Prior to last week, I had always thought of Second Life as purely social. I've never been "in world" but from what I had heard, it seemed like more of a game than anything else. Then I started hearing that people are making a living by charging for things in businesses that were set up in Second Life. Hmmmm. Then I heard people were wanting to set up training centers in Second Life. For the life of me, I couldn't see how that would work.
Last week I visited one of these training centers and it was ... interesting.
They had built a building, complete with spiral staircases, as student lounge, a library and classrooms. Through your avatar, you went to the center and participated in synchronous training. Students could use both verbal and typed "chat" to communicate, ask questions, etc. Quite impressive. They even showed us a team building activity where avatars solved problems together with the restriction that they could not speak, much like an activity we do in a classroom team building session.
There certainly appear to be many possibilities.
But there are also some limitations.
First, participants have to be able to work their avatar. One student who was part of the demonstration had been in Second Life for 6 months and she still had trouble raising her hand and walking from one place to another. When it came to "teleporting", another student had to take her along because she wasn't good at that either. It made we wonder to what degree the technology could be distracting to students -- will they be splitting their attention between what they are trying to learn and how to operate their avatar. We run into this challenge with any new technology, but in this case, it seems perhaps a little more complicated.
Second, there is the whole Second Life environment. Let's face it, there is some pretty adult-oriented content out there that is just not considered appropriate for a business/professional environment. Making sure your participants don't accidentally get somewhere they don't want to be would be important. And making sure others who want to be inappropriate don't get into your space in equally important. They recommended making sure you locate your center in a G or PG area of Second Life would help, but the risk is always there. A more certain way of controlling who comes to your center is to pay for an invisible island, but you still have the risk of your students getting into places they don't want to be and possibly unsure how to get back.
The person hosting us admitted that many things he was doing in Second Life could be done more efficiently in other delivery methods, but to him, the great advantage was have one place to access all training - the training center in Second Life. He didn't have some training offered in a classroom, some online via Web-Ex-type technology, some via self-study on a website, some as reading, etc. Everything people needed or wanted to do was at his Second Life training center. All they needed was an avatar to access it.
And while I have not yet been in Second Life other than as a tag-along to this host's avatar, people who are in that space say they really do feel like they are there "in world" -- that they are much more engaged in what they are doing than when they are in a synchronous online training session. But they admit that what they are participating in (social things) is more engaging that a lot of training anyway. They can't say for sure that attending a facilitated session that basically mimics Web-Ex training would really be different in Second Life.
It was very cool. It certainly has potential. But as I said in my earlier post, I'm wondering where it will be in 10 years. Will it really replace all training? Or will we figure out that it is great at some things and not so great at others? And in that case, will it just be one more place to go for training instead of my host's dream of one place for all training?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Interesting discussion. As someone who still hasn't bought into SL, I am eager to see where this goes in the next 10 years as that would determine if I'd have to make an effort to start liking it or not. I recently discovered Aviva, the company I work for, also has its presence in SL. But I think it's only for agents and salespeople. Though, Aviva announced its new wiki and blogging areas last week or so, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are looking to expand their SL presence to all employees
Prior to this class, I had not even heard of SL. I was amazed as we talked about it in class. In my mind it was clearly a gaming environment- speaking as the mom of a 17 year old who spends a great deal of time on x-box live! I was surprised as I was listening to a podcast and the speaker was talking about how Universities are using it and how some professional degree programs are using it. Made me think differently about this as a resource!
Post a Comment