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Online Higher Education in Second Life?
XxtraLarGe asks: "As both a technician for my college's Distance Learning program and as an avid gamer, I have been tasked with investigating Second Life as a possible way for us to extend and enhance our online classes. I've done a lot of research, reading about what other schools have done. While I personally think it is a really cool idea, I am somewhat skeptical of the actual practicality and value of what seems to be a glorified chat room. I'd like to hear from others about their education experience in Second Life, particularly if you've been involved in setting up any online classes or taken any online classes. What sort of training would be required for the faculty, and is it really worth it?"
If I met someone who acquired their education via Second Life, I would laugh hysterically at them. Then I would toss my spare change into their tin can and while I continue on my way to work.
Look beyond the hype and anti-hype. Second Life is a great platform for cooperation, and it is not just about chat.
People can build things together without having to know 3-D instructions of 3-D software. People can program in a C-like syntax, event-driven. It has produced a great result in beginning programming classes, since students have been able to produce enticing results from their first 'for','while', or if... And they find an immediate use for maths (3-D movement) and for lots of algorithms.
For instance, my undergraduate students are producing in Second Life "products" that behave as if they had RFID tags and are now developing a traditional Windows application for managing e-mails sent by those "products" - without actually having to acquire RFID tags. And they are just beginning their programming.
On the other hand, one of my PhD students is trying to integrate Second Life with teaching management software like Moodle or like our in-house system. There is an open source platform for accessing Moodle content from Second Life (Sloodle), but not the opposite.
I think you two could exchange interesting view. Get in touch.
Instruction is just chat, also. I fail to see how that's any different.
As for archiving, there are linux-based scripts to intercept the text chat and store it. So no issue there, either.
It's not THAT bad on the client side. If you don't get crazy and build a complete model of your real building in-game, you should be able to get quite a few people in the same area without issue.
Server uptime is questionable at best.
It IS distracting for sure.
Getting your slideshow to work can be an exercise in profanity.
And people can just wander through uninvited, unless you make everyone part owners and use special scripts to keep others out, etc... A real pain.
How do I know this? I used to go to the RoSL (Rubyists of Second Life) weekly meetings to listen to them talk about the cool Ruby stuff they were working on. Why don't I go now?
Because the idiots that staff Second Life can't fix my account and don't want to even talk to me about it. They had numerous security breaches, and on the first one, made everyone reset their password. Mine won't, it just gives an error and tells me to contact support. Email support claims they can't help other than to send the same broken url that's on the website. The phone support always does one of the following: disconnects immediately, puts me on hold forever and disconnects at the recording, puts me on hold forever and PROMISES they'll contact me and let's me record a message and then doesn't contact me, or goes into an infinite loop and won't let you do anything. I don't think there even ARE live people on that thing. I've certainly never talked to one in 6 MONTHS OF TRYING.
Seriously. If you have ANY issues whatsoever, you can kiss your precious class goodbye.
That's the real reason to stay far, far away from Second Life for anything non-trivial.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM