SLBPE. Kenny Hubble’s (Loyalist College) Keynote.

Ken Hudson (SL: Kenny Hubble) of Loyalist College in Canada presented the first keynote of the conference. I believe the archive of his address may be available at SLCN.TV, and it’s worth viewing. The session was FULL; the main room was standing room only, and from what I understand there were fair crowds at the overflow venues as well. (more pictures here)

Ken provided a fantastic overview of Loyalist College’s experience, to this point, in Second Life. There were several things he described which I believe are informative to other institutions perhaps beginning to establish their Second Life presence.

First, Loyalist College started with a 1000 square meter parcel that Ken set up rather quickly at EduIsland. He quickly seized an opportunity to use a smaller piece of land on a larger, educationally related development. This allowed an initial presence which they announced via a press conference, attracting national attention in Canada, and they were able to do conduct their first instructional use of the space as well.

Having a campus in Second Life is one thing; it’s entirely another thing to have real live students using it as a learning platform.

Loyalist College began their build by replicating campus buildings; they utilized student groups from the college (particularly architecture students) to begin creating a learning space: Loyalist College Amphitheater. This clearly represents a traditional learning space right down to the included “hand-raising” chairs designed to enable learners sitting and raising/lowering their hand to ask questions. I’ve been rather vocal about recreating such traditional spaces in Second Life. Even their initial goal, as he described it, is one that I’ve cautioned against: Twenty journalism students would use SL for small group discussions that used to happen in WebCT. HOWEVER, as Ken continued to describe the instructional activities engaged by their faculty and learners, Loyalist simply used the traditional space as a jumping off point for faculty and students. While the first several sessions simply recreated traditional learning interactions, by the time the course was over, they had guest journalists, researchers and editors join them in world, and one of their students garnered an internship with the Second Life News Network. That’s quality use of the Second Life environment.

Soooo…. I’m beginning to think that building a traditional space as the first College venue may be a good step; it provides familiarity and continuity for residents when first using Second Life. And, ultimately, such traditional uses of Second Life may begin the institution’s SL presence, but it doesn’t have to summarize it.

If you litter in Second Life, you’re littering. If you shoot someone in Second Life, you shot someone. If you have sex in Second Life, don’t do that in the classroom.

Loyalist College has and is willing to share a list of the basic skills they believe learners neeed before they will be able to fully engage the SL environment. This only confirmed my assumption that this is a necessary activity, despite a debate to the contrary on the SLED Listserv. When I have access to Ken’s slides or training materials, I will make information/links available here as well.

Other Loyalist notes and projects of interest:

• started marketing through SL. An international student established a Study in Canada pavilion and offered sessions describing the opportunities at Loyalist College. Within a week or so, they connected with 80 individuals across 26 different countries and received one application to the College.
• created a partnership with Brown University – highlighting the opportunity for inter-institutional collaboration via SL: Open Source Museum of Open Source Art.
• currently in the process of building Loyalist College Island.
• developing for the Fall semester a Youth Detention Facility Simulation: a twelve person detention center for role play within their criminal justice program. A similar project is underway within their Mental Health program.
• developing a Podcast Cinema, a movie theater type venue, which will allow learners to scroll through and watch College related podcasts: tutorials, course content and marketing materials.
• recreated, and improved in the process, a student lounge area called the Shark Tank Pub; while it takes the same name of their RL campus venue, the SL version is an underwater venue surrounded by sharks. dance floor included of course.

I sincerely hope to have the opportunity to get back in touch with Ken in the future as my institution plans to establish its SL presence.