All 13 of the JISC Regional Support Centres responded to the  request for information for the Virtual Worlds Watch snapshot survey..

“The picture they (RSCs) present is of virtual world use being much more isolated and infrequent in further education (FE) than in higher education (HE). Institutional technical barriers and support are still major issues for further education staff. Where institutions have overcome these, substantive virtual world developments have occurred.

The RSCs themselves are providing support in different ways, e.g. events, forming a national coordination grouping, and levering the experience of HE institutions to support FE colleges. Across the 13 regions, staff hold widely differing views on the effectiveness of virtual worlds in education.

As with all previous snapshots, Second Life is the predominant virtual world of choice. Having said that, OpenSim is being mentioned by more respondents than in previous snapshot surveys, though actual implementations in UK academia remain few and far between.”

Snapshot and Full Virtual Worlds Watch report

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University have collaborated on a JISC-funded project in Second Life to simulate areas of the Western Front in the 1914-18 World War

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/Home/news/stories/2009/11/ww1simulation.aspx

This project, uses  a range of digitised archival materials like poetry manuscripts, letters and diaries from the major poets of the First World War including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg and Vera Brittain, along with contextual primary source materials. These materials have been supplemented with new interpretative content,  interactive tools and tutorials, streaming video and audio effects.

Kate Lindsay, project manager, said: “Virtual worlds create opportunities to do things that are impossible in real museums. By simulating parts of the Western Front, we can embed an entire exhibition’s worth of content within in the space. This can be further enhanced by placing digital versions of real archival materials and narratives along the paths that visitors take. The result is an immersive and personal experience. It’s not ‘real’ but it does offer possibilities for understanding a part of history that is now beyond human memory.”

A new report  from Virtual World Watch, “Choosing virtual worlds for teaching and learning in UK Higher Education” has been  published containing contributions from academics in the UK.

Virtual World Watch asked previous respondents to snapshot reports – UK university and college academics who develop and use virtual worlds – what worlds they used and why they chose them.

Read or download the report

Since 2006 Barry Spencer at Bromley College has been exploring the learning possibilities of Second Life. In January 2009 he introduced this 3D online environment to students taking specific modules of the BTEC National Diploma for IT Practitioners (Software Development).

The course project involved the students:

• designing and coding programmes to calculate electricity generation of wind turbines;
• using the Second Life multi-user virtual environment to simulate the effect of ‘real world’ variables on turbines of different design and displaying the output of electricity generated; and
• evaluating their experience of using Second Life for learning

Read this RSC London case study on the Excellence Gateway

The windfarm in Second Life

The first thing that everyone notices about Second Life is that it is a 3D graphical world which appears to be populated with pseudo-realistic humans with perfect bodies and elaborate hairstyles. – JISC 2009

So begins an introductory guide to Second Life from JISC.
The ‘Getting Started’ guide has been written by representatives from several projects within the recent Users and Innovation programme.  It is aimed at staff who are looking to connect through a virtual world to learning and research activitiesand offers a step by step approach and a range of guidance in the key areas and issues.

Order a copy or download the PDF

Getting Started with Second Life

JISC’s third online conference  Innovating e-Learning 2008  ran between 4-7th November and attracted nearly 400 delegates from higher and further education. The programme, which featured live interactive sessions in Elluminate – a tool for online collaboration – and in Second Life, was judged a resounding success by delegates.

The theme ‘Learning in a digital age – are we prepared?’ supported a broad programme from the disruptive but equally enabling affordances of mobile technologies to the impact of Web 2.0 on the relationship between learners and teachers, from achieving transformational change within institutions to the importance of understanding learners’ strategies for effective learning.

Presentations and papers from the conference are now available online at

Innovating e-Learning 2008