University Business - March 2008 - (Page 63)

A Holodeck classroom simulates a variety of environments. A virtual greenhouse at Case Western Reserve University’s ClevelandPlus campus includes babbling brooks, flying birds and butterflies. to the campus, with various paths from which to choose. Up ahead board on the island that advertised the course, as open enrollment. is a faithful recreation of the school’s landmark Cutler Hall. In real Normally, students who enroll in our courses are actually in our life it serves as an administrative building, but in Second Life it is master’s program. But for this class, of the 14 people who enrolled the student center, featuring meeting spaces and video screens that in the class, only two were from our master’s program. The rest were people who found the class through Second Life. Now we’ve play student-created ﬁlms on demand. Throughout the island are automated information boxes that started advertising our other grad classes in-world. Does Second contact advisors. Just touch the box and a message is sent to a uni- Life increase university exposure? Deﬁnitely.” versity representative. “If someone is looking for speciﬁc information on, say, the English department or computer science, their CRITICISM request is forwarded to the correct department,” says Keesey. Like television and the internet before it, Second Life has its share “The greatest beneﬁt of our Second Life campus has been as a of critics. While some call it an enormous waste of time, others are marketing tool, really extending our brand out into a whole dif- concerned about using a technology in teaching that hasn’t been ferent channel,” he says. “Along with creating the campus, we also thoroughly assessed as an education tool. created a corresponding machinima video on YouTube that has had “Students are not introducing Second Life to universities, unithousands of hits. That has done wonders in terms of throwing at- versities are introducing Second Life to students,” says Michael tention not just on our Second Life campus but on Ohio University Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Comas well. There are many people who would’ve perhaps never heard munication at Iowa State University. Speaking at a Second Life of Ohio University. Even more amazing is that we’ve seen YouTube symposium at ISU last fall, Bugeja warned that because Second video tours given in other languages, created by people who just randomly found ‘Policy has to change. As we innovate we will run into our campus via YouTube or from bopping around in Second Life. They created policies that were written for other contexts.’ their own videos, in their own language, —Chris Keesey, Ohio University Without Boundaries giving a tour of our island. So here are people who clearly would never have set foot on the Ohio University campus, and the Second Life campus Life is largely an “anything goes” world, schools may be opening really allows them to walk our sidewalks and under our trees and themselves up to enormous risks for liability, especially in areas of really get a feel for what it’s like.” assault and harassment. Dawley says that although EDTech Island is just over a year “If you place in that world a replica of your college or university, old, it has grown in part from the marketing potential of Second leasing virtual land, and agreeing to service terms that bestow anoLife. “We’re still exploring how we can leverage our virtual pres- nymity and disavow liability, your institution becomes liable for ence to increase our exposure on a national and international level, virtually anything that happens there,” Bugeja says. “Almost anybut I can say that it has helped,” she says. “Last semester we had a thing that happens in real life can happen to avatars. The actions class called ‘Teaching and Learning in Second Life.’ I put up a bill- of avatars are controlled by people behind the Wizard-of-Oz-like universitybusiness.com March 2008 | 63 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