Virtual reality provides new classroom possibilities

Mike Alberti Assistant Life Editor

Imagine if, instead of getting dressed and walking to class each day, you simply logged onto the Web to watch your professor’s lecture. You could ask questions and have discussions with other students, all from the comfort of your dorm room. Well, it might not be such a stretch.

Over the last few years, colleges and universities across the country have been experimenting with Second Life, a 3-D, interactive, virtual world in which users create and embellish real characters to represent themselves. These characters, called “avatars,” can look like you or not, but they can fly and teleport to any part of the virtual world at any time.

The world itself is the equivalent of more than 100 square miles, and is growing steadily. You can design and build just about anything in Second Life, from a house to a slot machine to an art sculpture.

While Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life, designed it primarily for recreation, schools have recently found ways to use the technology for educational purposes. Along with dozens of other schools, Vassar owns its own island in Second Life, where students and staff are free to experiment with different ideas pertaining to college courses.

Though in some ways similar to having class in a chat room, Second Life offers students and professors the advantage of actually being able to see one another, or at least the digital versions of one another. This real-time “physical” aspect is what makes Second Life an attractive medium for education, especially for classes in which students are unable to come together in real life. New York University, Pepperdine University and Harvard Law School all currently hold classes in Second Life.

Classes taught in Second Life might be able to replace more than distance-learning classes. Vice President of Computing and Information Services Bret Ingerman noted possible advantages to Vassar’s participating in a virtual world: “What if an
Environmental Studies class were to model a specific environment in Second Life? What if an organic studies class were to build a model of a molecule in Second Life? It would be a lot different from building it with wooden balls and sticks. Students could walk around the environment, make observations, see what’s going on. There are definitely some advantages,” said Ingerman.

Ingerman stressed that these are all just ideas for the time being. He said, “Right now, it’s really about conversation and inspiration. We’re just seeing what may fit.”

Some Vassar professors have already begun utilizing Second Life in their classes. In Media Studies 250: Serious Play: Computer Games in Contemporary Culture, Associate Professor of Computer Science Tom Ellman and Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies Colleen Cohen had their students put on a virtual fashion show in Second Life. “We wanted to look at Second Life to investigate issues about how it feels to sort of move and act and talk in a virtual world [where] one can represent oneself as many different kinds of [persons] based on the kind of avatar one makes for oneself,” said Ellman. “My intern built a runway for the avatars to walk and a seating area for the audience to sit. Then the students had to show their avatars and talk about how they made them and what they were trying to do.

Ellman did expres some reservations regarding Second Life as an educational tool. “We discovered that students who we would expect to understand the ground rules of an ordinary classroom behaved differently in a virtual classroom,” he said. “Some students brought weapons to the fashion show and fired them at other students’ avatars. It inevitably raises the question: How do you know what the rules are when you find yourself in a virtual world?”

Although she admitted superficial knowledge about the program, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Gayle Sulik said in an e-mailed statement that she agreed that the undefined parameters of participation could cause problems. She also expressed reservations about Second Life’s impact on actual reality. “The folks who say, ‘It's just software’ forget that there are real people sitting behind screens pushing buttons,” she said. “And, the folks who are invested in making the virtual real are not taking into account that real realities have material and social conditions that one cannot simply turn off.”

Ingerman said that he created Vassar Island mostly as an experiment. “My job is not only to meet the needs of today, but to find the technologies of tomorrow that help Vassar do what it does better,” he said. “It feels very much like it did in the early ’90s with the Web. I think that Second Life offers us an opportunity to explore a new kind of technology that, in my opinion, represents where communication on the Internet is going.”

“Second Life definitely looks like it might have some learning potential,” says Art Librarian Thomas Hill. “One project that we are thinking about is a virtual art gallery where the art studio students here could essentially display their work. Artists can also use it for performance, possibly being able to reach more people than they could in the real world.”

Hill mentioned a project at University of California, Davis where psychology professors simulated the experience of schizophrenia in Second Life. “You walk into this house and suddenly there are all these voices, coming from everywhere, saying some really disturbing things,” said Hill. “It’s creepy, but for psychology students it’s educational as well.”

Ingerman spoke about a man who created an online area based on the works of Shakespeare: “I can foresee a place where English students could watch key scenes from Shakespearian plays, acted by virtual actors. You could actually see the kind of places that Shakespeare was writing about.”

However, according to Ellman, Second Life’s potential as an educational tool is far from being fully realized at Vassar. “At this point, it’s main educational potential is learning about virtual reality,” said Ellman. “I’ve yet to see examples of it being used for other purposes. Second Life may well be an effective way of doing some distance learning, but we haven’t been using it that way yet.”

“As for the future,” said Ellman, “I have no doubt that things like Second Life will become more popular. As an educational medium, I certainly expect it to grow.