Creating, Managing and SustainingVirtual Learning Environments

Lessons Learned

Rameshsharma (Ramesh) Ramloll PhD,Moriz Gupte/Deep Semaphore in SL

Play2Trainhttp://www.play2train.org

Play2Train

How did we start?

•Implement environment using 3D ‘game’ /Engines Unreal, Torque, Quake, Dark Basic, 3D State (about 10 years ago)

•Heard about Second Life (~2003): Momentum for using previous generation tools was too strong

Early candidates for VLEs?

Sources of Early Personal ‘Blind spots’

•Environments like SL would never attain the same responsiveness/fidelity that contemporary game engines could produce. Mindset: Get the fidelity right first…then look for applications.

Obsession with the fidelity race

•Many VR leaders were hoping to make VR technology mainstream by ‘lowering’ content creation barriers (Sense8/ WorldUp/ WorldToolKit) However, the toolkits were still not easy to use. Cost of creating ‘aesthetically pleasing’ VR was still very high.

Virtual content creation more engineering than art

•Hooks that enabled the integration of high end VR user interfaces e.g. VR HMDs, DataGlove, Eye trackers and so on were available, but in most cases immersion was being achieved at the expense of ease of use (bulky hardware/calibration-step do not go hand in hand with delightful experiences)

Infatuation with immersion through high end user interfaces

•Users are not supposed to create content, they cannot create good content anyway (still hotly debated)

Users cannot be producers

•Not being able to recognize the deep interdependency of users, content creators and platform developers

Undervaluation of Ecosystems

•Mindset: Create the most ‘real’ virtual environment and they will come, create the best environment and users will vote with their ‘virtual’ feet.

Designer God/King delusion

Early-enough ‘Realizations’

•Realized early on that with in-world building tools and streamlined content sharing opportunities, production workflows would change

Collaborative building in situ was becoming possible, not

just lab prototypes

•Lead VE developers found it harder to leave ‘established’ production workflows, common criticisms about SL ranged from ‘throwing objects into a shared space/sharing is not a big deal… Looks crap....SL will suffer same fate as Active Worlds…’

Change is painful, resistance colors perception, lack of

openness to future possibilities

•As early SL adopters, we had to estimate future possibilities while keeping an eye on current status. Seeing enough structures in place to encourage user driven change, Experiencing enough productivity boosts regarding VLE development, encouraged us to stay.

Taking a dive while estimating future possibilities

First Steps

Moriz Gupte born 4/25/2005

First contact: SL Education community… impressed by quality of interactions, found more ‘similar spirited’ people in SL than in RL. Being a CSCW researcher, thought this phenomenon deserved some attention…. Why is this environment working for ‘me’ and not ‘others’?

Experienced true opportunity to learn from peers, to develop collaborative networks and to evangelize functionalities that would ultimately be of significant ‘business’ value to SL

First OpportunityLL provides a piece of land to develop prototypes to showcase possibilities for peers at my institution, Idaho State University (May 2005)

Did not manage to get in house staff ‘fired up’

Took snapshots of the ‘prototypes’ and used them in one section of a ‘distance learning and simulation technologies’ proposal, IBAPP, to meet an RFP from a federal agency (HRSA, now ASPR).

Overall funding level 3.8 M USD. Amounted allocated for SL effort (est.) 175 k USD (over 3 years). Irony: Play2Train turned out to be the ‘flagship’ product of the whole IBAPP project.

Play2Train StakeholdersSubject Matter Experts

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P2T VLE Design Methodology

Estimation of Minimal VLE

Interaction Skill Set

Orientation Station Design

Interactive Learning Content Design

Design of Tools/Games for

Competency Evaluation

CurriculumDesign

Support for In situ

Collaborative Building

Support for Content Replication and Sharing

Opportunity for Content Tailoring preferably by Subject Matter Expert

Support for Security and

Privacy of Learning

CommunityFoundations of

Participatory VLE Design

Our Typical Grant Funded VLE Development Budget

Subject Matter Experts; 25%

Evaluators; 20%

VLE Developers (ART); 5%VLE Developers (SCRIPTING); 5%

Equipment; 20%

Indirect Costs (Arghh…); 25%

Project management and other challenges

•KANBAN (for highly creative projects with flexible time lines)

•SCRUM (for time critical projects)

Project mgmt methodology inspired

by agile software development process

•Develop good relationships and identify good remuneration practices early on

•Use tools for time tracking, effort tracking agreeable to all parties

Optimize virtual content production by

leveraging distributed teams of freelancers

•Contractual constraints: State laws can require that contractors be US based

•Payment for virtual goods problematic: No PayPal and Linden Transactions allowed

•Lots of confusion between product, hosted services, contract services

University finance challenges

On sustainability

•For each Federal RFP, hit rate approx. 20%

•Look out for other potential sources of funding: Tech Initiative Grants, Govt bid opportunities

Keep on writing and winning grants

•What does this mean in our case?

•Why? Because during a funding drought, the environment still needs to be up

Commoditize content and sell to cover basic costs

Thank you for your attention