Module 4: Second Life as a Disruptive Technology

Second Life as a Disruptive Technology in Education and Training

I would like to introduce you to my avatar, Snowball Svoboda.

She represents me and my involvement in Second Life, where I have been a resident for three years. I see the virtual world through her eyes, and together we explore educational opportunities and new learning situations. We are members of the Second Life Educators and Second Life Researchers communities, as well as Real Life Educators in Second Life. Those groups alone can keep an avatar and her person busy most days. There are lectures, discussions, courses, symposia, concerts, and exhibits going on all the time in-world, so I have to pick and choose the events that are most useful for me, because I could easily become so involved that I would neglect my First Life obligations. Unfortunately, Second Life has not yet evolved to the point that I can send my avatar to an event and have her take notes and report back to me. That could potentially be the beginning of “virtual cloning”!

In the workplace, Second Life is becoming popular as a training and collaboration space, especially in companies that are geographically distributed and where meetings are conducted via teleconference systems. People attend these meetings, but their value is limited because there is no real engagement. Many attendees start checking their email, planning grocery lists, and other non-related actions. However, as noted by Chuck Hamilton, IBM’s new media leader for the 3-D internet team, “You can come to the meeting as a fish”(Gronstedt, 2008)--you can be creative, and as you express your creativity, you become more engaged in what you are doing. Additionally, you now have a (virtual) physical presence in the room, which also leads to more participation and direct involvement, and all without the need to leave one's office or home, fight traffic, or incur travel expenses.

Second Life, for those companies and organizations that have made the leap, has become a disruptive technology in a most constructive interpretation of disruptive: Second Life affords the opportunity to treat everyone in a large geographically diverse organization to equal access to events sponsored by the parent company. The Chief Learning Officer at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) championed the use of Second Life in conjunction with CSC's 50th anniversary celebration--the training organization sponsored a research grant that funded the development of an island (a discrete piece of property in Second Life) to be used initially for sales training, and was later co-opted to develop a virtual tour of CSC's 50 years of history. These applications were so successful that the learning team has reclaimed the island as theirs and are now using it for new hire orientation training. Because CSC has numerous branches all over the world, this arrangement guarantees that all new hires receive the same information without the company incurring travel expenses (Huntley, 2009).

As a technology, Second Life displaced stand-alone simulation programs, as well as some of the computer games using avatars. What made Second Life truly unique, however, is the fact that everything in Second Life is created by users. Linden Labs provides the raw materials (called "prims" for "primitives") that can be morphed into almost anything the builder can imagine. Avatars are created as generic characters, and each user customizes their avatar's appearance, clothing, and accessories (wings are always an interesting concept, although they are not necessary for flight in Second Life). An additional technology that has been at least partly displaced by Second Life in those places that have embraced virtual worlds is the teleconference: why sit in a room staring at a speaker (the electronic kind) when you can gather virtually?

Before I get too far down the road cheerleading for Second Life, I would be professionally remiss if I did not also address the concerns about Second Life: namely the fact that it is used by many international criminal and terrorist organizations for communications between their personnel. What is an advantage for business and education is also an advantage for the bad guys, but for different reasons: this way they can meet without being in the same location (and creating what my uniformed colleagues refer to as a "target-rich environment"). They do not have to leave their safe havens and travel, all of which potentially exposes them to the folks who are looking for them. Like most anything else, Second Life is a double-edged sword that can be used for good or for evil.

Because Second Life is only limited by the number of servers that Linden Labs can support, it is never likely to become overcrowded or overused. Also, as long as users keep coming up with new applications, events, and purposes, there will always be a demand for Second Life. I would predict that it has at least 5-10 more years before it runs out of ideas/inspiration.

As an educational tool, Second Life has acquired a large following in some very interesting places: a government agency needed to train personnel to become fluent speakers of Korean. Traditionally, this was done in a classroom, taught by a native speaker, with the standard drill and practice and rote memorization of vocabulary that many of us have come to expect. Someone at this agency got very creative, and got funding to buy an island, where they developed and built a traditional Korean village. Instructors developed avatars in traditional Korean garb, and student avatars were dressed in school uniforms and were expected to follow the protocols of school in Korea, including standing in respect when the instructor enters the room.

Here's where it gets interesting, though: because this became an exercise in total immersion is both language and culture, students were becoming proficient in spoken and written Korean much more quickly than their traditionally-trained peers. They performed better on standardized tests, and impressed the instructors, all of whom had taught the traditional classes previously. How did this happen, you are asking? The actual research has not been published for many reasons, but mostly because this agency does not publish for the benefit of the rest of the world. However, those of us who were in the room when this information was briefed to us developed a theory which could be worth pursuing: adult learners tend to be a bit risk-averse in a classroom. If they are not absolutely certain of the right answer, they will just sit quietly and try to become invisible. However, we also know from prior research that adults learn best by making mistakes and examining the mistakes of others. Therefore, the instructor needs to get someone to give an answer in the first place. The Korean instructors noticed that in the virtual classroom, students/avatars were much more willing to respond to questions and provide answers and input. This gets into some deep psychology (see Dr. Nick Yee's dissertation for much more detail on this concept, called the Proteus Effect), but because students feel that the mistakes are being made by their avatars, and not by them, it was safe to take the risks. Students would learn from the mistakes of the avatars and move on.

Other social benefits of Second Life echo the benefits of the internet in general: the ability to connect people from a wide geographic span to collaborate on a variety of projects and activities. For those interested in architecture and design, several years ago a Non-Government Organization (NGO) doing relief work in Nepal needed to build a new clinic. They could not afford a traditional architect's fees, so someone floated the idea of a contest in Second Life. This took on a life of its own, and a self-selected group of volunteers, real-life architects, students, wanna-bes, and just plain creative people pooled their expertise and ideas and, using a wiki model of collaboration, developed a design for the new clinic, which ended up winning an international design prize (Wikitechture, 2008).

For those who are physically challenged, Second Life offers a taste of what normal could be: avatars can walk, run, dance, and even fly even though the people behind them may be confined to wheelchairs. Hearing impaired people are right at home in Second Life because the use of text is quite extensive, even though a voice chat capability was recently implemented. Most of the events that Snowball and I attend are done in both modes, as computer speeds in some regions are too slow to support real-time voice. Several programs have used Second Life to teach life skills and communications manners to autistic/Asperger's patients, and there is an active group of autistic individuals who have formed a support group in Second Life. Children who have suffered traumatic circumstances find it easier to talk to a friendly avatar on the screen ("just like television only it talks back to me!"), so the virtual world becomes a tool for therapy as well.

I could go on and on, because in three years I've barely begun to see all that there is to see and do in Second Life. However, I'll wind it up here and just suggest that as Ed Tech students, we should all be at least conversant in functioning in a virtual world. It costs nothing to sign up for Second Life, and for those of us whose First Lives are sort of limited (that would be me: grad school, full-time job, and a business owner), it offers a wealth of experience that we don't even have to leave our computers to participate in. See you in-world!

References

Gronstedt, A. (2008). Be First in Second Life. Training, 29-30. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

Siekierka, G., Huntley, H., & Johnson, M. (2009). Learning is center stage at CSC. T+D, 63(10), 48-50. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.


Wikitechture on YouTube (2008). Accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amCi90zH3VI&NR=1

Yee, N.. The Proteus Effect: Modification of social behaviors via transformations of digital self-representation. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, United States -- California. Retrieved October 28, 2010, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text.(Publication No. AAT 3267669).