Is the effort to explore the virtual world of Second Life worth it, or is its star already fading?

First:

Blog Spottings and Other News

As I have mentioned before on Mission to Learn, how to market and sell e-learning is one of the main areas of concern for my clients. While not specific to online learning (or any other product or service, for that matter), what Seth Godin has to say about marketing in general is worth reading and applying to your e-learning marketing efforts. I’ve mentioned his Purple Cow concept elsewhere. More recently, Godin has jumped on the customer evangelism bandwagon and published a new e-book called Flipping the Funnel. I recommend this as well his recent posting on The Scarcity Shortage . Nonprofit readers may also appreciate the take on this concept at What is Scarce in Advocacy and Campaigns?

Speaking of Purple Cows. I’d like to renew my general call for Purple Cows of the nonprofit online learning world. See E-learning: Where are the Nonprofit Purple Cows, post your examples, and please spread the word.

Now:

Second Life Second Hand

I have been planning for some time now to explore and write about Second Life, but one thing or another has held me back. For those unfamiliar with it, Second Life is a 3D virtual world, or multi-user virtual environment (M.U.V.E) in which participants literally set up a “second life,” complete with a new, virtual identity, and interact with other users in many of the same ways that people interact in a real world, i.e., buying things, selling things, socializing, teach, learning, and so on (with “and so on” including some of the inevitable shadier sides of the Web).

Not the least of the factors holding me back from exploring Second Life has been the sheer amount of time and effort that doing so in any depth would seem to require. I have enough going on in my first life without trying to maintain a second one. Still, the enticement has been strong. When I noticed that Brandon Hall had set up a research office in Second Life I almost made the leap. And when I saw that Karl Kapp was conducting a summer class on Learning in 3D. I was once again almost lured into the light. But still I clung to this life.

Recently I began to think that perhaps my doubts have been justified. In August, Wired published an article portraying Second Life as a virtual wasteland –one that is “slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return.” To add insult to injury, Chris Anderson, who is both the acclaimed author of The Long Tail and the Wired editor who commissioned the article, roundly dissed Second Life in a recent posting on his blog and has closed down the magazine’s virtual office there. In the world of higher learning, the Chronicle of Education’s Wired Campus blog has picked up on the debate and is asking what value is being realized by the more than 100 colleges that have set up a presence in Second Life are realizing.

At this point, it might be wiser to join the doubters, spare myself the time and effort of a closer look at Second Life, and move on to other topics. The problem is that much of the debate sparked by Wired, Anderson, the Chronicle and others misses the mark. As some of the commentators on Anderson’s blog have noted (rightly, in my opinion) the Long Tail author himself discounts the potentially large long tail impact of Second Life. Perhaps more importantly from the perspective of education, however, Second Life at this point is primarily an event-driven medium. While it may aspire to being a culture and an economy (and with more than 9 million users, it may be making some progress), what appears to work best there right now is a virtualization of that classic human communication modality—the meeting. Corporations (the main stakeholders addressed in the Wired article) that are expecting big marketing returns and universities that are expecting to build a virtual campus life are almost certain to be disappointed in the short term.

This is not to say that Second Life does not resonate well beyond the virtual walls of a single event, particularly when other social media tools or Second Life-friendly techniques like machinima are used along with it. Indeed, at this point, it probably works best as an educational medium when blended with these other tools. In any case, given the amount of traffic I have seen on the education listserv for Second Life (up to volume 459 as of this posting), what appears to be solid interest in the education track at the Second Life annual conference (37 paper submissions), and a vibrant emerging discussion of the pedagogical value of the 3D medium (see more Karl Kapp, for instance, as well as a recent posting on Educause’s HiredEd blog there appears be ample interest in the potential value of Second Life for learning, if not for marketing.

Of course, whether Second Life itself will ultimately be the delivery medium in which new pedagogical approaches are realized is an open question. A recent posting at TeleRead asks “Could it be, as some have suggested, that you should consider Second Life to be just a set of training wheels for less proprietary alternatives?“ I won’t pretend to have an answer to that one yet, but I am convinced my original plan to explore Second Life first hand is still worth pursuing. As of this posting, I have created my virtual identity (to be revealed at a later time) and am in the process of tricking out my avatar. Stay tuned for dispatches from the virtual frontier soon.

JTC

Books mentioned in this posting:

Related posts:

1. E-learning: Where are the Nonprofit Purple Cows?
2. Nonprofit Web Windfall at Work
3. Video Games Better Than Life?
4. Life by PowerPoint