University's Second Life in cyberspace

    Memorial Hall sits on an island with a sandy shore. Inside the building are galleries of paintings. Just outside, the "R/V Hugh R. Sharp" research boat bobs on the water, pelicans flap, and university admissions officals book campus tours from their bait stand.

These are the university's Second Life islands.

Second Life is an online world in which participants can create an avatar and live a virtual life, interacting with other virtual people.

Creating an avatar is free but Second Life charges for the islands for people to live on and for premade virtual accessories like buildings and clothing. Participants can also create their own accessories.

One of the university's islands contains teaching spaces where classes can meet virtually.  There is a large stadium for talks to be broadcast while they happen in real life, such as the Global Agenda series last spring.

The other island is everything else: admissions, galleries, an art conservation display, demonstrations of research such as the electronic car, and an exhibit run by the Women's Studies department with interviews from real Afro-Latina women.

Debbie Jeffers of the IT-Client Support and Services department is in charge of the program. She said the university purchased the Second Life islands in the summer of 2007 through the New Media Consortium for $4,300 each. 

"By choosing this route, we are guaranteed to be located within an educational continent, in close proximity to other colleges and universities with similar objectives and goals, creating a greater sense of educational community," she said. "NMC deals directly with Linden Labs, the company that owns Second Life, and offers its clients extra support not readily available elsewhere."

Sophomore Andrew Barroso was hired by Jeffers to assist classes in Second Life. He builds specialty items for classes as well as wanders the island, talking to visitors and pointing out the island's features. Because Barroso and Jeffers build many of the pieces themselves, they avoid paying fees for downloading game elements.

"Some kids think it's just another World of Warcraft, but there's no monthly fee for students to play," Bross said. "With 16,000 kids here paying tuition, this is small for the university to pay for such an incredible unleashing of imagination."

He said some students have been worried about safety on such an open internet platform, but the university has tools to keep unsavory people off the islands.

Jeffers said the university islands average about 370 visitors a week, but during events, they have had more than 1,000. The Women's Study exhibit alone receives 16 to 40 people a week.

Associate Prof. Alvina Quintana taught the class that put together the exhibit last semester, Women's Studies Capstone (WOMS 410). The oral history interviews as part of the Delaware Oral History Project are being archived in Special Collections in the Morris Library. "It gives the project a much more global scope and will enable many more people to experience it," Quintana said.

Professor Janet Hethorn uses Second Life in her First Year Experience class, Visual Impact and Action. She said since the purpose of the class is to show freshmen how visual images affect their behavior, Second Life gives the students a chance to completely immerse themselves in a virtual visual world.

"The students can interact with global environments and people of different cultures, which they wouldn't have access to in a regular classroom unless they were doing study abroad," Hethorn said. 

She said the support Jeffers gave her class made the program easy to use. Her class will use a Second Life classroom to meet for small group activities. She will also use it to hold class if H1N1 breaks out on campus and classes are canceled.

Associate Prof. Don Lehman's Forensic Science (MEDT220) class is also using Second Life this semester. Jeffers and Bross are building a crime scene, complete with a dead body and a forensics lab within the university's islands.

Students will work in pairs as avatars to investigate the crime scene and collect physical evidence. The goal is to determine what happened at the crime scene and who is responsible, Lehman said.

Jeffers and Barroso are building specialty equipment in Second Life the students can use to run DNA profiling and toxicology tests, among other processes, on the samples.

Lehman said without Second Life technology, the students would be using written case studies, but Second Life provides them with a simulated real life experience.

"When I first saw it, it was kind of a neat thing, but I didn't know its educational value," Lehman said. "But student interest necessitated a forensics course, so my wife suggested I use this new technology in the new course, because now's the time to experiment with it."

He said none of his 16 students had ever used Second Life before. He attributes that partly to the steep learning curve associated with Second Life. The multitude of tools and options take some getting used to, he said.

"They're showing what I'll call ‘tempered enthusiasm' — they seem alright with the idea, but I suggested they go into the islands before the project started to get the hang of it and explore, and as of Monday there are not yet any avatars."

Since then, Tejal Naik, a junior in Lehman's class, has created an avatar. He said this class was the first time he'd heard of Second Life and he finds the experience of using it much like the game "The Sims."

"It's interesting to think about what Lehman will do in the virtual crime scene," he said. "In Second Life he could do a lot, but I don't know what to expect. It could be good or lame."

Naik said the program was hard to use, but he thinks it could be fun once he gets the hang of it. He said he's happy Lehman isn't just using written case studies to teach forensics.