How is our relationship to physical space changing as space becomes “virtual”?  What do virtual spaces reveal about the people and circumstances that create them?  Those are questions asked by Annabel Wharton, Professor in Art, Art History & Visual Studies, in her research on Medieval and Modern Architecture.

Over the past few months, Wharton has explored Second Life, an immersive world inhabited by several million avatars representing real life humans, as well as Assassin’s Creed, a popular video game set in thirteenth century Palestine and Syria. She is examining the effects of digital architectures on those who navigate those virtual realms. In Fall 2009, she plans to teach a course on Jerusalem in which students will join her in investigating the power of architecture in these new media.

For the past four years, Wharton has been studying “pathological architectures,” seeking to understand and describe the ways that “sick” buildings affect the people who occupy them. More broadly, she is interested in how architectures act as agents in modifying the way humans live.  Her work in exploring architectures in Second Life and video games is preparation for the last chapter of her book.

“It’s impossible to understand space conventionally any longer; digital worlds and immersive spaces play too large part in our economy and culture to ignore,” Wharton said.

“I expected myself to be a kind of tourist in Second Life and in video games. But the space is invasive; it doesn’t allow you to be simply an objective observer. I have become subjectively engaged, in a way that surprised me. ”

Wharton also noted that, in Second Life, the spaces are created by the avatars themselves; both shaping and acting is an expression of their producers.  As opposed to “real” life, objects retain  reference to those who made them. A chair or a house in real life is anonymous; a chair or a house in Second Life, with a click of the mouse, reveals its creator. Search engines allow you to invite those makers to talk to you about their work.

For example, during the recent presidential campaign, Wharton explored the Second Life spaces created by Democrats and Republicans. Democratic spaces were functional, open, modern, information-centered. Republican sites were architecturally elaborate with classicizing buildings and the intimacy of Main Street. She drew from her observations conclusions about the working of the “public sphere” in immersive worlds.

For faculty thinking about integrating Google Earth, Second Life or video games into a course, Wharton suggests becoming familiar with the technology first.  She compares it to learning a new language or visiting a new city with its own culture and conventions. Each technology may take several weeks of learning its mechanisms and exploring its   the territory to feel “at home”.

With Second Life, Wharton recommends having students to visit a variety of spaces, some connected directly with the course contents and some not, in order to accustom themselves to navigating the space and interacting with other residents. But finally students can construct the historical sites they are studying in three dimensions so that they and other avatars may walk through them.

Most residents of Second Life are “in world” for social purposes or for entertainment—from soft-porn to “dancing for Jesus.” But groups engaged in politics, education, art and music are also active there. Avatars can walk around the Sistine Chapel and the Temple at Karnak or they can attend discussions of Obama’s Cairo speech with Egyptians, Turks, Iranians and other Muslims from around the real world. The first brief piece that Wharton wrote about Second Life described her first visit during the Gaza War to the newly opened Palestine Holocaust Museum (article at iReport).

“It is really worth investigating digital technologies,” Wharton says, “They give you a new means of rethinking your old assumptions—a central concern of education.”

Project Description:
Giuliana Perco is using Second Life to explore new ways for her Intermediate Italian students to engage with Italian language and culture. Taking advantage of the many Italian cultural resources that already exist in Second Life, she is developing in-world activities for her Italian courses in order to study how effective Second Life is for language instruction with virtual “found” materials. CIT is providing Giuliana with pedagogical consulting on the use of Second Life for language teaching and learning, as well as Second Life workshops for her and her students.

Project start date: 6/9/2008

Funding awarded: $400

Project description

The purpose of this project is to establish and pilot a Second Life (SL) learning environment for faculty and students in the Duke School of Nursing (DUSON). Constance Johnson and her colleagues have explored student perceptions of learning using three different environments, and built a virtual classroom structure on the DUSON’s parcel on a Duke SL Island. In addition to building a virtual classroom they have also identified, collated, and developed orientation resources and procedures that could be provided to students and faculty for DUSON in the SL community. They develop and test with the students policies and procedures that could serve as suggested ground rules for DUSON to adopt in their SL learning activities, to ensure that students are able to focus on the educational components of the activities, rather than the novelty of the application and the overwhelming social aspects of SL.

The short-term outcomes of this project are development of a DUSON infrastructure for faculty and student participation in SL, and the assistance of students from at least two different nursing specialty areas and programs with evaluation and tailoring of the infrastructure.

The expected long-term outcomes of this project are facilitated participation of faculty and students from across DUSON, the University, and DUSON’s practice, service, and educational partners, in innovative, 3D learning activities.

Students’ positive feedback and comments in a recent evaluation have proved value of virtual environments: promotes distance education, allows simulation of scenarios, real time interaction between students and professor, interactive with 3 spaces, and self-directed study.  Future directions: to build autopsy rooms and simulation labs.

Watch the YouTube video below to see Dr. Johnson and her students use of virtual world Second Life as a teaching and learning tool:

Project start date: 6/16/2008
Funding awarded: $2,000

Additional information

There is a short overview on the Duke School of Nursing’s website about the work Constance Johnson is doing in Second Life.

Project Description:

Vicki Russell, Director of the Duke University Writing Studio, is investigating innovative ways that tutors can work with students on writing assignments, and students can collaborate on writing projects. Russell, using 3d virtual worlds software, has created a virtual Writing Studio – an online, 3d “space” where students, faculty and writing tutors can collaborate in real time.

The goals of the project are to use the extensive resources for writers available on the Writing Studio Web site as a foundation for creating an interactive virtual learning environment, demonstrating for writers that writing is a dynamic rather than static process. Allowing access to these resources during a tutoring session with students in a real-time virtual environment will provide interactive ways to facilitate writing as recursive rather than linear process. In addition, by creating a virtual environment space for collaborative writing that is expandable and reproducible for other units at Duke, the project will focus on helping writers improve individual written texts and become more self-reflective better writers and provide faculty with tools to help their students become more effective writers and critical thinkers.

Promoting a larger “culture of writing” on the Duke campus, the resource will include spaces for exploring writing resources in non-linear ways to help students during the writing process. The online presence will be a meeting place where writing tutors can assist students with writing assignments and spaces where student organizations can collaborate on writing projects for publication.

Russell was awarded a CIT Strategic Initiative Grant to facilitate the early stages of her project. Russell used funding from the CIT grant to learn more about virtual worlds applications, to investigate different virtual worlds tools determine technical suitability for the project and to survey students about current and potential virtual worlds interest and use.  The grant was also used to develop a plan and paper-prototype as a blueprint for implementing the future development of the virtual Writing Studio.

During the grant term, Russell, working with Writing Studio tutors and graduate students Richard Musselwhite and Jen Walsh, compared different virtual worlds tools (Second Life, Protosphere, Cobalt, and Qwak) and their possible suitability for the project.  Based on factors such as the ability to custom program objects in the application, ease of use, suitability for an academic environment and the facilities for text collaboration, the team choose Qwak, a commercial product built on the Croquet/Cobalt engine, for initial development, with a plan to port the Virtual Writing Studio to Cobalt after testing in courses.

Finally, Russell and the team surveyed students about their prior use of virtual worlds software and the types of features they might find useful in a Virtual Writing Studio.  While only a small number of students had tried some type of virtual worlds software in the past, they expressed interest in chat with tutors, access to help materials and collaborative spaces.

The team built some sample spaces in Qwak based on a paper prototype developed during the grant term.  The CIT provided additional funding to license Qwak for creation of spaces for the Virtual Writing Center so that it could be tested in Spring 2009.

During the semester, Holly Ryan and Jennifer Welsh used the virtual world in their course.  Students in Welsh’s class used Qwaq to create learning rooms that students can visit to discover a wide variety of topics.  In Ryan’s course, students revised writing studio handouts into materials that would be effective for visual kinesthetic and aural learners.  The materials included videos, virtual rooms, PowerPoint slides and additional handouts that are housed in the Virtual Studio for use by future students.  In March 2009, Russell presented at the College Conference on Composition and Communication about the project.

The Virtual Writing Studio was used for sessions between students and writing tutors during the semester to a limited extent.  “The handful of experiences we had were well received and successful, with both students and tutors feeling the medium offered a different and ultimately richer way of interacting with the text under consideration,” Russell said.  Welsh noted in that one student “was able to take as much time as needed to go over the paper, and really work through it”; She also noted that “It’s also clear that working in a virtual space contributed to how they were able to work through the paper– reading through it on a panel, scrolling up or down, highlighting, etc.”

While the Virtual Writing Studio is still a “work in progress”, Russell reports that it has been well received by students.  They plan to continue to explore the most effective ways that students can be aware of the resource and ways to encourage them to try it out.  The Virtual Writing Studio will be continued in Qwaq in the fall and spring.  Faculty interested in trying the Virtual Writing Studio are encouraged to contact Vicki Russell via email for more information.

Student survey questions (PDF)
Student survey results summary (PDF)
Comparison of virtual worlds software (PDF)

Project start date: 5/13/2008
Funding awarded: $4,000

Project description
ISIS (Information Science + Information Studies) explored Second Life for teaching and learning. Students studied virtual worlds as social phenomena and “texts” as well as technical aspects like 3d modeling, scripting, and virtual space design. Projects included: construction of a student project gallery and virtual labyrinth for the ISIS Focus cluster; research assignments in Gender and Digital Culture; developing virtual world content in ISIS 140 and 240; a “getting started” script garden; a Next Newsroom prototype, and a virtual economics experiment (co-funded by VSI).

ISIS is currently consulting with faculty in several departments: in Education, to create the English Café, in Nursing, to provide an online classroom environment; in Writing, to launch a Virtual Writing Center and with the Office of Institutional Equity to launch a virtual diversity training center. In addition, ISIS explored Croquet, Qwaq, and Project Wonderland to assess appropriate applications.

“We came into this project with some experience with Second Life, but also with the broader goal of understanding how virtual world environments can benefit our curriculum as well as be a rewarding object of inquiry. Second Life’s strengths are in its sociability, the ease in getting started, and the support resources available for it. Its limits are in house-only tool, the time it takes for users to get up to speed for construction activities and scripting (as opposed to just participating), and the challenges in integrating it into other systems.”

–Victoria Szabo

Find out more about these virtual world explorations, consider using Second Life in your class,  or learn how to get started with Second Life.

Project start date: 5/4/2007
Funding awarded: $ 2,500

More information:
Focus Cluster on Virtual Realities
Course descriptions
Project wiki
Second Life at Duke