FCVW (Day 2)

Day 2 at the Fedaral Consortium on Virtual Worlds was a little less eventful. There were two panels (one with international speakers and one with developers). There were also a series of workshops on different interest areas surrounding VW's (i.e. Education and Training, Development, Governance/Policy/Acquisition, Security, etc.).

I attended the Education and Training workshop. Much of the discussion surrounded best practices, communities of practice, and combining resources to help build a VW picture/strategy for organizations. Much of the information will be pushed to the FCVW wiki. The moderator (Paulette Robinson) discussed the four major areas of work being done in VW's to date:

1. Information delivery
2. Meetings
3. Some training and education
4. Analytical interactions (more recently)

FCVW (Day 1)

I attended the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds last week, and apart from several technical/sound glitches, the conference went very well. There was a large contingent of Federal agencies interested in leveraging the potentials of virtual worlds for improving training, education, collaboration, etc. These are a few notes from Day 1.

Larry Johnson from New Media Consortium (NMC) was the keynote speaker. He emphasized that the community was gathered to discuss "worlds" (not "games"), and that many saw VW's as the evolution of the 3D Internet. He highlighted that VW's would develop in ways that we have not even imagined yet (think back to the early 90's and how many didn't see the potential of the Internet for sharing music, international calls, etc.). The Internet capture our attention...we just had to think outside of the box. Trends that (will) lead to the success of VW's include:

1. Putting people at the center of the network
2. Increasing computing power to represent 3D visualizations and data
3. Allowing users to generate content

Over the next 4-5 years, Larry encouraged the audience to watch for the following:

1. Moving flatweb to 3D web - there will be a continuance of this (including leveraging mash-ups).
2. Keep an eye on Linden - with a new CEO and lower costs, they are aware of the shortcomings of SL and are actively looking to overcome and partner with solution providers. Also need to watch for open source solutions...long-term, this tends to be the solution that wins out.
3. Security, Privacy, and Intellectual Property are critical - these are major issues that need to be overcome with in virtual worlds.

Maj Gen Erwin Lessel (USAF) provided an excellent talk on the future of Air Force education and training. The current move is towards USAF 2.0 (which means more of a focus on KM, Continuous Learning, and Precision Learning). The USAF is also working on a concept called MyBase which is a virtual 3D portal (exploratory and interactive) for the purposes of recruiting, education, training, and operations.

There were also a few good panel discussions with members from the private sector and government members. One interesting list from Curtis Conkey (NAWC) was on the difference between games and VW's (as a side note, I think some of these categories are limiting as games do not necessarily fit the descriptions provided):

• VW's are "24/7" while Games are "as needed"
• VW's are "persistent" while Games are "clean slate at start"
• VW's are "moderate fidelity" while Games are "high fidelity"
• VW's are "large teams" while Games are "small teams"
• VW's are "security issues" while Games are "isolated"
• VW's are "remote presence" while Games are "physical presence"
• VW's are "Internet" while Games are "local net"

Steady Stream of Virtual Worlds

The past week (and upcoming two days) seems to be filled with a steady stream of information on virtual worlds.

First, I attended the Corporate Advisory Council at Bloomsburg University. Although "virtual worlds" was not the emphasis for this Spring's RFP (it actually was for last year's), Karl Kapp always gives out nice, short, little white papers on a topic of interest. This year, the white paper was called "Real World Instructional Design for Virtual Learning". He gives a brief overview of virtual worlds (a.k.a. metaverses), and then discusses advantages and disadvantages of different design activities. The design activities ranged from synchronous activities to self-paced exploratory activities. The design activities included:

• Classroom Emulation
• Role Play
• Scavenger Hunts
• Guided Tours
• Operational Applications
• Critical Incident

The bottom line that Karl drew is that the basic tenants of instructional design still apply in virtual worlds. He mentions that "building an environment in a metaverse and turning the learners loose to go 'learn' without guidance, goals, or objectives will not lead to effective learning."

Then, Monday morning, the latest version of Training & Simulation Journal arrived. The cover story was called "Gathering of Avatars: Harnessing the potential of virtual worlds". It contained three articles on virtual worlds: one was basically an introduction to virtual worlds, another was an article on how the National Guard is using a virtual world, and the last was an article by COL Howard of TRADOC. The article by COL Howard was particularly encouraging because he basically gives a swift kick to the DoD (and Government at large) to stop arguing about the downfalls (like security vulnerabilities) of virtual worlds and look at the advantages.

During the next two days, I will be participating in the Federal Consortium on Virtual Worlds at the National Defense University. I will actually be presenting a paper there on a project I'm working on. The inaugural meeting last November drew almost ~500 individuals in person and in world. That's right, the conference was (and will be over the next two days) available through NDU's islands in Second Life. I'm looking forward to a couple of days of seeing how much growth there has been since the inaugural conference in November. From the looks of it, there are already several more agencies and organizations that are looking into virtual worlds.

April 2008 Big Question

The Learning Circuits Blog big question for April is "What would you like to do better as a Learning Professional?"

The simple answer to this question is "push back more." This can be applied on many levels, but I am primarily speaking of pushing more on ROI and evaluations. I learned very early on that Analysis and Evaluations are the first things to get cut from a learning project. In actuality, the same is true for many technology related projects.

While some of the projects I'm involved in do include an Analysis and Evaluation, there are other times where customers and colleagues come to me with a problem worded as a solution (I need XYZ training), and given the lack of time (both at the project level and personally), quickly moving out seems to be the only viable option.

The good thing is that I work in an environment where there are many needs, and often times the first gut reaction is a piece to the larger puzzle. The bad thing is that this keeps me in the mind set of "I'm not doing anything wrong" and sometimes the large puzzle doesn't get put together.

I've posted before that I think the number one issue facing the field is the lack of ROI and evaluations being done. This was all fine and dandy for several years, but with the current "recession" and job market slow down, the Learning Professional will once again need to show the value added.