SL-Based Education Not Hurt by "Wokeness", But Institutional Indifference (Comments of the Week)

Great comment thread in response to one educator speculating that a very politically incorrect Second Life would never work as an educational tool on today's "woke" campuses. SL-based artist Nebulosus Severine says not so based on her personal experience:

So-called "woke" colleges (I attended one) frequently engage their students about society's dark sides, controversial issues, and problematic human behavior ON PURPOSE. It doesn't try to shelter students from them, it encourages them to face them & discuss things like this - that's kind of a big part of what being "woke" is about??

While I was still in school, we had several incidents with controversial groups on campus, including anti-abortion protesters who posted graphic images on large signs, etc. And we were all able to handle these things like civilized fucking adults. School staff made it a custom to alert students to events like these, so that we could choose to avoid them or not as we chose, because we're all grown-ass adults who have agency. And these controversial topics of discussion were the norm, not the exception. The process of becoming woke is to examine controversial topics, to try and understand them, not to run away and hide from them because they're upsetting to think about.

That sounds right, though there is a substantial difference between controversial groups on campus which students can avoid or engage with as they choose, versus what we were talking about: SL-based educational programs, where students might be required to share a (virtual) environment with these controversial groups as part of their necessary coursework.

In any case, Victoria Leavenworth, another reader with experience in virtual world education, argues that the real problem with SL-based education is the institution itself:

My limited experience with the institutional/educational run of SL wasn't plagued by the seedier aspects of SL. It wasn't a problem for us. The problem was the institution itself. My institution gave lip service to education and outreach, but the main goal was RL money and branding. They really didn't want to put the muscle into creating something that was alive. It's real work, it requires real resources, and it requires the ability to embrace a more progressive way of thinking. It didn't take long for me to see that the SL project I was working on was destined to die.

I was different then. Sure, getting paid was great, but I would have devoted much more time for free to have some higher purpose in SL. LOL, I was so naive. It was a great learning experience about how unproductive and crippling institutional control, rules, and pecking order can be.

I think everything worked out as it should have. SL is another planet and the things that grow in its soil need to adapt to the environment. New possibilities was its strength, not its weakness.

I think SL is experiencing its own climate crisis from all of the institutional envy poisons that's been introduced to the environment over the years. Vulture capitalism, gaslighting, monopolies, cronyism, greed, and the neutering of its middle creative class down to consumer drones has done its job.

Whatever the reason(s) educators largely abandoned Second Life, it is definitely true that the culture of SL suffers from their absence. It's no accident that the rise of Second Life as mainly a fashionista shopping experience started at the same time as its use as a teaching/thinking/artistic platform declined.

Pictured: Harvard's Second Life campus, which, while apparently abandoned by Harvard, actually still exists in Second Life.

Comments

[Madeline blackbart]

Remember when everyone cried that mesh would ruin sl and we all laughed like they were just chicken little. They were right tbh. While mesh did help keep sl up with the times graphics wise somewhat it is definitely the cause of its monopoly issues. The skill level required to create mesh just makes it damn near impossible for your average user to make marketable items and onces mesh body monopolies (here's looking at you maitreya) took over the creative freedom, variety, and artistry of the masses, offered by the freely available and easy to learn building tools in sl were a thing of the past. Sure learning also building tools is difficult but it's no where near as difficult to learn as 3d modeling and you average user doesn't have time for that let's be real. So mesh was/is a double edged sword need to keep up with other modern games but the cause of the death of a lot creativity in sl.

[Wagner James Au]

I think about that a lot, Madeline. I mean Minecraft and Roblox-based creation is not mesh dependent, with Minecraft much more like prim-based building, and they are VASTLY bigger than SL. At the very least we can say mesh didn't help SL grow its userbase.

[Summer Haas]

If you think about it, building with prims could have been a difficult task, but they gave us easy to use tools. The problem isn't mesh, it's that Linden Lab didn't build a mesh editor into the client.

They could have invested in an offline mesh creation tool specifically geared for SL and it's avatars, that would be relatively simple for everyone, instead they spent 10's of millions for the 3 people that use Sansar.

[Madeline blackbart]

I think to create a thing that could create mesh equivalent to what someone skilled in blender could would be impossible summer. That said I do agree they should have updated the in world building tools to some degree.

[Summer Haas]

Not impossible at all, just very time consuming and expensive to develop. Certainly comparable to creating all of Sansar.

Anyways, it wouldn't have to be as good as Blender, just good enough to let entry level people create basic to intermediate things. Would it be so impossible to have an editor with primitive shapes and allow them to be merged and extruded? That at least would get people farther than they are now.