University Business - March 2008 - (Page 62)

Sizing Up Second Life students at the Ohio institution have adopted the platform as an extension of real-world activities. “Our Virtual Campus is well traﬃcked because of our lively community, resources, and the continuing development of the campus,” Fontana says. “We have more than a dozen professors using it in some way. Some are doing research, while others are teaching. I’ve exhibited my art, and there are many instances of student exhibits, music, and performance.” The Virtual Campus continues to grow and will soon have a writing center staﬀed by graduate students. Bowling Green faculty have even been known to use their virtual oﬃces—which look like space pods built into the side of a mountain—for oﬃce hours and meetings. “The real value of it is as a means of interaction,” Fontana says. “For example, last semester, we conducted voice chat interviews with an artist working in Tokyo and with a physically disabled entrepreneur who runs a nightclub in Second Life for handicapped residents.” Interaction was also the key behind the recent collaboration between Ohio University and The Princeton Review. The result was a live, in-world pavilion dedicated to SAT preparation. “We set up an event venue to have the Princeton Review teachers come in and do a series of live Q&A sessions for parents and Avatars appear to come to life and interact with humans thanks to special software developed at Georgia Tech’s Augmented Reality Lab. Second Life to blend locations in physical space with corresponding places in the Second Life virtual space. The result is real world interaction with virtual world objects and beings. “We’re very much interested in using video games, not for their typical purpose of beating a high score, but as expressive platforms and performance spaces,” says Michael Nitsche of the School of Literature, Communication & Culture, who is part of the Augmented Reality team. “We wanted to create a new form of telepresence and virtual performance.” The project enables the Augmented Reality team to take a realworld video feed and combine it with the avatars acting in Second Life. These performances ‘Does Second Life increase university exposure? Deﬁnitely.’ are then recorded as videos called “machinima” (a portmanteau of —Lisa Dawley, Boise State University (Idaho) machine and cinema). “The result is that you can actually appear as students interested in doing the SAT and ACT exams,” says Chang yourself in your own body next to an avatar and interact. You can Liu, director of the VITAL (Virtual Immersive Technologies and enter these worlds yourself,” Nitsche says. “That’s very powerful.” Arts for Learning) Lab, part of Ohio University Without BoundarThe Augmented Reality team has begun experimenting with ies. The venue, which includes seating, stages, multimedia projec- this breakthrough with a series of virtual performances by Georgia tion screens, and voice and text chat capabilities, also has a robust Tech’s improvisational theatre group performing with Second Life administrative system to capture student data and the ability to avatars. Nitsche says the potential for such technology is huge and record detailed logs of each of the sessions. can see it one day being used for training simulations, or perhaps to “Second Life provides the capability for people to communi- practice surgical procedures. “Second Life and other game engines cate very eﬀectively, in a very rich form,” Liu says. “It’s no longer are simply a means to achieve something. I’m interested in empowjust text. It’s no longer just voice. It’s text plus voice, plus the 3D ering the player more with this technology,” he says. “There are all animation that lets you see and interact with each other. It’s a very kinds of implications. It’s a new form of telepresence that can be rich form of communication, and the main task of education is used, for example, in a virtual meeting where you appear as yourself communication.” and interact with your boss.” (See an example of Augmented Reality machinima at http://youtube.com/watch?v=ODgZtriNYoc.) INNOVATION Because it opened to the public in 2003, Second Life is still very much in the early adoption stage. Linden Lab’s designers had no grand scheme in mind other than to see what people would do with their creation. One of the most groundbreaking examples has come out of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Augmented Reality Lab. The lab team created custom software that works within 62 | March 2008 PROMOTION Gaming technology is one thing, but Ohio University has also had some success using its Second Life presence as a marketing tool, says Chris Keesey, project manager of Marketing and Learning Applications for Ohio University Without Boundaries. When a user ﬁrst teleports to the island, he or she arrives at an arched gateway universitybusiness.com http://youtube.com/watch?v=ODgZtriNYoc http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - March 2008

University Business - March 2008
Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
EduComm Insert
Financial Aid
Money Matters
Human Resources
Higher One Insert
Community College
Cadets on Campus
Keeping an Eye on the Network
Sizing Up Second Life
Endowment Management
What's New
Calendar of Events
End Note

University Business - March 2008