Archives for 2007

Second Life will undoubtedly affect the way in which tertiary education is delivered.

I say this after doing a search of the term “university” on SL the other night. Whilst the usual mish-mash of results occurred, what was extremely interesting was the number of universities that had established a serious presence in SL.

As yet there is no Australian presence, however I would not be surprised to see some of our premier universities such as the 2006 Commonwealth University of the Year, University of Wollongong, showing up there some time soon.

The prospects for distance education courses are an obvious dimension that SL would substantially change in terms of costs, lecture material, communication and student / lecturer interaction. However, it also begs the question as to whether the idea of on-campus and off-campus course structures could, would and will change.

A perusal of the search results on SL show that some of the universities; Rockcliffe University, Ohio University, San Diego State University (the top three by traffic numbers) are exploring their presence and the kind of options they can offer current and prospective students. As the front runners, other universities (competitors in the world market place) may find themselves playing catchup at a cost.

Assuming that the global market is just that, we will no doubted see these SL campuses of Real Life (RL) centres for learning providing fully recognized programs at competitive rates.

The effect that will have on Australia’s HECS scheme, and indeed, the funding and viability of universities in this country is a definite area of concern, if not interest.

I recall an article bemoaning the lack of scientists in Australia – too many MBA’s mayhap 😉 – so for those of you interested in a different perspective on gathering resources for teaching, a visit to the SL Science Center is definitely in order.

A range of displays and interactive exhibits as well as links to various other SL Science landmarks not to mention URL links around the center make this a must see.

I was especially impressed with the weather map just inside the first building when you TP (Teleport) in. It would be great if our own Australian BOM site could have such a visually impressive representation of weather!

Just do a search for “Science Center” and you will find the place and the group dedicated to the maintenance and development of this valuable area. It would appear to be an international collaboration too. Would be great to see some Aussies represented.

The creater, Troy McLuhan has his own blog subtitled Explaining Science with Second Life. He certainly would and could be classified as a pioneer in exploring the ways and means of enabling science education to be delivered in a way that motivates further investigation by aspiring students and teachers. Both the Science Center and Troy’s blog would certainly be a good inclusion for prospective science teachers as a SL Field Trip and browser read respectively.

Of course, the downside is that you can’t share this with classes in schools (unless you are very, very brave – or stupid), though the URLs are obviously easy to bookmark in a browser and pass on to students.

Given the “mature” dangers associated with SL the challenge in the near future for both Linden Labs and content providers is how to overcome the inherent dangers when such worthy SL areas are sandwiched in areas that contain, let us say, adult content…