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The Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008 report spawned a host of predictions from other bloggers, and several commenters suggested I do the same when I reviewed the report. I think the general predictions have been pretty well covered so I’ll stick to the topic nearest and dearest to my heart: Education in Virtual Worlds.

Following the report’s question format..

What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?

1. Second Life will continue to be the virtual world platform of choice for educators in 2008. While competing platforms are coming online in droves, university and college administrators are conservative about investing in new and poorly understood technologies. In countless committee meetings, early adopter faculty and IT staff will have to show hard data to skeptical department heads and Second Life is the only virtual world platform with a critical mass of educators, institutions, grant dollars, and burgeoning research to provide that data. What the administrators don’t know and nearly as important as the data, however, is that Second Life is also the only platform with a large enough and diverse resource base to provide freely-given documentation, training, websites, and technical support that educators need to deliver results – a level of support that isn’t currently provided by the host institutions or Linden Lab themselves (though the power of the 4,000 some educators on the Linden Lab hostedSL Educators email list can’t be underestimated).

2. Traditional Course/Content/Learning Management Systems will belatedly establish project teams to explore how they can cross-over into virtual world territory. The big players like Blackboard and Desire2Learn will look at the ground-breaking work of the SLoodle project and the continued spread of the open-source Moodle CMS and wonder where the heck their heads were in 2007. Though there won’t be any major implementations of virtual world technology in these other platforms, internally there will be a lot of head scratching, planning, and development, which will be poorly implemented in 2009.

3. College presidents will demand proof of ROI more vigorously than any CEO in 2008. Though the cost of entry to stick an institutional sign in the virtual world yard is still relatively low, as more educational institutions develop virtual presences and programs, the cost in both time and money to build, document, and deliver courses in these environments will explode. Early adopters will be forced to defend their work in a climate of tightening budgets and the increasing corporatization of edu culture, which will yield better metrics and research study designs that will be utilized to better effect by the private sector in late 2008 and into 2009.

What goals have you set for 2008?

The University of Cincinnati Second Life Learning Community has grown from a handful of members to over 30 faculty and staff from nearly every college, and in 2007 we hosted 7 classes on our island. Beyond increasing growth of the learning community and the number of courses that explore Second Life as some component of the course, my 2008 goals include:

1. Research: Complete and publish results of a second study of educational institutions in Second Life to build upon the initial benchmark. The second time around, I hope to explore not just “who” and “what kinds of spaces are being built”, but also take a more comprehensive look at the type of educational activities that are being conducted. Are educators just delivering traditional PowerPoint slides and lectures in the virtual world, or are they doing something else?

2. Sustainability: Funding, funding, upgrade computer labs, funding, more support staff, funding, better documentation and support infrastructure, and did I mention funding? I suspect I’m not the only one working 60 or 70 hour weeks to make education in virtual worlds a reality, and if we don’t find a way to make these nascent programs sustainable, we’ll all suffer massive burn-out. In return for more institutional support, we’ll be expected to deliver on the promise, but we can’t deliver on the promise without more institutional support, so solving this chicken-egg dilemma is a high priority in 2008.

3. Collaboration: Identify and challenge departmental and institutional barriers that hinder opportunities for collaboration. Virtual worlds knock down more than just geographical barriers, they also facilitate the holy grail of interdisciplinary curriculum – digital design students can help create models and learning spaces that are programmed for interactivity by computer science students to facilitate social science research, and there’s nothing to stop this from happening across institutions as faculty find researchers from other disciplines who share similar interests from different perspectives. The technology makes it possible, it’s just a matter of discovering what cultural and procedural barriers are standing in the way.

What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for education and the virtual worlds industry?

1. Throwing off the “games” label: 2008 will be the last year that educators have to explain that virtual worlds are not games, not because the perception disappears, but because mass media will do the job instead. Virtual world applications for other serious purposes will be discussed in newspapers and tv shows and other traditional media ad nauseum, and by the end of 2008, anyone who still thinks any animated simulation on a computer is just a game was living under a rock.

2. Integration: Educational institutions have spent millions of tax payer dollars integrating student information systems, HR systems, grant and research funding systems, payment processing systems, and more. All of this data and infrastructure exists to automate the day-to-day business processes previously done manually, and yet with closed virtual world systems, we’re back to manually creating accounts, enrolling students in groups, giving curriculum and items by hand.. Virtual world platforms that intend to be adopted by institutions will have to enable integration with institutional systems and infrastructure or be outdone by competitors who do. This is a key barrier to widespread adoption, and newcomers to the virtual world playing field will begin to address this need in 2008.

3. Scalability: The interface must be user friendly. The initial experience must be idiot-proofed (even a PhD won’t get you off of Second Life’s orientation island, and that is ridiculous.) The documentation must be free, easily accessible, and clear. The tools for teaching must be easy to find and plentiful to accommodate different teaching styles. The platform must be stable, reliable, and allow more than 2 or 3 concurrent classes in the same space. Virtual world platforms that get the basics wrong will lose educational users in droves in favor of the platforms that get them right. Second Life in particular is on the hotseat in this regard, educators are itching for a way to test their theories on a platform that makes it possible without it feeling like a root canal, and 2008 may be the make or break year.

A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on education and virtual worlds?

1. The education separatists will get their wish and discover that closed, sterile, disinfected virtual worlds are boring as hell, but they’ll persist in using them because it’s safer and easier to defend to administrators. Their students will see the experience as one more horrible institutional misuse of a cool technology and adopt open virtual worlds in ever greater numbers.

2. New degree programs will begin to emerge that focus on the interdisciplinary cross-section of organizational leadership in online environments, virtual worlds, and pedagogy. Ok, I’m hoping to find a program like that in 2008, so let me know if you find one. 😉

3. The most highly paid “instructional designer” positions will require experience with 3D modeling, social networking, and virtual worlds. Nascent departments and sub-units with expertise in virtual world platforms will begin to develop in IT departments at educational institutions across the United States, and in some other nations where virtual world technologies are being aggressively pursued.

How will all of this change education in 2008?

It won’t change anything except on the margins. A few students in a few courses in a few institutions will get a revolutionary educational experience that radically changes their view of the world and their place in it, but the vast majority of institutional resources, staff time, and equipment purchases will be continue to be spent on flat web technologies and endeavors. Enormous amounts of resources will continue to be poured into crappy course management and e-portfolio systems that don’t properly utilize Web 2.0 technologies yet, let alone incorporate virtual world tech. Pockets of innovation, under-funded and under-supported, will continue to grow, however, and faculty will lead the charge as they become aware of grant and research opportunities that they can’t take advantage of because of this lack of institutional support. National and professional associations will develop virtual world Special Interest Groups and these will show rapid growth among young faculty and early adopters across disciplines, but it will be several years before virtual worlds in education begins to approach anything like mainstream adoption.

So there you have it, just in under the wire! I’ll look forward to seeing how off the mark I am at the end of 2008, but until then, a Very Happy New Year to all – especially the educational community!