Recently in Second Life Category

On October 6, 2009 representatives from NMC's virtual world building team gave a tour of a project that they created for the University of Washington's Psychology department. The goal of this project was to recreate a real-life experiment space using a virtual environment. The real-life experiment seeks to evaluate people's responses to office and classroom environments that are decorated in a stereotypical computer "geek" way (e.g. Star Trek posters) versus more neutrally decorated rooms. The research team is specifically looking at how long people spend and interact with objects in a room and if there are any gender differences.

The tour began with an explanation of how the subjects of the experiment were trained in how to navigate through the Second Life environment. A maze was created that tested a user's ability to navigate through the space, once a user was able to successfully complete the maze three times they were thought to have mastered the necessary skills needed to continue with the study. The hosts of the tour then explained how objects were quickly rezzed so that rooms can be quickly changed into tech-geek or genre neutral. They made an important point of noting that Second Life is not a photo-realistic environment and that the goal of this project was to make the environment as realistic as possible in the placement of items that were identical to the real-life conditions but not to reach the same level of graphic realism.

When subjects enter the experiment rooms in Second Life using their avatars a sensor is used to detect what direction they were facing, this information is then emailed to a specific account for data collection.

Is Second Life even suitable for this kind of research? The research team found that results from the Second Life experiment were very similar to real-life results. What does this mean for researchers? Using a virtual world such as Second Life allows researchers to conserve resources in both finding and building out real-life spaces which costs money and time.

For more information visits the description of this build available on the NMC web site at: http://sl.nmc.org/2009/10/06/october-vwex/

An article on this study can be accessed at: http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/0901/pages/geeks/geeks.html

On September 15th, 2008, Kelley Executive Partners, affiliated with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, held a half-day program in Second Life entitled Virtual Worlds and the Future of Business Education.

Presenters at this event included:

• John F. Cady, Executive Director, Kelley Executive Partners


• Ken Hudson, Managing Director of the Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College


• John Lester ("Pathfinder Linden"), Linden Lab's Boston Operations Director


• David Levine, IBM TJ Watson Research Center


• Anne Massey, Dean's Research Professor and Professor of IS at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington


• Christian Renaud, CEO of Technology Intelligence Group


• Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins-Bell, Director of Emerging Technologies for Media Sauce


• Carolyn Wiethoff, Clinical Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington

Earlier this week, the Idaho Business Review posted an article, Play2Train virtual world provides disaster training.

The article describes how the Play2Train environment (developed under the Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness and Preparedness program - IBAPP) in the virtual world Second Life has been utilized by graduate students at Seton Hall enrolled in the Master of Healthcare Administration program.

Drs. Anne Hewitt and Susan Spencer incorporated this virtual world training experience in March 2008, and are planning a second exercise in early July.

For additional information regarding the use of Second Life in the Master of Healthcare Administration program, please see these earlier ePirate posts:

Learning in a Virtual Environment
Bioterrorism Awareness Using Virtual Worlds

If you are interested in exploring the potential of utilizing Second Life in your classes, please contact your Instructional Designer.

Learning in a Virtual Environment: Managing Emergency Preparedness and Health Security using Second Life as a Teaching Tool.

Anne Hewitt and Susan Spencer recently presented with Ramesh Ramloll from Play2Train at the TCC 2008 World Wide Online Conference regarding the integration of a virtual learning scenario in a Master in Healthcare Administration (MHA) course.

Industry is quickly discovering the advantages of virtual worlds. Hundreds of corporations are taking the plunge and creating a presence in Second Life. We recently stumbled across a portal, VBusiness, dedicated to supporting these efforts through an advertisement for an in world expo. The VBusiness expo is a "dedicated business focus entry into Second Life".

VBusiness Mission: Providing a dedicated resource and entry point for corporations in Second Life gives us all the opportunity to promote business in virtual worlds. Through content partners, corporate sponsors and educators, vBusiness Central will become an invaluable source of information for companies and play an important role in virtual worlds adoption in 2008.

For more information visit: http://cleverzebra.com/vbusiness/expo

On Friday, February 29th faculty at Seton Hall participated in the "Leap into Second Life" workshop. Ten participants enjoyed a fun filled day learning about how to fly, walk, chat, change their appearance, make notecards and take pictures.

This past Tuesday members of the TLT Center staff explored the potential of Second Life. The professional development workshop provided staff with a basic understanding of how to navigate through the virtual world, change avatar appearance, and interact with objects (such as notecards). Much of the fun took place on the NMC campus and Pirate Island (Seton Hall's leased space). The workshop also provided the opportunity for a test run as we plan a similar event for faculty on February 29th. Registration for the Leap into Second Life workshop is limited to 16 - if you are interested be the first to register at http://tltc.shu.edu/register.