This is the sort of thing which would have some of the free spirits who thrive in the relatively anarchic and regulation-free virtual worlds emerging on the Internet up in arms. However as our institution puts more of its learning activities into environments such as Second Life there are many policy issues emerging to which we’re having to find solutions.

I had an interesting conversation earlier today with Anna Peachey, our resident Second Life guru about some of these issues. I had only encountered her before in Second Life so it was great to meet Elsa Dickins’ real life avatar.

One of the most fundamental issues is whether Second Life is the best environment for us to base our activities in – with substantial investment going into a platform we don’t control. If Woodbury University could have its site removed by Linden Labs then it could happen to us for a variety of reasons. There are alternative environments such as OpenSim which can be hosted and managed in-house and avoid the problem of the site being withdrawn.

This parallels the arguments surrounding the use of free Web 2.0 tools on the internet versus in-house VLEs/LMSs, some of which I’ve detailed before. Trying to replicate the success of Second Life in a locally-hosted “walled garden” would have a number of drawbacks. By restricting the space to students and staff of a single university it would miss that element of spontanaeity and unpredictability that having strangers wander into your tutorials brings! But would students take to a neater, more sanitised version of Second Life? On the other hand the Open University has enough critical mass with its 200,000 learners that it could potentially attract thousands of them to an environment restricted to its own community where genuinely useful learning activities were taking place.

Another issue to get to grips with is the basic architecture of the University’s islands. Schomebase is where students tend to hang out and can create their own objects whereas OpenLife’s spaces are developed and controlled by University staff. We’re not convinced we’ve got this balance right yet and there are various sections of the islands which need to be restricted at times or permanently for particular purposes (eg meeting rooms where there are good reasons for keeping the discussions private).

As more activities take place on Second Life there will no doubt be great controversies about where they should be located relative to each other. Deciding whether an entirely new area of activity such as study skills should have its own island or say a building within an existing island is something that will have to be worked out. I remember similar discussions a decade ago when universities were trying to decide on the optimum architectures for their new institutional websites.

There are of course various legal issues to deal with such as copyright. Another one is ensuring that we don’t breach access restrictions to any library content we make available there. Then there will inevitably be complaints from students about the behaviour of other students – we need to work out ways of dealing with those.

Training is an issue too. If we’re going to be hosting core parts of our courses in virtual worlds, we need to provide training for students and tutors in technical and navigational issues – and also guidance to staff and learners in how to carry out effective teaching and learning activities “in world”. I heard about a student the other day who fell down into the tunnel at the edge of one of our common areas and spent the whole tutorial trying to find his away out of it to join the other students…

There are all sorts of logistical issues too such as the connections between the virtual world and the virtual learning environment, single sign-on, automated population of tutor groups with the right students and booking systems for teaching spaces within Second Life, integration of your avatar into your student profile, bespoke sign-ups which allow you to enter the virtual world immediately… Thank you Anna/Elsa for giving me a lot more very interesting things to think about!