I received an email from a reader who is working on a worthy project and is looking for advice on Second Life. Since I generally avoid SL myself, I was hoping some of you might have some tips for her.
She writes:
My goal is to create a simulation that can be used by a non-profit consulting firm, where I intern, to allow employees and field representatives engage in a fun and useful tool to educate themselves about the intricacies of implementing a project. Many of our employees are at field sites around the world, and we wanted to use a platform that would not require us to all sit in a room and do a tabletop simulation; instead, using the virtual world of Second Life seemed like a perfect place where individuals could learn and interact.
We work on international health projects, primarily sponsored by USAID, and have allocated overhead money to cover the cost of purchasing an island where the simluation can take place. As many activities have input from a variety of stakeholders, our aim was to use Second Life as a place where individuals could adopt the role of the Minister of Health, a donor, a community health worker, etc. and experience what it was like to participate in the negotiations that take place in determining priorities, indicators, targets, and other necessary tenants of our projects.
I know that explanation is laden with international health jargon, but here are a few of the questions affiliated with it…
- Is it best to set up seperate SL accounts attached to avatars that we can give to the individuals participating in a given round of the simulation, or allow people to create their own avatars and attend the simulation, just taking on the role in the way they behave?
- Beyond purchasing the island and the “rent”, what other costs can we expect to incur if we don’t need any particularly fancy infrastructure? We work in developing countries, so a bare-bones facility will suffice just fine.
- What is a realistic time frame to conduct an online learning module like this?
- Any other advice/caveats/words of wisdom?
Well?
I have lots of thoughts, but most of the answers to these questions would be “that depends.”
Q1. The answer to this may depend on how comfortable your learners are with SL, and also how immersed you’d like them to be in the environment. For people familiar with SL, it may be easier for them to use their own avatars–if they aren’t experienced in SL, it may be easier to give them avatars. Also, if you are truly setting up an immersive role play and the types of people involved in the scenario is very important, it might help with the storyline to have avatars already made that those involved can “play.”
Q2. My guess is that if you only need barebones facilities, you can probably get most everything you need for free, or for the amount of Lindens$ that you get with your island.
Q3. Are you referring to how long it would take to set up, or how long to run the actual training? Set up should really only take a few days to set up the physical environment. Obviously, what happens within that physical space is what’s more important, but you didn’t mention design issues like who will facilitate, how will the success of the interactions be measured, etc., so I’m assuming you feel you have those addressed. If the actual design of the interactions hasn’t been developed, that could take additional time to determine the most appropriate structure for designing a truly immersive environment. How long the experience should be designed for is very much dependent on the content, but I wouldn’t recommend a requirement of more than 60-90 minutes at a time.
Q4. I’d put much more focus on making sure your learners can effectively use the technology through a great orientation to SL and then the design of the immersive environment. Good instructional design is much more important than fancy graphics. It sounds like a cool project and I wish you luck!
I agree with most of what Koreen says above. I would think that if finances are the issue that you should probably avoid trying to get an island. Over the years, I have seen a number of enterprises/ projects fail because of the tier costs for an island. There are other alternatives that you can consider and I’m happy to share additional information if you are interested……