The institutional land grab

To educators seeking funding to engage in activities in SL there is the reluctance of the administrators of academic funds to support &idquo;game playing”. This applies pressure on educators to emphasize Second Life as a Virtual Learning Environment rather than a MMOG. It also shapes the nature of some of the projects that they initiate in-world.

Staking a claim

There are numerous SL campuses such as Harvard Law School, San Diego State and Northern Illinois University that include reproductions of key structures from their bricks and mortar counterparts. One explanation for this type of construction could be, as Daniel Livingstone and Jeremy Kemp have observed, for large education institutions in Second Life “something like planting a flag on a distant land” [15]. Another could be an attempt at creating status using the primary currency of prestige available to institutions and enterprises establishing a presence in Second Life i.e. the amount of land used and sophistication of building skills deployed. The larger your land and the more complex your architecture then the greater your standing among your competitors in Second Life.

A demonstration of potential

Aline Click from NIU (Ali Andrews in SL) claims that one of the main reasons she chose to recreate a facsimile of her real-world campus in Second Life was to prove a point to those funding her work.

“I went about replicating one of the cornerstone buildings on Glidden Campus because I thought that it would be the best way to demonstrate that this isn’t just a game…I thought if they saw something that was more science fiction or creative they might not quite understand what you can do in this system, and that is that you can simulate real life.” [16]

Respected SL educator and commentator Sarah Robbins remarked that importing recognizable landmarks from real-world campuses “somehow impresses administrators” [16].

Both these quotes came from a session of the Second Life Educators panel entitled “Are we playing games? Finding Legitimacy in the Academy.” Held in-world on the 18th October 2006 as part of the New Media Consortium’s “Impact of Digital Media Symposium”. The very existence of this panel is testimony to the perceived need to overcome the perception of Second Life as a game in the eyes of some education administrators.

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8

[15] Livingstone, D., & Kemp, J. (2006). Massively Multi-Learner: Recent Advances in 3D Social Environments, Computing and Information Systems Journal, 10(2).

[16] Kojishi, D., (31 October 2006). Legitimacy in Education. Metaverse Messenger

A sign of things to come

The Berkman Center at Harvard School of Law

The Altgeld building at Glidden