The Open University was recently asked by Linden Labs to participate in their first ever Land Expo which took place in Second life from Tuesday June 9th to Saturday June 13th. The purpose of the expo was to “share best practices, compare land development offerings, and encourage the exploration of innovative uses of land”. Linden felt that the OU’s innovative use of land in education would make an ideal showcase at the expo.
The OU was assigned a parcel on one of the land expo sims and it was decided to recreate the character of Open Life Village on the parcel. OLiVe residents Elsbeth Biedermann, Jadis Mai and myself (Eshala Tabacznyk) decorated the colourful houses and Leornian Naidoo created an allotment to give visitors a taste of life on OLiVe. Decorating proved an interesting task due to the amount of lag on the sim. On one occasion one side of the house did not rezz at all leaving me wondering if I had accidentally deleted a wall and would have to face the wrath of the management!
An information area was also set up on the parcel giving details of the history of the OU’s presence in Second Life and information on the numerous study and research opportunities with the OU.
As well as recreating OLiVe for the expo the OU was asked to make a presentation inworld. Kickaha Wolfenhaut was charged with this task and made a presentation about the largely spontaneous emergence of the OU social learning community and how the project team observed this emergence and then adapted plans to incorporate the best possible support for these students and faculty members.
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