VWER: Future of Education in Virtual Worlds?

(cross posted from http://blogs.sanjac.edu/virtualworlds)

I attended the Virtual Worlds in Education Roundtable (VWER) Annual “First Meeting of the Year” for 2011 this past Thursday.  I believe this is the third year the VWER’s new year has begun with a panel discussion.  The stated focus of the discussion was on the Probable, Possible and Preferable Futures of education in virtual worlds.  Of course, the majority of the discussion focused on the first two.  The discussion was moderated by (using Second Life monikers) AJ Brooks and included Buddy Sprocket, Fleep Tuque, Anthony Fontana, Wainbrave Bernal, and Kenny Hubble.  So what’d the panel have to say? (with my thoughts mixed in throughout.)

Probable Future of Education in Virtual Worlds (or Second Life) for the next year?

Hypergrid and OpenSim will be coming into their own: Joykadia, Reaction & VWER Grids along with hypergrid-linked worlds and Pathfinder’s Hypergridding club (Buddy).   Anthony took it a step further though; he believes Open Sim will continue to attract talented developers and (other than browser functionality and developed content) will rival SL experience by the end of the year.  Of course my thought was, aside from client/browser/viewer functionality and developed content, what else is there in the virtual world?

With a caveat that predictions are increasingly difficult as the technology makes the realm of possibility substantially larger, Wainbrave predicted that more institutions will acquire greater sophistication and context of how we use VWs to achieve a broad range of learning outcomes.  He also noted that Public Virtual Worlds are at the bottom of the trough of disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle, according to the August 2010 report.

Fleep believes Virtual Worlds will continue to be a very niche technology.  That will continue at least until the platforms start to break down barriers between web and virtual worlds; currently everyday communication tools and uses of the web are too external to Second Life.  With that said, virtual worlds are not going away, and they may increase somewhat as OpenSim will have a larger role in the coming year with a number of benefits (local hosts, secure hosting, local backups).

Digression: Second Life on the decline?

A significant portion of the early discussion focused on the role of Linden Lab’s Second Life within the market. Buddy Sprocket reminded the group of his comment from last year that Linden Lab need to establish themselves as the hub for hypergridding; problem is, they haven’t done that.  As hypergridding increasingly connects OpenSim sims and other virtual platforms, Second Life may be marginalized – especially if you combine that with the impact of Linden’s price hike for education.  Plus, someone noted that a very interesting and perhaps critical issue with Second Life is that even some of their best people are no longer with the company and in some cases, are evangelists for other platforms.  Pathfinder Lester (formerly Pathfinder Linden) started the Hypergridding club and is now an evangelist for OpenSim, hypergrid-linked worlds.

Kenny Hubble commented that he believes “there is *not* a future for education in Second Life.”  His explanation focused on the idea that “doing education in a virtual world” is an obsolete notion; we can; we can meet anywhere via any number of technologies.  It’s not going to be one world; it’s going to be multiple spaces.  The manner in which we relate to it will change.  The notion of the “virtual campus” will fade, and it will be just another space in which we meet.  I disagree.  First, Kenny’s argument was more theoretical and semantic than practical; he even commented that he believes the educational community will persist in Second Life.  The platform disappearing into the background and the way in which we relate to it changing will not happen in the near future.  For that to happen, the novelty effect and general user awareness of the technology as they used it would have to wear off; it would have to become “just another way to communicate.”  I don’t think that will happen for a number of years.

Fleep took the middle ground regarding the future of Second Life.  She argues there are definite benefits to staying in Second Life: see my previous post re: the Metanomics session, and Anthony agreed that the content in Second Life is worth maintaining a presence.  To maintain a position of relevance, however, Linden Lab *must* participate in developing standards and protocols and engage the larger virtual world community (i.e.  hypergridding).  With all of that said, she does *not* want to discourage folks from trying OpenSim.

Digression: Search in Virtual Worlds?

An interesting side conversation focused on the critical need for effective search capabilities within virtual worlds.  AJ noted the lack of an effective search engine to locate hypergrid enabled sims; though Pathfinder suggested hyperica.com, and I’m not sure who noted Gridhop.net.   As I first glanced at that site, it struck me as an indexing sort of site, and not a true, Google-type search; it seems like Yahoo internet search circa 1997. Pathfinder agreed and commented that we “need a Google-esque system. something that automatically indexes things across grids.”

An additional, search related issue is the desperate need to be able to better search within virtual worlds for content.  Wainbrave, who has done significant work in this area, noted the absolute lack of metadata on objects in Second Life which renders it unsearchable, from a Google-esque perspective.  The only content that can be searched in Second Life is the data that users have submitted to the indexing system.

Possible and Preferable Future of Education in Virtual Worlds (or Second Life) for the next year?

By the time the panel had addressed the original question and the digressions, we had blasted through the first hour.  I appreciated Anthony Fontana finding a way to interject his prepared notes regarding the Possible Future and Preferable Future of Virtual Worlds/Second Life for the coming year.

Anthony believes three things are distinctly possible for the coming year.  First, we may see SL in a browser, and that could mean two different things.  Combined with a $50 Chrome netbook could begin to make SL’s role in education more significant, and we could see SL interaction integrated within Facebook apps or iframes – making SL use more seamless in existing social interfaces. Second, Avatar Kinect by MS XBox could allow for SL via a browser on your TV and perhaps REAL virtual world dance parties; Kenny had suggested the same when discussing Probable events for the coming year, and I have suggested previously as well

As for preferences for the next year, Anthony described a scenario in which mesh brings more animators and architects into Second Life.  Plus, Linden Lab splitting the SL experience based on user engagement: basically, focus a web browser experience on consumers and the client experience on producers of content.

What’s really going to happen? And a few closing thoughts and questions.

First, I think it’s a no-brainer that educational institutions will spend significant effort exploring OpenSim and other opportunities.  Open Sim will continue to post record months as HyperGridBusiness.com has reported several times of late.

Second, as that happens, I believe Fleep was dead on that we’re going to see the wheel reinvented in OpenSim – since Linden Lab does not permit the porting of SL content to OpenSim (which they should) and, worse yet, in my opinion, the education community will become more fractured.  Spreading our efforts across multiple platforms inherently fragments the results.

Third, I believe two significant changes will occur at Linden Lab.  The background of the new CEO seems to suggest the manner in which Second Life is promoted and “framed” for potential users will change, as might the user experience.  We may see signs of Second Life become *more* game like.  Plus, I see the ownership inevitably changing.  The leadership thus far at Second Life has seemed incapable of developing Second Life into the lead dog within the niche that is virtual worlds; there’s any number of things they could have done to accomplish that: engage the development of protocols and standards; engage hypergridding; opening SL content to export to extend Second Life’s presence across platforms; making the Second Life browser capable of browing other virtual worlds.  With all of that said, the content and technology of Second Life is invaluable.

Question that I’ll be considering.  When will public virtual worlds begin to move OUT of the trough of disillusionment, and what role will technologies like Avatar Kinect play in that happening?

For those unfamiliar . . .

The Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable (VWER) is a weekly, global meeting of professionals interested in the use of Virutal Worlds in educational environments. Currently, the VWER meets every Thursday in Second Life at 4:30pm Central Standard Time, GMT -6 (Chicago/Houston).