[Opensim-users] Hoping for a fearless comparison of opensim vs unity 3D

[DrDoug Pennell]

Hi Kay,

I think what Tom meant (and definitely what I meant) is that adapting and changing objects on the fly in real time by more than one person is not needed. What I referred to as collaborative content creation - two or more people/students creating things that did not exist previously in world. Updating resources such as a textbook in Unity and rebuilding the environment is a quick and painless process. I rebuild my simulations on a regular basis to change a character or access a different AI data set. I just create a new URL for the new sim.

I completely agree that students don't have time to fuss with virtual world simulations that are not relevant to their courses. Nor do they have time to spend on orientation activities needed just to learn the interface. Anything that makes the experience easier and more relevant is desirable.

It seems like your environment is working well for you and your students so there is no need to switch. That is probably true for most folks on this list.

Doug 

> On Jul 20, 2014, at 10:24 AM, Kay McLennan <mclennan.kay at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Tom <tom.willans at bessacarr.com> wrote:
>>  
>> ...For many educational uses adapting and changing objects is not needed...
>  
> While it is true that some types of educational simulations are well suited for static simulations (like a virtual tour of the inner workings of a human body part or a historic recreation of a city), static (Unity platform-like) builds are completely ill-suited for the types of online economics and business studies college courses I teach.  
> 
> Even the online courses that utilize extensive instructor- or institution-created materials always simultaneously utilize a textbook (to insure the transmission of the relevant portion of the course-specific common body of knowledge).  In turn, the textbooks I utilize in all of my courses change each year.  Sometimes the textbook changes simply involve a [maddening] re-sort of the chapters (to enable the publisher to change the edition and sell more new copies of the text).  Still (and more importantly), it is often the case that the material in the textbook changes (and these changes need to be reflected in the course materials and activities).  For example, social media marketing is now one of the most important components in the field of marketing but was barely mentioned in textbooks even as recently as a few years ago.  Similarly, the cases in business ethics textbooks continue to change at an almost exponential rate owing to the abundance of new real work examples of unethical behavior (think GMC, BP, the financial meltdown, GMOs, fracking, and more!).
> 
> Further, college students (including traditional and non traditional aged students) are pressed for time and require course-specific learning simulations only.  That is, students do not have the time to explore virtual world simulations that are only tangentially related to the course learning objectives.  Rather, the virtual world learning simulations have to be graded activities that are worth their time (in the sense of being detailed and expansive enough to contribute specifically to their understanding of the course material).  Again, in the same way high quality college textbooks and online course sites require continual updates and upgrades, high quality virtual world simulations need to be updated and upgraded -- to contribute specifically to students' understanding of the course material.
> 
> Also (and this is a BIG item), I am constantly thinking up (and testing) new types of virtual world learning simulations.  In other words, my view is that it would be too limiting to be only be able to create a simulation once.  In contrast, right now, I currently have about 40 or more different types of virtual world learning simulations "in play" [read:  that I collect student feedback data on (based on student -- Likert scale-based -- views on the interactivity, engagement, and contribution to learning outcomes for each simulation -- see some of the early data collected at:  https://sites.google.com/site/fvwc12mclennan/student-survey-data-2)].  Note:  Over the years, students have provided excellent and surprising feedback.  For example, in the basic economics course I teach, I thought students would be keenly interested in the Free Trade Game I built (with each student the president/king/queen/dictator of their own island nation).  However, the in-world PP slides (from my lecture notes that are also uploaded into my course site) and the in-world vocabulary flash cards were rated markedly higher than the Free Trade Game in every category.
> 
> Note:  My college-level students almost universally [first] say they need asynchronous virtual world learning activities ONLY (in keeping with how all of my online courses are asynchronous).  However, after the students get some experience with the virtual world learning activities, they almost universally request real time meet-ups in-world!  That is, one of the main attractions of virtual worlds continues to be the ability to interact with others in-world.
> 
> Finally, while I keep trying all of the different available virtual platforms, to date (and for the reasons detailed above), I believe the OpenSim platform is the best fit for my online college-level virtual world learning simulations.  [Still, I will confess to being particularly taken with the genius and intuitive "ease of use" of the smartphone control panel or interface feature in the Cloud Party virtual world viewer.  That is, while the Firestorm or Singularity or other OpenSim viewers work perfectly for me (and I do NOT think a virtual world viewer has to be browser-based!), I wonder if a second type of OpenSim viewer (that is geared for a beginning user only) might be needed (?)...]
> 
> Best,
> Kay
> 
> Kay L. McLennan, Ph.D.
> Professor of Practice
> School of Continuing Studies
> Tulane University
> kmclenna at tulane.edu
> e-Teaching in Virtual Worlds @ https://sites.google.com/site/fvc13mclennan/ and https://sites.google.com/site/fvwc12mclennan/
> e-Course Teaching Schedule & Syllabi @ http://www.tulane.edu/~kmclenna/
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