Rice University’s experiments in Second Life

Philip Montgomery Archivist/Special Collections Librarian

Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University

woodson@rice.edu

November 12, 2009

Stepping off the edge:Virtual World Project

• Perceived interest in virtual reality for library• Created an ad-hoc university-wide committee• Created a white paper on need to explore• Approached Provost with request to create

alternative virtual campus• Bought an island in Second Life• Made a committee decision to build campus• Ran two-year experiment for teaching and

learning.

What is Second Life?

• Networked Virtual Environment (NVE)• 3D modeled terrain inhabited by graphically

rendered actors known as avatars• individuals build, interact and exchange in a

graphical format• owned and operated by Linden Labs, a leading

developer of NVE technology

SL facts

• 1,363,000 avatars logged in Oct.-Nov.- 2009• 50,000 to 60,000 logged in at one time (a

small number by gaming standards)• SL has its own economy based on the

exchange rate of L$120 per US$.• The participants own their content.

Milkwood Library

Macbeth

Rice’s Owl Land

Fondren Library’s presence in SL

• Rice University’s Fondren Library posted several image & text based exhibits in the library space in Owl Land. Images linked to digitized items in Rice’s institutional repository, scholarship.rice.edu.

• Access to the Fondren Library catalog via SL was explored.

Educational opportunities in Second Life environment

• Some universities have explored using Second Life as a virtual classroom for distance education

• Some have used Second Life as a research lab / community

The gist of SL

It is about human interaction through:• Emotions• Creativity• Community• Relationships

The primary tool is the avatar, a representation of a sentient being.

Pronoun problems

“… my pronouns get a little mixed up when I'm talking about Re or myself. I have occasionally settled on "we". I know my avatar (Re) has done many things in her three months of life that the real me wouldn't do.” Lisa (ReneeIlene Spiritweaver in SL)

Mind if I sit here?

"... one of my favorite oddball things about being in SL... If I'm at a meeting with a friend, I want to sit next to my friend - even though we are not really "there"! I don't care about that dimension in chat rooms or discussion threads! <grin>" Ilene

Look at me when you talk!• I always turn to face a person I’m talking to in SL•Awareness of body language• Finding the right look and feel or not• I react “inside” when my personal space is treated in a different way than normal. • What does this say about me?Rolig

I don’t mean to be rude

“I am guilty of the not-always-facing folks when I chat. One reason is that I am usually doing three things at once …. So I forget to move Rocky to face folks.”

Rocky/Bill

Personal Space in SL

Nature NewsSept. 11, 2006Psychologists find real-world social rules mirrored in

'Second Life' interactions.

“some quirks of how people interact in the real world have survived the digital transition. ”

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060911/full/news060911-3.html

Replicating schizophrenia

University California, DavisOctober 12, 2007

This UC Davis psychiatric clinic is nothing but pixels, part of the online, virtual reality environment Second Life. Based on the psychoses of actual patients, it was created by Dr. Peter Yellowlees, professor of psychiatry, and colleagues at the School of Medicine, to help medical students understand what it is like to have schizophrenia.

http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=9787

Learning to Save Lives

From BBC News October 27, 2008

Paramedic students at St George's Hospital, University of London and Kingston University use Second Life to aid their learning.

"When they make a mistake, they are always keen not to make this mistake again." Dr Ahmed Younis, principle lecturer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7686595.stm

Screen shot of student avatars attending a drunk in Second Life for paramedic students at St. George’s Hospital in London.

Body and mind: a study

Source: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

This paper looks at how and why users customize their avatar and how easy and satisfying the existing avatar-creation tools are. Full PDF available on line.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1518877

Emily• Image Metrics, creator of

Grand Theft Auto• The aim was to overcome

the traditional difficulties of animating a human face, for instance that the skin looks too shiny, or that the movements are too symmetrical.

• http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece

Emily is one of the first animations to leap a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

Be Mindful of Future

Technologies change how we do projects.• 3D-visualizations for personal devices (HUD glasses)• Artificial worlds in gaming environments• Artificial intelligence• Robotics• Quantum computing• Mobile computing• Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and beyond

Epilogue, 2010

• Rice decided to halt the experiment in Second Life for the time being, due to staff time constraints in the current economic environment. However, it was a very worthwhile experiment and we look forward to future experimentation in new arenas to fulfill our educational mission.