“New Ways of Working” Course at VU University Amsterdam
On November 25 I gave a two hour lecture on virtual worlds in the course “New Ways of Working” at VU University Amsterdam. The course is run by Professor Marleen Huysman and her assistant PhD Candidate Sarah van der Land. The overarching objective of the course is to introduce students to new ways in which knowledge workers communicate and collaborate in increasingly distributed organizational contexts. The course includes two parts: 1) general lectures about different theoretical perspectives central to new ways of working and 2) the application of these theories in an organizational context. I took part in the second part of the course.
PREPARATION
To prepare for the lecture, the students were asked to do the following:
1) Read the following articles:
- Schultze & Rennecker. Refraining Online Games: Synthetic Worlds as Media for Organizational Communication, Springer
- Wasko, Teigland, Leidner, & Jarvenpaa, Stepping into the Internet: New Ventures in Virtual Worlds, MIS Quarterly
- Bailenson & Beall. Transformed social interaction: Exploring the digital plasticity of avatars, Springer-Verlag
- Teigland, Born Virtuals and Avapreneurship: A case study of achieving successful outcomes in Peace Train – a Second Life organization, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.
2) Install Second Life and create an avatar using the attached helpguide: Getting started in Second Life Instructions – PDF
LECTURE
The lecture ran from 9:00 to 11:00 am and was on SSE’s island in Second Life. The 40 students were then given the option to log in from wherever they wanted to attend the lecture. Marleen and Sarah were at VU but only four students actually showed up there. Most logged in from home. One student wrote, “I am at home in bed.”
Only a handful of the 40 had sound problems in the beginning so after a few minutes working this out, we started the lecture. I asked the students who had been in Second Life or had played an MMO, and while only one had been in SL for research, of the remainder there were only a few who had played an MMO, e.g., Call of Duty, Star Craft, Quake, WoW. However, they all got the hang of it very quickly.
9:00 – 9:20 Welcome and Treasure Hunt
After a brief introduction to the lecture, I sent them on a treasure hunt to get them active using their avatars. I said that if they needed help, they could just google their question including second life in the search string. I was very impressed with the students. They all went out searching and there were several people who found the cave and took a snapshot quite quickly, with the first winner back already at 9:13. Interestingly, the student who wrote he was at home in bed was one of the winners of the treasure hunt.
9:20 – 10:00 Tour of SSE Island and Visit to Redgrave Store
We then toured the SSE island and I discussed the different activities we have done on the island as well as gave them links to two youtube videos describing these:
1) Virtual Teaming
2) Co-creation
After the SSE Island tour, we visited Redgrave where the winners of the treasure hunt could spend their money. I also showed them how easy it was to buy things when I bought a new pair of shoes for my avatar.
10:00 – 10:15 Break
10:15 – 11:00 Presentation and Discussion
After the break, we met back on the SSE island for a presentation and discussion. I posted my slides on slideshare so that the students could follow the presentation here as well since some were having considerable problems with the presentation board in Second Life rezzing quickly enough.
In addition to the expected playful and fooling around comments, the students were also very active in the text chat, commenting and asking lots of questions:
- i’m really interested why you believe in this thing? i think it is a waste of time.
- I would say it gets people to learn how to interact with technology, which may stimulate communication through tech
- It might be cheaper to do it hear than in real life
- I believe the economic value of FB is much higher than 2nd Life – 2nd Life has never taken off and companies can reach 500mio users on FB
- another advantage of SL > dualtasking
- In WoW you play for fun and maybe some status, but you dont need to walk around in a 3D FB for those things ?
- And the mobile internet network isn’t fast enough
- there are some examples of rather big virtual worlds
- privacy would worry me even more in virtual worlds – is that an issue you experienced?
- excuse my i saw that there are modelling agencies?
- great I missed the entire lecture due to my internet problem
- people are going to virtual bars?
- aren’t people getting isolated? And are physical behavior and physical expression decreasing in Real Life?
- only because tweens use VW now, doesnt mean they will user it when they get older
- is ‘percieved attention’ considered a problem in SL or any VR? e.g. it’s quite easy to get distracted here
- So are we going towards a 3D virtual environment or isnt it more likekly that 3D will be added to real life (augmented reality, like the app ‘layer’ for example)?
- Wouldnt a virtual world ‘within’ a body be a great tool to learn children a bit about their body. Just as a sort of game / interactive learning? It doesnt need to be about medicines or surgery all the time I guess?
- tactile feedback is indeed already available
- thank you again, was really intersting!
- thank you so much it was very cool!
- APPLAUSE!!!!!!
A few days after the lecture, I received the following reflection from one of the students:
Dear Ms Teigland,
thanks again for the interesting lecture last week! I read your blog post on the lecture, and also wanted to give you some personal feedback. I have to admit, I was at first very, very critical towards Second Life. One reason is that I had that feeling that Second Life (which to me was synonym to Virtual Worlds) had never really taken off. Probably also because I have seen my former company invest in a Second Life shop, but when I joined our Digital Marketing team last year it was (and still is) all about Facebook. But you definitely convinced me of virtual worlds potential, when you said that there will likely be an adoption of existing or new Social Media platforms that will incorporate these virtual worlds. So given even more broadband speed and computing power (my laptop was struggling a little bit) in the near future, I would now agree with you that Virtual Worlds could show strong growth in the future.
Actually, that also answers a point of criticism that I had on your article “Stepping Into the World: New Ventures in Virtual Worlds” – I had the feeling that the conclusion that just because Tweens are using VWs now, they will likely use them in the future as well. My assumption is that they will “replace” VWs with more “real” (at least perceived to be more real..) Social Media like Facebook. And there again, by merging these two “worlds” there is definitely a lot of potential, since you can bring together the best of both worlds.
Kind regards
Master Student – IKM
———–
In summary, while there was some skepticism to Second Life, my intention with this lecture was to encourage the students to explore the 3D internet and think about the possibilities in the future. If we look back 15 years, it is amazing to see how far we have come in terms of the internet’s development. Where will be in another 15 years?
If you have any questions about this lecture, please feel free to contact me.
/Robin
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