What+is+each+campus+doing?

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Spring 09 - visit http://uwmsecondlife.wikispaces.com/ to find the most recent information at UWM.

Quick Facts: UWM has trained almost 40 faculty to use Second Life. App. 10 faculty are using or are in the development stages of using. Faculty include Health Sciences, Communication, English, Continuing Education, Film, Visual Art, Business, and Education. This is UWM's 3rd semester using Second Life. You can visit us on Arts and Letters island.

Previously posted: Contact tjoosten@uwm.edu for more info on UWM's use of Second Life. http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/LTC/sl.html

This project will consist of several members in different disciplines throughout the campus who will integrate learning activities in Second Life into their course design, to learn if these systems are in fact effective for teaching and learning, and if so, what the most effective ways are to use these systems in courses.

The faculty who will participatie in the project include: Latonia Glass School of Continuing Education Susan Stalewski Clinical Lab Sciences Patricia Thomas Occupational Therapy Tanya Joosten Learning Technology Center Department of Communication

The goal is to learn and disseminate "best practices" and other resources for teaching with Second Life for use by faculty and LTDC staff throughout the UW System through a project website. The project will prepare the campus to support and assist instructors as they become interested in introducing virtual world learning activities into their courses.

Status: UWM is currently looking to purchase land for the project and is trying to manage building and development of the land. Building and development exceeds the initial budget, so alternatives are being explore.

__NEW - Faculty Completed Spring Use of SL__

To view more about one sample use of SL, visit Tanya Joosten's Blog regarding her use of SL in her Human Communication and Technology courses:http://www.wikispaces.com/_/2009041501/i/c.gif http://uwmsecondlife.blogspot.com/

__NEW - Faculty Use of SL for Summer 08__ Patty Thomas has created a Second Life Activity for her course. See Syllabus, Option 2 of Module 5. It is focuses on facilitation techniques through leisure education. Students are able to chose an alternative option, if they do not want to use Second Life. The activity focuses on the student developing a therapeutic recreation program for individuals with traumatic brain injury through Second Life. Patty know wears a wheelchair in Second Life and has made numerous networks with the occupational therapy communities and other communities for the disabled. Patty is also contemplating building a location on the UWM sim that would focus on adaptive facilities for individuals with disabilities.

Sue Stalewski is currently building her College of Health Sciences facilities in Second Life for her next class in Clinical Lab Sciences, which doesn’t start until July. The facility building has been purchased as well as lab equipment for the building. She will continue in the summer to use her role-playing lab avatars for students to complete role plays in the new lab she is building.

Latonia Glass and Chip Donohue will be using Second Life as a virtual meeting location for their Administrative Leadership course. I have no updated information, but am following up with Latonia and their specific plans.

Three UWM nursing faculty (incl. Whitcroft) attended the TECNE conference sponsored by UW Oshkosh along with Patty Thomas and Sue Stalewski.

Overall, our faculty are realizing their ability to network with others is a key component to the usefulness of Second Life.

=**UW Oshkosh**= I'm VERY interested in collaborating and share with others about SL. Our College of Nursing is jumping into it. We have an island and a few buildings. They will be using it for some course discussions starting tomorrow, with expectations of getting other projects up and going by summer time (including some activities related to public health including some simulations). One of our religious studies profs is also using it. They are creating a Bedouin village, if I recall correctly, and students will be roleplaying across cultural differences. We're also getting a SLUG--Second Life User's Group--going with monthly meetings so more might be happening soon! AnnMarie

Update from Stepahnie Stewart

We have purchased an island and have an Alumnae house, a library, an auditorium and a Public Health department in progress. We have oriented a cohort of our online bachelors degree to BSN and have had a disuccsion on legal ethical issues in Nursing using the avatars in a group discussion format. They have done an evaluationbut we have not looked at the data yet (they had not been graded). Thier next course is a clinical course and they will be doing 1.5 hour synchronous chats using the avatars.

Hi Tanya!

I would be happy to show you and your staff our island in Second Life and explain the process I went through in order to get it up and running with our current programs. Not only do we have the nursing program in-world..but also courses in religious studies.. specifically Islam...where we do have students involved in a role-play type scenario. I have built a Bedouin village strictly for this purpose that resides above our ground sim.

I would be also very happy to share information with you of other health related sites in SL. I would just need the avatar names of your people that will be in-world so I could pass the notecard directly with landmarks attached.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance!

Warm regards, Deb Duncan

__NEW - TECNE Workshop__

UW Oshkosh hosted the TECNE workshop that provided hands on workshop for faculty on creating and navigating their avatar as well as many other helpful workshops, such as loading PowerPoint into SL, etc. They also had a Aaron Walsh as a guest speaker.

Wisconsin TECNE Conference, May 20-21, 2008 Virtual Reality in Education and Health Care University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Tuesday, May 20 9:00 – 12:00 Optional Avatar workshop, Swart Computer Lab, TECNE Group Members 12:00 – 12:45 Lunch, N/E 39A 12:45 – 1:15 TECNE Planning year for UW Oshkosh “Virtual Reality,” N/E 152 Stephanie Stewart 1:15 – 3:15 Virtual Reality in Education, Multiuser Virtual Environments (MUVE), N/E 152, nationally renowned speaker Aaron Walsh 3:15 – 3:30 Break 3:30 – 5:00 Virtual Reality in Education, “Second Life (SL),” N/E 152, Aaron Walsh 6:00 – 7:30 Dinner, Pollock Alumnae House Wednesday, May 21 7:15 – 7:50 Breakfast, 39A 8:00 – 9:00 UWO TECNE Island Projects, N/E 152 9:00 – 11:30 Small Breakout Sessions, 40 minutes each, (See your name tag) 1. Podcasting, Vodcasting, Wirecasting Overview, Clow 213 2. Podcasting (hands on), N/E 229 3. SL (hands on), IDEA Lab 4. Virtual IV starts (hands on), N/E 229 5. Discussions in SL (hands on), Swart Computer Lab 6. PowerPoint in SL (hands on), Radford Computer Lab 7. Combined with Session 8 8. Virtual Human, Clow 205 9. Uses of virtual reality from a patient’s perspective, Clow 107 11:30 -12:15 Lunch, 39A 12:15 – 1:00 Health-Related Sites and Resources in SL, N/E 152, Deb Duncan 1:00 – 2:00 Brainstorming Small Group Project Session for TECNE Scholars, N/E 152 2:00 – 2:15 Break 2:15 – 3:00 Wrap up and Evaluation Panel Discussion, N/E 152, UWO TECNE Scholars

For more info, contact: andersonv@uwosh.edu Vicki Anderson, Program Assistant Center for Nursing Innovation UW Oshkosh 920-424-0134 fax 424-1762

=**UW Extension**= Scott Reeser and I are working with Second Life for the Division of Continuing Education, Outreach & E-Learning in UW-Extension. In doing so, we’re collaborating on a project with Rich Berg of ICS and Tina Hauser of WPT (both of which are also parts of Extension). If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Penny

=**UW Madison**=

With the support of Ron Kraemer, UW-Madison CIO, and Engage funds we starting a "Virtual World Pilot" in July or August of 2008 by purchasing an island in Second Life. We have gathered a group of approximately 10 technologists and faculty to participate. Ron has asked us to look into how much it would cost to brand a central area of the virtual campus as uniquely "UW-Madison" - perhaps build Bascom Hall or a similarly recognizable structure or group of structures. Dan LaValley is currently talking with Larry Johnson from the NMC about how much this could cost. It is likely this will be too expensive and the support group will be have to build and buy stock structures. We hope to help faculty explore, experiment and develop best practices for using virtual worlds in courses.

We are also working with three faculty awardees in our Engage program in Second Life - one from the Art Department (Michael Connors) and two from French and Italian (Tom Armbrecht and Andrew Irving). Catherine Stephens, a learning technologist from the School of Education has also been heavily involved with SL. Our ComETS Simulations and Games special interest group has had a number of events surrounding Second Life, and we plan to hold more once the island is available.

http://www.engage.wisc.edu/sims_games/phaseIII/index.html http://comets.wisc.edu/sims_games/

=UW-Stout= Teaching in a Virtual World Minutes September 9, 2009. Present were Dan Riordan, Peter Galante, Jean Haefner and Scott Short. 1. The name of the group is changed to better reflect its goals. 2. Dan announced that any Stout class can use the Stout island, and create things there. He will take down current buildings if necessary. He also announced that there is a support budget to assist instructors who require students to upload images. While the cost is minimal (10 Lindens or about 1 cent), we do not want to require students to spend money unless we announce it ahead of time. 3. General discussion. a. Jean talked about her presentation in Madison this summer. 80 people, an overflow crowd, attended. They were very interested in the process Jean used to create her assignment. She has received some indications that people might like to have her talk in more depth about her experience, including use of IRB. b. Peter outlined how he will use SL in the spring to teach photography. The class will take photos in SL, but will also meet ftf in order to learn processing, such as in photoshop. This will be an IRB study. Peter said that a helpful journal is The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research [] c. Scott discussed the potential uses in his interface design course. He is willing to collaborate with anyone. He will have his students explore SL in order to determine its strengths and weaknesses for use not only in this course, but also in career areas. d. The group mentioned a number of possible uses/actions e. Uses—role playing and acting in scenarios, including creating theater situations so that students can explore content using theater-type, or scenarios with certain goals (act out a situation in which you explore XX) activities. f. //Action—we need to create narratives of content development and course development. This will be our key action this semester. We need to work through some narratives that explain to anyone how to set up a course in a Virtual World and what doing so will get them that they couldn’t get with the technology we have. We also need to have narratives of assignments, eg, actions, goals, requirements//. g. //NTLC will assist anyone to get started with thinking about possible uses of a “virtual world” class//. Just ask and one of our AvatarBusters will fly over to help you! Meeting end at 5:10. Next meeting Wednesday, September 30, 2009; 4:00‐5:00 p.m. in Millennium Hall 104. Dan will post these minutes on the UW System Blog. http://uwsecondlife.wikispaces.com/What+is+each+campus+doing%3F Dan Riordan April 22, 2009. Posted by Dan Riordan riordand@uwstout.edu, Director Nakatani Teaching and Learning Center 1. This semester two faculty members have used SL in class. In Art and Design Jean Haefner has a series of assignments her students must complete throughout the semester, including a gallery show at the end of the semester. We will send out invitations. Kevin Tharp had his Communications Technology students explore SL in order to find training uses for the technology. When Jean is finished with her semester we can present a report. A third instructor introduced SL to his photography students but they resisted strongly enough that he cancelled his plans. We have spent a good deal of time discussing the 'buy-in' issues. 2. We are working on Stout's virtual campus at Teaching 14. a. We are exploring how to relate to buildings. We have taken off most of the doors and set up teleports to replace stairs. b. We have also begun to get serious about the pedagogy related to SL. Right now we are exploring whether we can set up quests and narratives for our students. We have read some of Michelle Dickey's articles on games and learning and been influenced by her analyses. I would like to see buildings with no access except by teleport. If a building had three floors, each would be a stage in a quest. Students would have to complete floor 1 learning, thus earning the right to use the restricted teleport to get to floor 2 where they would complete a task and earn the right to get to floor 3. We are studying how to script a 'restricted' teleport. c. We have also dealt with 'immersive.' Our question has been (no answer yet) can you "immersively live" a quadratic equation? In other words do you really need any "reality"? Could we have an equations spot where people "lived" an equation to learn it? d. Lastly we are willing to explore whether learning in second life means creating relationships not progressing through content. 3. We met with one of Simone's classes one night for over an hour. The students we talked with were very clear about things like their buy-in and the uses that they saw of the technology. Thanks, Simone, for sharing your students with us. We learned a lot. 4. We will have an all-day institute on June 2 to explore the interface for newbies and to work on creating courses or units that can be used in Second Life. For details see []
 * September 9, 2009**


 * November 4, 2008**. Posted by Dan Riordan riordand@uwstout.edu, Director Nakatani Teaching and Learning Center

Hi, here are the minutes from our meeting on November 4. Present were Kevin Tharp, Peter Galante, Jean Haefner, Art Juchno and Dan Riordan. The meeting lasted from 4 till 5:30 in Mill 104. We hit on a great strategy for the meeting. A. During the first 45 minutes we toured Teaching 14 inworld. Three people were in Mill104 and two were other places in Millennium 105. There are four Quad meeting rooms that we can use (though they are 'common' property with our island mates the University of Alaska). The rooms have numerous tables and chairs for small group discussions. One room has an auditorium set up with lecture seating. It has a projection screen but we need to contact NMC to learn how to use it. We also toured the Stout half of the island, in particular the sandbox which Art built. B. After the inworld tour we all gathered in 104 to discuss the event. Several points were made. -We can build what we need on the island. -We appear to have enough technical savvy among us to resolve most technical issues, and we have an NMC contact to help us with the more difficult ones. -We need to show that using the island has educational value. More on that later. -We need to practice "working" the richness of the SL interface. Dan will circulate an excellent orientation url. C. So for actions-- 1. We will meet on November 18 at 4 pm. We will use the same inworld/f-t-f model. We will spread out in Millennium for inworld and then meet in 104 or 207. Bring an ethernet cord. Dan has a few but not enough for everyone. 2. You are asked to figure how to do something inworld that you can share with us (e.g. if you are adventurous: Create a notecard, how to build something easy, how to upload an image or ppt; if you are just beginning: use audio chat, teleport, search, change avatar features. If you can't get to it, just come to the meeting. 3. Art will look into streaming "About Stout" into Second Life. 4. Kevin and Peter both indicated that they will definitely incorporate Second Life into courses next semester. 5. Dan indicated that, because of the cost of the SL presence, we have to demonstrate pedagogical value. The ppt recently sent by UWM is one way to report that. However, during the spring we have to set up some way to collect some data, and also to record our 'journey' with the software. Dan will set up something--google doc, d2l, wiki, blog 6. We agreed that it is time for us to actually meet students inworld. How long does it take for them to get up to speed so that we can export part or all of the course to SL? We had a good time. We learned a lot. I will post this set of minutes on the UW system SL wiki run by UWM, and invite system colleagues to visit our site.

**The Second Life Community met in SL on May 21, 2008 from 10:30-11:30**. Attending were Dan Riordan, Art Juchno, Tim Zick, Chris Lutz, Jacob Lutz (2 years), and with difficulty Jean Haefner. The meeting occurred in the NMC Quad at the Arts and Letters sim. The four members discussed uses of SL for the hour. A number of issues arose. All told the hour passed quickly. This kind of meeting allows us to find issues that we can solve before teachers use SL with a class. While the group might meet during the summer, this is probably the last meeting until fall. Dan has submitted his proposal to create a Stout site in SL. Right now the possibilities look good. More on that item when or after we contract for the site. Dan Riordan
 * 1) We had to learn to take turns talking, so we didn’t speak over one another.
 * 2) We had to learn to adjust each other’s audio channel for loudness.
 * 3) We had to use the Search function and the various methods for controlling the voice chat function (whether to ‘toggle’ or ‘lock’ the voice chat button).
 * 4) We had to learn how far to place the mic from the mouth.
 * 5) We learned that if a person clicks on our profile they can then open a website, so two channels would be open for a teacher to use to interact with students.
 * 6) We discussed potential uses of SL. These would include office hours and small group work. In addition we expect that we can find areas that focus on specific disciplines. For instance, Chris has found a chemistry area.
 * 7) Buildings that we would build/use should have a number of areas for smaller groups to meet. Until people become proficient at voice and/or chat usage, large groups seem difficult to manage.
 * 8) We attempted to discover how far from a group an avatar could be and still be heard by the group. Nothing conclusive was determined, though we will continue to work on this.
 * 9) We determined that if we could find a way to use a whiteboard, or some other method, we could give students more immediate feedback. The possibilities for this strategy are not clear. But having the website open in SL seemed to be a workable option.

4--22-08. Posted by Dan Riordan, riordand@uwstout.edu, Director Teaching and Learning Center At Stout this spring we have had a learning community studying the SL potential. That it is cool, we all agree. We are working on establishing teaching/learning uses. We hope to rent or purchase a site soon, in order to establish a UW-Stout presence. Our first goal has been to have small group meetings in SL. After a number of set-backs we had a very successful meeting this morning. Seven of our members met in Second Life at the Quad of the Arts and Sciences NMC island. All members were in their offices, so it was a synchronous, distance meeting. Using text and audio chat to communicate, we met for about an hour. It was very exciting as we can see that we could have groups from classes meet. We have learned that as teachers we need to know the interface--how to text chat, audio chat, im, teleport, make and use friends, and create and use a group. We found that people on a wired connection were able to control their avatar and interact much more satisfactorily.

Right now our members are from the Art and Design department (3-d modelers), Learning Technology Services, the School of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Technology, Engineering, and Management, the College of Human Development, the Title III program, and the office of the Chief Information Officer.

Based on our experiments this spring, a number of our members plan to include SL activities in their classes this summer and next fall. We have learned that we will need to provide training for our students, at least one class period, and probably some time out of class. As classroom projects become clearer, I will post information here.

We are happy to share what we have learned, and would be happy to meet all of you in SL if we ever decided to have a UW System get together (want to try sometime at the end of May?). Also we would be happy to hear how you have financed/are financing your SL presence. Thanks to the UWM folks for making us welcome at their site, and for creating this wiki.

Session Details
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:45 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Speaker(s)

 * Michael Connors, Associate Professor, Digital Printmaking, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract
Critique_It is an online virtual classroom critique system originally developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Croquet and ported to Second Life. The critique is a rudimentary instructional methodology in the arts that can be applied to most other disciplines. Critique_It provides an environment for simulating authentic learning strategies and allowing the possibility for feedback from peers and experts from outside the campus.

Tanya Joosten and Sue Stalewski met a group of UW Stout folks on UWM land on Arts and Letters island. The group included TimothyTG Zabaleta, Doc Schmooz, nota Oh (visual artist, PhD studnet in ed tech), Art Shostakovich, etc...They are looking at leasing some land.

=**UW Eau Claire**= Where there is some interest in Second Life here at Eau Claire, only one computer science faculty member is even dabbling in it right now. We participated in the ELI seminar on Virtual Worlds yesterday and learned that the learning curve is high—even for gamers—and that it takes a lot of faculty time to do the preparation. These two things alone will be barriers to a faculty contingent making use of Second Life. I can give you the name of the computer science faculty member if you are interested. Cheers, Donna draleigh@uwec.edu

=**UW Superior**= We have no one here using it for teaching that I know of, though a faculty member here in Teacher Ed is interested in anything related to it for a possible future project. If you are thnking of a CR grant proposal on Second Life please let me know. Lisa

**UW Green Bay**
Our Nursing Dept is part of WI TECNE. Fall 2008 we purchased our own Island "UWGB Nursing Complex." The LTC has worked closely with Nursing to plan and develop the island including a model of our Mary Ann Cofrin (MAC) Hall and other GB landmarks. We have also been working with a social work instructor to create a virtual version of a role-playing simulation workshop about poverty and homelessness. This activity has helped us tap into the potential of SL scripting language in terms of creating custom buttons and having objects communicate with each other via SL channels (e.g., avatars visit different locations perform financial transactions, and each location updates the amounts spent, received, etc.). Our Nursing faculty (and a few other non-nursing people) have participated in virutal meetings, and some of them plan to have activities in Second Life for their classes. In the long run, we plan to maintain our island and develop more sophistocated activities and simulations. Possibly we will have involvement from other campus departments, etc. down the road. As for technical considerations, we have had some concerns (crashes, etc) with hardware but were able to remedy most of them by adjusting SL settings (I can share our recommended tweaks, if desired). Our LTC student staff has found the SL project to be a great opportunity for them to learn 3D design as well as some basic understanding of a new scripting language (one student worker said that working in Second Life has enhanced her organizational skills and her ability to "think outside the box"--perhaps those are the types of things students taking courses with SL activities will gain as well). -Leif