harvard. So actually, let me ask you the same two questions:

Where did you get your unusual name in Second Life, and what brought you here?

REJIN TENJIN: I was raised in Northern Indiana, an area that is called ‘da region labeled

around there. So when I saw the Tenjin name and selected that, I just put Rejin in front of it:

R-E-J-I-N. So it was easy to remember.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay, I was excepting a Japanese influence story or something.

But I guess I’m going the wrong direction. And what got you personally into Second Life?

REJIN TENJIN: As with Fleep, I’ve been involved and monitoring these technologies

emerging for quite some time. I was involved in virtual reality activities with stereoscopic

lenses in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. And also, I monitored the MUDs and the online worlds

that were emerging at the time: Imagination in the West Coast and The Palace in the East

Coast, and Larryland and other renderings that were emerging in the early ‘90s. So I’ve

been monitoring it for quite some time as well, anticipating that the technology would catch

up to the aspirations.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So let me ask you, how close do you think we are now, then, to

the technology catching up to the aspirations?

REJIN TENJIN: I think we’re in very good stead right now. I’m very impressed with the

progress of the last three or four years and the emergence of capabilities both from the

gaming environment, but also from the civil attitude that emerges in some of the current

worlds.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So now, Fleep, you are probably in the best position of maybe

just about anyone in Second Life just to give us a sense of what all is going on. I mean, we

sometimes see numbers thrown around of how many educational institutions are in Second

Life, but it’s not clear how deeply they are involved or how many people, how much they’re

doing, and what types of things they’re doing there. Could you sort of us give us a lay of the

land of what particularly higher education is doing in Second Life?

FLEEP TUQUE: Well, it turns out that that’s a kind of tricky question to answer because,

well, in April and May a colleague and I, Nancy Jennings, wanted to do a survey. We were

getting ready to build our own University of Cincinnati Island, and we weren’t exactly sure

what was the best thing to do with the space that we had. And we thought, “Why not go take

a look at what everyone else is doing?” And we discovered that there are a couple of

stumbling blocks to finding even all of the educational institutions in Second Life. Some

things like they’ll name their lands crazy things maybe based on their university mascot or

something. And if you don’t know exactly what the land is called, it may be difficult to find.

So we started with the link from Linden Lab’s own website, the SimTeach Wiki, and we

found that 170 institutions were listed either there or something that said university in the

search tool in Second Life. And we started teleporting to these places to see what everyone

was doing. And we found that 71 of those institutions actually had land in Second Life. And

remember, this was in April and May of this year, but already that’s changed. And a number

of other institutions have come online. So it’s changing day by day.

And we found that most of those institutions, like 68 to 70 percent--something like that--were

physically located in North America with Northern Europe not far behind--20 percent there.

And we started looking at what institutions were doing based on what we could observe on

their campus location. And for those of us who are familiar with Second Life, you know that

sometimes it can be like explaining to someone that there’s this really fantastic class going

on, and all of this great energy and synergy is being created, and then taking someone in to

see an empty classroom: you don’t necessarily see from the artifacts left behind what all is

happening.

But we thought that there was some value to at least look and see what campuses are

building, what educational institutions seem to be doing based on the spaces that they’re

creating. And we found a lot of really great stuff. We found that many of the campuses in

Second Life devote space to student socialization. So we found beaches and bars and

dance clubs and all kinds of creative--coffee cafes and even restaurants. Things like that, in

addition to the classrooms and auditoriums and galleries and libraries and things that you

could think of as a more academic setting.

And then in May, we also had the Best Practices in Education Conference, and we were just

completely blown away by the response. I think we expected maybe a couple hundred

educators were here and seriously looking at this. And we found that our email box just got

over-flooded. We had 1400 RSVPs and people come to the event. So I think the breadth of

the individual exploration--so individual faculty members may be doing serious work here

without institutional support, in addition to the actual institutional groups that are using

Second Life and exploring what’s happening here.

And at last count, as far as I know, we’re looking in the range of about 200 institutions world-

wide at this point.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. I’ve heard similar descriptions of how many companies

there are in Second Life and what they’re doing. And one of the things that regular viewers

of Metanomics will have heard many, many times that, “Well, these companies come in, and

they build a beautiful ghost town. There are a few people there for a little while, and then

you’re just left with an empty shell, and there’s not much activity there.” Do you have a

sense that universities are avoiding that problem and actually keeping avatars on their

sites?

FLEEP TUQUE: Well, when we visited places--some of the work we were doing in the

evenings, which may not be in-class time--but I think that location in Second Life is

dependent upon the people and activities that are happening there. So I think campuses

probably face many of the same challenges that companies face. It’s all about the events

and what you’re doing, what draws people into that environment. You can create some sort

of asynchronous learning objects. You know, there’s a project called the Salamander

Project where we’re looking to sort of categorize learning objects that sort of stand on their

own and people can use. But I think campuses are facing many of the same issues. You

can build a beautiful space, but if there’s nothing to draw people there, then they won’t

come. I don’t think that educational institutions are really facing that problem though,

because from what I’m hearing and reading, if you read the sled email list, faculty are very

engaged; their students are engaged. And they’re having activities both on their campus

locations, but maybe more interestingly they’re doing research and projects out in the wild of

Second Life. So maybe they’re not on their campus; maybe they’re out in Second Life

exploring and doing research there as well.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Very interesting. Benn, so you’re one of these professors who

has taken your school, Emory, into Second Life. Can you just tell us specifically what you

guys have going on? [PAUSE] Let’s see, did we lose Benn? [PAUSE] Let’s see, is it just

me? I’m not hearing anyone. Chris, you still there?

FLEEP TUQUE: Yep, I’m still here. I don’t hear Benn either. We may have lost him on the

call.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay, Onder, if you can check that out. It’s possible Benn is

muted and is talking away and doesn’t realize it. Well, okay, I will stick with you, Chris. And

let’s go on and talk a little bit about what you see as being basically the biggest

opportunities and the biggest challenges for higher education in Second Life.

FLEEP TUQUE: Well, I think there are many, many opportunities. And there are some sort

of obvious applications. I know some of the first things that I noticed and saw, “Oh, this

might be good for universities and schools to get into.” Things like providing a place for

distance learners to meet.

Distance learning is really on the rise at least in the U.S. And one of the complaints that

students of distance learning programs have is that they feel isolated and don’t feel part of a

class kind of environment. And obviously, all of us who are involved in Second Life now

realize how much of a benefit it is to be able to visualize another person. And even if it isn’t

an exact replica of them, you get that sense of co-presence. And that carries across too, to

collaboration and research. I think Second Life has taught me, if nothing else, the

educational community here is very collaborative, and very giving and willing to sort of talk

and see how the class that you’re teaching might interface with the class that I’m teaching.

And you have this visual component of meeting one another and being able to sort of build

on the fly and draw graphs or whatever to demonstrate your concept.

So I think for distance learning and for collaboration across institutions and disciplines--and

other things like language learning, cultural studies, and even more innovative things. Like,

I’m seeing--I can’t remember which school now; they’re having their journalism students--

they’re sort of imbedding them in Second Life and maybe having them intern with a Second

Life newspaper. That’s an experiential kind of learning exercise that I think it can’t even be

replicated unless you go out and get the job in real life. So I think those are some of the

benefits.

And the other thing that I think doesn’t get mentioned enough in talking about application in

Second Life, beyond teaching your discipline and talking about whatever your course

content is, there’s also a benefit just being exposed to this technology. I think educational

institutions across the board, even in kindergarten and grade school, are thinking about

what this new digital media stuff is, and how to bring those digital media literacy skills to

their students. And you come into an environment like Second Life, and you’re suddenly

exposed to the entire Second Life culture, which is very net savvy. So in addition to Second

Life, you’re using things like Skype and voice override P technologies and blogs and Wikis

and twitter.

And we see that faculty--people who may be using email, but not particularly tech savvy,

maybe they have their syllabus on their course management system, but they don’t have a

blog. You know, the faculty member comes in--

REJIN TENJIN: Fleep?

FLEEP TUQUE: Yeah, uh-huh?

REJIN TENJIN: No, go ahead. Finish that.

FLEEP TUQUE: So we see that faculty members are coming into Second Life. And they

become a learner again themselves and start to interface with their classes in different

ways, and they start to pick up additional technology skills. And I think that those are very

valuable too.

REJIN TENJIN: Let me--

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: You ready to cut in?

REJIN TENJIN: Yeah, I’m sorry. I was muted, and it would not un-mute. And I am now un-

muted.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: That’s okay. Do you want to react to what Chris was just saying?

REJIN TENJIN: Yeah.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay, great.

REJIN TENJIN: I want to pick up on that just for a minute because it so reminds me of the

period of 1994 with the internet per se. And I feel like we’re at that same stage here. This is

very much like the internet in ’93, ’94. And you had the global schoolhouse emerging with

the see you see me, and Maven, which was integrated for voice on that so--in ’94, we were

doing some of those innovative things that brought kids from all over the world together in

educational forums. It was very primitive technology, and we were learning and running a lot

of experiments. And I see that same thing happening now. The common mistake we often

make is to bring our RL practices into SL too readily and not try to think of the most effective

leverage of that.

And I think to pick up on another point that Fleep was talking about earlier, was the issues of

the schools and universities in the space. They are as many and varied as they are with the

dilemma of websites. When you have a presence, to what end is that presence used? And

some of them are in the world for identity and image. They create a campus of their existing

environment or even their future campus aspiration. And that’s all pre-matriculation. That

has external promotion and also promotion to the prospective students. The students are

Millennials now that are coming in, and Millennials are often expecting to be wowed or

understand that their prospective schools has a future reach. And so some are putting a

presence in and are finding that it’s an important part of promoting to Millennials. So even

pre-matriculation there are many missions for a presence in the world, let alone the

matriculation period when they are in the school, are associated with the school during a

pre-degree. And then also the issue of life-long learning and alumni relationships and things

like that come into play.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So Benn, you were talking about the importance of not just

importing this stuff we’re used to doing in the classroom into Second Life, but actually using

the medium in the best way and coming up with something new that takes advantage of it.

Do you have any specific examples in mind of things you’ve seen done well?

REJIN TENJIN: I’ve seen examples that sort of hint at that future. A part of things you find

like very large meetings like this can work well. Very small meetings work well. The historic

classroom groupings don’t often work well, especially if you try to take advantage of

mobility: moving groups from one place to another is a disaster waiting to happen. Looking

for seizing attention and retaining attention.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Can you just tell us a little bit about what Emory is doing and

plans to do?

REJIN TENJIN: There are two things to mention and briefly discuss. The first is the class

that we have entitled Virtual Worlds and New Realities, which I am co-teaching with the vice

provost of international affairs who is a political science professor. And we are very

interested in the social norms commerce practice, but also politics and law in the metaverse

and looking at several virtual world environments. Conniva(?) and Second Life are the ones

we are mainly concentrating on looking at. And we’re after sort of a triangulation of three

things: the technology and infrastructure and capabilities, the commerce and societal

practice, and the third is politics and law issues that relate to behavior and exercise of those

worlds.

The second thing would be the island that we have set up is called Simsim, S-I-M-S-I-M.

Invite everyone to visit the island. It has four quadrants to it, and four different purposes it

serves. The first is an area called the virtual hatchery that is used to display branding

assets. So right now, for example, there’s an exhibit related to our Cartooning for Peace

exhibit that happens to be at Emory right now, and will be a rotating exhibit.

The second quadrant is sandbox and virtual learning environment that has a variety of tools

and assets and meditation and planning centers for the students to learn about aspects of

the world: building and scripting and things like that. A third is a virtual business and virtual

government center where we’re planning on posting best practices that we see on virtual

government and virtual business practices. And the fourth is one of the main reasons we

started was a partnership with Society for Information Management in CIOs to expose them

at the events Practices Institute to look at emerging technologies in RL as well as in

practices in SL.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now, forgive an accountant’s question here, but I’m wondering if

you are tracking metrics to see sort of how successful your efforts are, how many people

are going onto the island, and so on.

REJIN TENJIN: We are monitoring the traffic onto the island and distinct traffic. And it’s

been much higher than I thought. So some word is leaking out even without us promoting.

So there’s some sort of vial exchange. We have a great partnership with several

universities. Our adjoining island world is ITworld that Blake Stringfellow from University of

Houston operates, and it’s right next to Baler. And also, Georgia State is putting an island in

on the other side of it. So we’re building a small archipelago of like-minded faculty. For the

most part, these are IS-related faculty within business schools within universities. So it’s sort

of an island of itself.

FLEEP TUQUE: I think for our island, first of all, we chose very deliberately not to make our

island public. So we have a small spot that’s open to the public on EduIsland. So traffic

statistics--we are measuring, of course, our student and faculty use, but we decided that

this--at least at the University of Cincinnati our goal was really to have faculty and staff

evaluate first what they thought of the potential of learning environment.

So I think some colleges and universities dive in and immediately start providing services to

their students on their island. And actually, Benn mentioned the statistic or he mentioned

that he thought that some of these institutions were using their presence in Second Life to

advertise for new enrollments. And I was really surprised because in our study we found

that less than half of all of the educational locations that we surveyed actually had a link to

their main institution website or to the a page that specifically solicited enrollment of new

students.

So I think what we’re seeing is that some institutions are coming into Second Life and

having a very public sort of PR student service advertising presence, and then there’s

another group of us, which I would include University of Cincinnati in, that we’re more doing

more of a soft launch. We’re not really doing this for the PR. We really want our faculty and

staff to sort of get in and get their feet wet. And a lot of those institutions aren’t public

because they’re not advertised. And just as another side note, Simsim is one of those

schools we wouldn’t have surveyed because I didn’t know that it was a university.

REJIN TENJIN: Exactly. And that’s part of the reason too in part because we don’t

necessarily--we want to build it and earn the right to label it from the university standpoint.

We want to commit the public service. And certainly, as we relate to the business

community, that’s why we’re public is because we certainly want the business management

community to get some exposure to the possibilities here. And then some part of the island

is relegated to the students with build privileges only for the students that are enrolled.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Listen, we’ve got a bunch of questions that have come in, and I

think I’d like to pose those to you. Before I do, let me just mention to those of you who are

out there listening, first, feel free to type backchat into the Metanomics group chat window.

Gives us a sense of what you’re finding interesting and maybe when we should be moving

on to other topics. And if you have specific questions you’d like to pose the panelists, you

can IM Onder Skall, or you can take a risk and just pop it into the Metanomics groups chat

channel. But there’s not a guarantee I will see it. The best way is to get it to Onder.

The first question that I’m going to ask comes from Melbourne’s Writer. And he says,

“Higher education is on the main grid, but there’s also a mass of educational institutions on

the teen grid. And so what are the obstacles in the transition between the two?” And I’m

guessing, Chris, you would probably [know this?].

FLEEP TUQUE: There are a number of really interesting and exciting projects on the teen

grid, which of course I have never seen because I’m not on the teen grid myself. But things

like Ramapo Islands and Global Kids and the Pacific Rim Exchange. There are educators in

the teen grid working actively with middle and high school populations, and taking

advantage of these opportunities as well.

But you know, when you start thinking about things like high school students and even some

freshman university classes that may have undergraduates who are under 18, navigating

the split between the grids is complicated both from a technical perspective and a

curriculum perspective. And I don’t know, I think everyone’s still trying to feel that out. There

is from time to time rumors of maybe they’ll create an education grid or something like that. I

don’t know if that will ever happen. I’m getting a lot off feedback here--noise.

So I think that, when you’re looking to design a program or teach a class, you definitely

need to consider the age range of the student population you’ll be working with. Because as

of right now, to the best of my knowledge, once a student turns 18, they are summarily

ejected from Teen Second Life and brought into the main grid. And I’m not exactly sure how

that process works, but I could see that it would be disruptive for a class presence.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yes, especially for those seniors switching over in the middle of

the academic year.

FLEEP TUQUE: Yes, exactly.

REJIN TENJIN: I would certainly not like to see a separate education grid myself. I would

like to see lessons learned come from the teen grid. And there should be some lessons

shared especially with the main grid and the higher education because I think there are

probably more lessons learned from the teen grid than would be offered by a main grid side,

and certainly by the higher education community.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now, our next question is from Rose Springvale. And the

question here is, “Are there ways that non-educational sims developed by private and

nonprofit groups can coordinate with the educational institutional sims?” Are there

successful examples of that happening, and do you have some ideas on how we might be

able to take advantage of that?

REJIN TENJIN: I certainly think that is extremely important. I think too often we think of the

20th century model of education separated from training and learning. I think that just as we

mash-up in our web space, we can readily see mash-ups that create learning environments,

new hybrid learning environments that involve both the historic institutions and other

providers.

FLEEP TUQUE: I would definitely echo that as well. First of all, there is a nice cross-over

between a lot of nonprofit institutions in Second Life and educational institutions. Many of us

contribute on the same email list serves and things like EduIsland hosts institutions of both

education and nonprofit. And as far as business and education, there are so many

opportunities here.

I think all of us are sort of facing some of the same challenges with the platform itself. And

as we discover things that work in one environment, they’re likely to cross over and work

well in other environments. And I personally am hoping to see a growth of things like

internships. So if a company wants to come into Second Life and explore creating a

presence here, perhaps some students who are working in educational projects in Second

Life may be able assist with that. I would love to see internships develop in that way.

And there are other partnerships as well. I know that our school, University of Cincinnati,

just recently partnered with Siemens to work on developing--they have an industrial design

modeling software. And some of their customers are starting to explore platforms like

Second Life, and want to turn their industrial designs, maybe an engine or something, and

turn that into Second Life prims. And they’re working with us, with the College of

Engineering, to write that software.

So I think the technology underlying these kinds of platforms, I think there will be lots of

opportunities for research and higher education to work together, but also in the experiential

learning process, letting students intern in your store. And maybe some of these big box

companies that are coming in and don’t have staff to stand there and greet customers.

Maybe students could do that work for them. So I look forward to seeing how that develops

over time.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now, I have to say that sounds to me like really a pretty

traditional RL model that certainly business schools have been following for a long time,

working very hard to develop partnerships with corporations for student placement and what

is sometimes called practice-oriented or experiential learning. So it sounds like maybe one

of the advantages of Second Life is just that it provides another venue for that.

REJIN TENJIN: But also in some ways it provides the opportunity for new experiments to

take place and new partnerships. And it’s not just educational and corporate institutions, but

organizations of all kinds. We had President Jimmy Carter visit at Simsim just a couple

weeks ago. And he was very curious about the means by which we can leverage these

technologies for different forms of engagement and collaboration. And also he picked up on

a comment, after he visited on the island, is that they’re remolding the Carter Center. Why

don’t we have a model of the new Carter Center that people can look at before the new one

is in place? And started to pick up on looking at other forms of engagement, in that we also

visited at The Wall. I certainly encourage people to look at the island called The Wall that

has a nice set-up that we visited too, to look at different build characteristics and prim

management.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. And that actually sounds like it leads naturally into a

question for Rejin from Evian Argus), which is, “Do you see Emory helping businesses to

understand best practices and actually facilitating e-commerce in the metaverse?”

REJIN TENJIN: I think the forms of commerce--as long as we look at it from core principles:

How do buyers find sellers? How do sellers find buyers? How do you match? How do you

describe products or offering of services to the market? How do you price things? How do

you discover price? How do you decide, settle, follow-on activities, follow-on services? All

those things can be examined in a whole different context in the virtual worlds. And so it’s a

great environment for discussion of principles of commerce practice and principles of

management.

So it’s not unlike the science experiments of a new physics that we have by looking at

particle animation and new physics within different islands that we can do the same thing

with commerce. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is very interested in looking at how these

environments can facilitate the education on economic conditions, not only present, but

historic. What were the situations in the past? So we start breaking the barriers of time as

well, as--physics as well as commerce practice.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now that we’ve gone through all the hype and talked about the

wonders of virtual education, let’s talk about some of the challenges. And I’d like to start with

what I see as being one of the biggest challenges of higher education in virtual words, which

is getting the faculty in there, getting the faculty over the technological hurdle. Do you see

best practices on that front?

REJIN TENJIN: It’s the biggest hurdle of all. I think that there’s a high overhead for getting

involved. The reality, from a faculty side is, this is not going to contribute to tenure in its

current form. And so it has to be done with a different passion as you well know. And that it

certainly has to be a part of a commitment by the institution and a recognition and valuing of

the extraordinary effort. And the same goes for the students as well.

FLEEP TUQUE: I think--I’m working with faculty every day; that’s I would say the bulk of my

real life day-to-day job right now, is facilitating our faculty staff learning community and

giving presentations and training sessions. And I think a couple of key things that I have

found helpful in introducing is, first of all, to note and be honest about the shortcomings as

well as the benefits of a platform like Second Life, and being upfront that, hey, this is an

emerging technology. It doesn’t always work; it’s not up all the time; there are glitches. And

if you don’t set the expectation so high that they’re expecting to come in and fly in and start

teaching tomorrow, I think that helps quite a bit.

As Benn mentioned, certainly institutional support helps if you have the infrastructure in

place and the funding in place to upgrade your computer labs or upgrade faculty’s

computers in their offices, we find that some of the biggest challenges are just the most

basic hardware components. People need to have upgraded machines to access this. And if

you don’t take care of that, then all the rest of it doesn’t work.

But I think maybe even bigger than sort of the technical challenges and learning the

interface and learning how to operate in Second Life, I think the biggest challenge I’m

seeing is really a cultural one. Our students may be a lot more familiar with digital

technologies than our faculty are, and we can’t underestimate how overwhelming and

intimidating that can be to come into an environment where maybe your students take to it

like fish to water and you’re still walking into the walls. And how does that affect your

authority as a subject matter expert?

REJIN TENJIN: Absolutely.

FLEEP TUQUE: I think that one of the things that we can do, at least for me, someone like

me--IT staff and facilitators and instructional designers--is really emphasize that this virtual

world technology is taking place in a bigger context. You know the web two point oh?

People hate that phrase. But it is a phenomenon. The social networking is happening. And

there are so many opportunities for research. When Benn said this doesn’t contribute to

tenure, I want to say, “Why not?” There’s tons of research to be done in here. There’s tons

of papers and conference presentations to be done, and I look forward to facilitating that.

And if we can just get over the hurdle, the technology hurdle and the sort of expectation

hurdle, then what I’m finding is that faculty get in, and once they can get past the sort of

initial barriers, they see the same possibilities that we do. And they’re set to run with it. Our

campus is having a barn dance tonight, and a couple of faculty members from different

departments are bringing their students in, and they’re going to kick it up with some hay

bales. And I think that that demonstrates that it’s becoming part of our class culture when

we use it as much as it is our educational culture.

REJIN TENJIN: Let me add a couple comments here because first of all, toys become

tools. And you can’t just declare a toy a tool. And all too often we’re at that cusp of we’re at

a nascent stage; we shouldn’t inflate it more than it is and we shouldn’t denigrate it. You’ve

got the issue of the digital natives: the Millennials that are coming in that are more ready

than the faculty to immerse themselves here. And you have a faculty that are digital

immigrants themselves that find it an extra hurdle to immerse themselves in here.

The promise is huge, but the reality is such that, when I talk about the issue of its not

contributing to tenure in part because it’s difficult to find effective studies. From the business

standpoint, any study that says six out of eight dragons believe something is not going to

contribute to one’s tenure case. But you can build models and you can demonstrate a lot of

things that you cannot do in any other venue. So I see it as very important that we look at

the transition period of toys that are becoming tools. But we have toy players, native toy

players that need to lever their skills and we as educators need to contribute to them.

FLEEP TUQUE: I think I have to take issue. I’ve come to hate the terms digital natives and

immigrants because I’m working with people on the ground, day to day, and finding that yes,

there is a generational component, but it’s not the end-all be-all. I’m finding that there’s a

sub-population of students who are just as uncomfortable with some kinds of technology as

faculty are. And vice versa, I’m finding some faculty that take to it like fish to water and who

are heads and shoulders above their students in no time.

So I think the issue of a digital divide is a real one, and it affects across class lines as much

as it does against age lines. And that’s something that we as a society and as educators

have to look at and maybe be realistic about that, not everyone has these technology skills

even if they fit in the Millennial demographic.

REJIN TENJIN: It’s not just a demographic; it relates to the issues of--a portion of them.

There are always people off the norm. I’m just saying that the norm of a community that

says they’d rather give up their 20 things that are considered more important than their

iPods, that you have something that’s very different; you have a skill-set of intrinsic learning

that is not leveraged well in our educational community. So you can always find out-lyers in

there, but I’m talking about the larger groups. And the larger groups do exhibit the behaviors

of comfort and discomfort with approaching new technologies. So it is a mix.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: If I could press a little bit more on the digital divide issue, Chris,

you mentioned that one of the big issues that you deal with is just the hardware and getting

the faculty and the students the right hardware. And here, Second Life is a beast. It requires

a very good computer. It requires a very good connection. And if you’re using it in

conjunction with other programs that you have running in the background, then you really--

you’re talking about a lot of money. So there’s the cultural issue of the digital divide, but

there’s also simply the financial issue.

So since educational institutions are supposed to be as open and accessible as possible

across the economic spectrum--I mean this potentially--actually, Margaret Corbett here at

Cornell, who’s been using virtual worlds, active worlds for over a decade, is very opposed to

the direction Second Life is going, saying they’re basically shutting out half, two-thirds of the

potential student body. So do you have reactions to that?

FLEEP TUQUE: Well, I think that certainly it’s an issue that our university is facing in that

when we look at distance learning students, for example, as a population, we discover that

often those students most dependent on technology for the course offerings that they’re

taking have the least hardware and the least tech savvy from time to time. So that’s

definitely a valid criticism.

I guess what I would say to that is that educational institutions have to invest, and granting

institutions that we’re applying to--these virtual worlds are happening, and they aren’t going

to go away. The more we can increase access to them the better. And I think for a faculty

that are considering teaching in Second Life, definitely you have to consider that this should

be an optional activity. You can’t necessarily require a student to participate in something

that they don’t have the hardware to do. And institutions can also provide things like

computer labs that do run Second Life, though, that can be a maintenance nightmare with

the constant updates. That’s one strategy that we are using; we’re trying to equip as many

computers on campus and give that access to our students when we can. Benn, what do

you think about that?

REJIN TENJIN: I agree that we need to have the means of rapidly testing the environment,

testing network and the computing environment to make that assessment. In working with

the government of Singapore for example, when you’re establishing a new system, instead

of taking the lower common denominator, you bring up accessible labs, a library or an

arcade-type structure that allows people to get access. And you have to tolerant and

assume that everyone doesn’t have the same level of access to the environment. But the

key is not to reduce everything to the lower common denominator, but trying to raise the

boat for the market if you can. And there are ways of doing that. The digital divide doesn’t

have to be just a have and have-not situation. It has to be turned into an accessibility

challenge for everyone.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I’d like, if we could, to move onto another issue which also came

up today here at Cornell, which is the limited attention span of today’s youth: those pesky

young people. Many of you will have seen in the news a guy has a book on the hazards of

multi-tasking, and we know that everyone’s doing 19 things at once and thinking about them

for eight seconds. This is a problem we struggle with in the traditional classroom. And I’m

trying it figure out whether virtual worlds are just going to create more problems or whether

there are ways that we can use this trend to our advantage. Is this something you guys have

thought about and see an answer to?

REJIN TENJIN: Let me comment a bit on that because the notion of immersion is the most

exciting element to me with the virtual worlds. This is the nascent stage of the browsers of

the future where we’re dealing with rich media that are very immersive, that capture and

engage multiple senses at once. And that’s a key part of the power. With that will bring more

focus. So there’s an opportunity for higher focus, and at the same time, augmenting multi-

tasking in a more focused fashion. I don’t see it as a negative and nor is this a remedy for

multi-tasking, but to bring it into a new venue that allows multiple senses to be engaged at

the same time. And it will lead to both better focused attention and better multi-tasking.

FLEEP TUQUE: I have to say that’s a really tricky question because I know for myself I find

myself having 15 blinking IM windows; I’m also in a virtual location; I may also have twitter-

up on another window. I find myself multi-tasking more in using Second Life because I’m in

multiple--I don’t want to say places--but multiple spaces, mental spaces sometimes.

Again, I feel like this technology isn’t going away, so the more that we can do to adapt to it

and figure out which strategies work well--and I agree with Benn; it’s the immersive nature

of this virtual environment that I think holds the most promise. And while I may have many

blinking things going on, the sense of being in this room with all of the people, I can see

them and I know that they can see me, and to me, that is as immediate as if I were sitting in

an auditorium. And that doesn’t go away even with my blinking windows. So I think it does

bring a different sense of attention to your interaction online than just say a text message.

REJIN TENJIN: One of the things that I worked on virtual reality was stereoscopic lenses

and binaural earphones and microphones was looking at the technology as a distraction

technology for children who are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer.

And looking at how these technologies allow them to engage and create a focus, a whole

new concentration is very powerful from that standpoint. In that case, immersion into a

gaming world or immersion into something that allowed them to have a different presence,

allowed them to distract them from other things is a positive element too. So immersion

works both ways: it works to mask out other reality as well as create an immersive situation.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Let’s see, are we still talking about limited attention span? Whoa,

that’s amazing. I have a couple great questions here, and so let me ask these from the

audience. Here’s one from Sandy Enock(?). “Considering the recent moral panic in both

Europe and North American institutions about declining standards of education, grade

inflation, lowered standards, how can educational institutions insure that when using Second

Live they’re providing better education, not just another instance of technology over

pedagogy?” Sandy does not use the word fad, but it certainly would fit. So, Chris, what do

you see on that?

FLEEP TUQUE: Well, I think instructional designers like myself we’re always trying to

[SKIP] don’t want to say, “How can I use this technology?” “Here’s this new tool; what can I

do with it?” Instead, [SKIP] I have this goal: How might this technology help me enhance

that goal? So I want to increase engagement in my class about this particular topic: How

can this tool help me do that to sort of fit the technology to the goal instead of the other way

around?

And I think that will be a challenge for educators. And that’s certainly one of the things that

we are looking at, and I think all educators using Second Life right now is assessment: How

do we assess the impact of this learning environment? How do we assess how well

students are gaining the information that they need based on this course material that we’re

using this environment to teach? And I think that that’s an ongoing area of study.

As to whether or not it’s a fad, I always say that it’s possible that Second Life could sort of

the Mosaic or Xscape. Those are browsers that we’re not using anymore, but they sort of

tipped the scales and started the trend. And I genuinely believe that things like virtual worlds

aren’t going anywhere. And the more researchers we have in here asking those questions

and measuring and assessing and really looking at it from an academic angle, I think the

better we can help inform the broader conversation about what these technologies mean.

REJIN TENJIN: I agree with Chris because, as I said, we’re very much in the stage like the

internet 1994. And I see the same kind of doubt discussion, uncertainty about it, what’s

faddish. We haven’t begun the kind of experiments yet that’ll create the whole new learning

environments that are a part of this. The biggest challenge is to think 21st century. And the

biggest challenge is to be looking forward on the educational practice, the way people learn

and adapt in the 21st century rather than trying to force-fit measures and metrics, especially

those of adult learning, which I think were frankly more 19th century than 20th century even.

So a key challenge is to build the measures and metrics and objectives against the 21st

century scope.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay, we have time for one more question, and it’s going to be

mine because this is something that I’ve been thinking about a while. I’ve been on the list

serve of the serious games list serve. So these are people who are designing games for

purposes other than entertainment, primarily education. And there’s been a debate going on

for a while on this list about whether to use the word “game.” And I think that part of the

problem--I mean, the question that Sandy posed was basically: How can we get people to

understand that people are actually using Second Life seriously? I view that as a

substantive question, but there’s also the image question whether it’s dragons in fantasy

worlds or escorts in Second Life. I think there is a game taint, a fantasy world taint in these

worlds. I’m wondering if you see easy ways to get over that so that these virtual worlds can

be viewed as serious.

REJIN TENJIN: I think we have some challenges, but civility is a killer app. And the notion

of moving from a World of Warcraft and I think Ted Castranova’s talk was excellent--

interview that you had where he was describing the issue of the concomitant tension and

reward aspect that has a pressure reduction here. This is more civil and more

understandable by those in society who might be skeptical of the gaming environment. So

we have to earn that. But as I mentioned, the toys become tools. And it’s very important to

understand that we’re in that migration and evolution of things that often begin as toys that

do become tools later on.

FLEEP TUQUE: I think one of the things about Castranova’s talk in the last Metanomics

session that I found really interesting is I sometimes had difficulty applying his analysis to

my experience in Second Life because I don’t view it as a game. The only way I can make it

make sense is if I said, “Second Life is like the game of life. And the risks are that this is my

real professional reputation even though it’s in avatar form. And the risks are that I’ll look

like a fool, and the benefits are that I will really facilitate education.”

So I think when we use the term “game” to apply to Second Life, I personally want to draw a

distinction between virtual world games and virtual worlds because the connotation with

world is that it’s complex; that there is an economy; that there are nascent sort of

governments and communities forming; that there is business and commerce and education

and nonprofits. That’s what, of all of the virtual world platforms, why Second Life is the most

appealing to me personally is that it’s a world. It really is that complicated. And I think that

this is such a new technology we don’t necessarily have the terms or the lexicon

established. For a while there it was synthetic worlds and virtual reality and metaverse.

Nobody knows exactly what these words mean yet, and I think it will be up to us to sort of

help define what those things mean. So I look forward to seeing how that goes. Personally,

in my presentations, I say Second Life is not a game. It may contain games, but the platform

itself is a platform, not a game.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, we are actually out of time. I’m going to let Melbourne’s

Writer have the last word and response to this discussion. He types in the chat window, “We

are World of Talkcraft.” Which I think is probably how my students often view me. Anyway,

thank you very much, both of you, for coming on to the show. And so we have about two

weeks left in Metanomics before the term ends. And we’ll be picking up again in January.

Welcome to all of you educators who have joined us, many of you for the first time. I hope

you’ll be back. We mix business and education together. And I guess, actually, just real

quickly, Chris, can you summarize for people in the audience just good resources to go to to

get more information about education? There would be SLED and the wiki. Can you just sort

of run through a list?

FLEEP TUQUE: Sure. There are a couple of things. First of all, I would say if you’re

interested in education in Second Life, just do a search in the group tabs for education.

There are a number of great groups that will keep you up-to-date on what’s happening in

Second Life. There are activities almost every single day that can put you in touch with

people in-world. And then there are a couple of really great web resources as well:

SimTeach.com is the website maintained by Jeremy [Kenth?], and they have some fantastic

resources for you there. The University of Cincinnati has a Wiki as well, where we try to sort

of collate all of the research being done. And there are a number of list serves that you can

join. And I think most of those are linked from the SimTeach.com Wiki. So those are good

places to start. Definitely I would say connect with other in-world educators. They’re the best

ones to sort of show you the ropes and let you know what all is out there.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Chris Collins from the University of Cincinnati; Fleep Tuque

in Second Life. Benn Konsynski from Emory; Rejin Tenjin in Second Life. And this is Rob

Bloomfield; Beyers Sellers in Second Life signing off. Thanks everyone for coming.

REJIN TENJIN: Thank you.

[END OF AUDIO]

Document: cor2012.doc

Transcribed by: http://www.hiredhand.com

Second Life Avatar: Transcriptionist Writer