The UA Builds a Campus in Cyberspace
The University is building a "second campus" entirely on the Web via Second Life.

By La Monica Everett-Haynes, University Communications
Nov. 7, 2007


It’s mostly bare bones now, but The University of Arizona’s Second Life community will soon be alive with activity.

Though Second Life looks like a video game, it does not exactly act like one. Instead, the Web-based program is a three-dimensional virtual replica of real life built and manipulated entirely by its users.

It is a place where interactions and experiences are not bound by time, location, resources or even gravity – which is why the UA's Office of Student Computing Resources was interested in subleasing an island on the site and using it as a teaching and testing platform for new knowledge and skills.

The virtual UA sits on Arizona Island, joining more than 400 other higher education institutions that have opened Second Life accounts.

The emerging platform will allow UA faculty to teach students in a new way, said Chris Johnson, an adjunct associate lecturer at UA South and UA lead faculty for the Second Life Project.

The site may also be used for community outreach projects and to recruit students.

Another benefit is that students can easily learn how to build and script in a virtual world such as Second Life, which allows users to have their own avatar, a 3-D character users design in their likeness or to represent themselves.

Such skills that will undoubtedly become increasingly important as the digital era continues, Johnson said. That goes for both the younger generations that are accustomed to working in a technology-driven world, and others who are just getting acclimated to technology, he said.

“You can build beyond sticking a poster on the wall," he said.

Johnson, who has used Second Life to teach courses and as a tool to interact with his students, is helping the University build its virtual image and home.

“Second Life has great potential. It gives me an environment where I can interact with students when it is most convenient to them,” he said. “These tools are giving us potential we’ve never seen before."

It's the type of technology that can revolutionize the teaching environment and its limitations, he said.

“A very common comment that I hear about Second Life is the richness of the relationships you form with other people, and with people you wouldn’t come into contact with,” Johnson added.

The UA's use of Second Life is still in its development stage. Faculty are being brought on board, as are students, to figure out ways to design Arizona Island and to use the site in classroom instruction.

Some faculty are still trying to determine how they will engage their students in Second Life, but a number of professors have already figured it out.

Johnson mentioned the project UA astronomy professor Christopher Impey set his students to work on. One of Impey’s classes built a timeline of Planet Earth, which is viewable in Second Life.

“There are actually volcanoes erupting, there are meteor showers and rain flooding the world,” Johnson said. “Others created a triage of what life on Mars might look like. So you open up the creative potential for students to truly express themselves in different ways.”

The UA got its plot of land through the New Media Consortium, a nonprofit international organization that has a network composed of nearly 250 research centers, museums, foundations and other organizations – including some of the world’s best higher education institutions – that focus on new media and technologies.

Faculty, students and staff do not have to pay to become part of the UA's Second Life or to participate in its creation.

Much of the virtual world’s future is going to be up to the students to decide and up to the faculty to facilitate.

The Office of Student Computing Resources is already located there. Of course, Old Main will be built there someday and possibly even the UA Mall. And if a faculty member wants design students to create clothing and cars or asks architecture and engineering students to build structures, that’s feasible.

The University will have space for structured learning and meetings, but it will also offer students a site where they can explore Second Life’s capabilities, said Limell’ Lawson, director of the Office of Student Computing Resources, who helped the University get Second Life space.

Lawson said she initially became interested in Second Life after noticing quite a few students in her office and others across campus using the platform. Then she began to notice more faculty members using Second Life.

“It has broad appeal,” Lawson said.

“The role of OSCR (the Office of Student Computing Resources) is that we understand the leading edge in technology because we have to support it,” she added. “It is difficult to support something you don’t understand or have access to,” she added. “It’s important for the UA to stay on the cutting edge.”

It also has broad reach.

Lawson pointed to current research that has found virtual environments, such as certain video games, may help users to learn. Some research has also suggested that such environments improve brain activity and problem solving skills.

“We know that medium works very well,” Lawson said. “Now, transfer that idea to Second Life, which is not a game, but is a learning environment. Then, add a learning environment. It’s really a fertile ground.”

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Chris Johnson

UA South

520-991-7304