Virtual Greg

During first semester (March to May 08) I’ve been working with Greg More, who teaches a design course in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT. It’s an interesting course: the students create buildings in Second Life that (by design) could not be built in real life. The word “buildings” doesn’t do justice to the creativity of these constructions. The course is almost over for this year: I understand Greg is considering opening the students’ work for public viewing.

I heard about Greg’s course when I reviewed his paper about it in the 2007 Australian Conference on Interactive Entertainment. I met Greg at the conference and he agreed I could be involved in some way. The topic of Greg’s paper was his decision to change platforms from a 3d FPS game engine to Second Life, the main advantages of SL being a simpler build interface and inbuilt social interaction (students can “walk” around the design space in SL, interacting with and commenting on each other’s work).

I’m interested in any innovative use of Second Life, but for me to get PhD data, a project has to involve a comparison of communication media. Greg successfully applied for funding to buy voice headsets for the students. This set up three ways for students to interact during the semester: in real life (usually in the computer lab), using typed text in SL, and using voice in SL.

I met this year’s cohort of students at the start of April. At this stage of the course they had completed an individual project. Each student presented their work to the class. I was on the judging panel. This was a good way to meet the students in person and gauge the kind of work they were doing. After presenting their individual work, the students formed groups of three to begin their group projects, which run until June. Here are the notes I took on the day:

“I went to RMIT to sit in on Greg More’s architecture class. There were about 20 students and 4 staff in a small computer lab. Each student had completed an individual design project within SL, and they took it in turns to demo it for the class using a projector. Some of the other students moved their avatars to the design, so that these students were ‘in’ the building while it was being projected on the large screen. The designs were impressive and not at all “regular” SL buildings. I will go there again on Friday when Greg describes the impending group project. I will try to find some groups who intend to work together in-world, I’ll speak to them throughout the semester about their communication experience.”

I joined this class in the RMIT computer lab again the following week, and spent two hours with them as they began their group work. My notes: “This experience was interesting, and it confirmed my belief that I need to categorize SL users into subgroups in order to understand anything about their behaviour. The members of each group sat together around a screen. I hadn’t really seen people collaborate ‘in real life’ while simultaneously using SL – I have usually thought of SL use as something done ‘alone in real life’, even if avatars are together in the virtual world. Each group fenced off a portion of RMIT Island to build in. Some groups started to think about how to form a group identity, for example by wearing similar costumes (one group all wore pink hats) or using similar avatar names.”

I subsequently met the students about four times during their project work, from April until they submitted at the end of May. Twice I went to the lab in person, and twice I was “in world”. When in-world I would simply appear on RMIT Island during class time and walk around the project sites, chatting to the students when I could. Many of the students were unaccustomed to interacting in-world: they seemed to regard SL as a modeling tool and did all their collaboration IRL (ie, in person, in the lab). Their area in RMIT Island was not open to the public and it was probably rare for anyone other than students to be there. Often it seemed that several students were sharing one avatar, so that is wasn’t obvious who I was speaking with. Often a student would simply not respond, suggesting that this student was either uninterested in communicating, wasn’t familiar with how to do communicate, or wasn’t sure who I was. Mindful of duty-of-care issues, I didn’t push students to communicate with me, and if they didn’t respond, I moved elsewhere in case they were uncomfortable with the situation or busy working. Watching groups build a project from close by was visually interesting. Though there is content everywhere in SL, one rarely gets the opportunity to watch someone building it. Watching several avatars working at once is especially fun. They hover in the air with outstretched arms emitting “power rays” that cause prims to appear, move, and change shape. It’s like a building site in the sky.

One group seemed to be the most interested in communication issues and I ended up mostly discussing with them. One week they used Greg’s headsets in class, and I was able to speak with them from my office at Melbourne Uni. Voice communication took a lot of debugging to get right: in particular, the group phone calls didn’t work well, so we stuck to using proximity voice. Shortly after this experience, this group took their headsets home to try working together from their respective homes. They told me they found this experience interesting, experienced no “virtual identity” issues as they all knew each other well.

On Friday 16th May I went to RMIT to watch the students give their final group project demonstrations. This followed much the same protocol as the individual demonstrations. During each group’s presentations, fellow students piloted their avatars around the presenting group’s project, making for a multi-faceted interaction: students and teachers in SL and in the lab.

In early June I plan to return to the lab for a final wrap-up and to ask students specifically about their communication experiences during the course.