Jump to content

Bluesky Larkham

Resident
  • Posts

    17
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Blog Comments posted by Bluesky Larkham

  1. Ignatius, Lorraine - my University administrators will be exactly the same.  I haven't told anyone there about this yet but I know what their answer will be.  I've been quizzed about the costs of SL already this  year and told that with all the cut backs there is no extra money to spend on SL.

    By the way I'm not moaning or whining I'm just stating a fact.  Loads of people here keep going on about LL being a business well Higher Education is a business too and a very risk averse industry at that.  Even if we (the educators who belive in learning in VW) provide really good arguments to stay in SL, I think the administrators will just close us down.  It's sad but that, as many of you have pointed out, is what business is all about.

  2. Whilst I think this is proposal is a good idea it would cause some problems for smaller universities, libraries and NPO.

    As an example, my partner created the island for our University, since then I have been the only person actively working on this project.  I am not a technologist so most things take me a very long time.

    Small universities do not have either the funds or the workforce to work on "high risk" projects.  It has been two years and I am only now starting to see a very few lecturers starting to use SL for teaching.

    Even though we don't have very high traffic stats we do play an active and supportive role in our community and I would hate to have to leave just because we are not as wealthy as Imperial College.

  3. You really have no idea do you - you're as bad as Doggie!  The Universities in SL are Universities in RL.  They already charge their RL students a lot of money so they can provide said students with good learning experiences.

    May be that is part of the plan - increase prices to RL students so that Univeresities once again become the exclusive strongholds they once used to be!

  4. It is sad Arwenna to see someone like you so totally disillusioned, SLENZ is so well known, but you are only saying what the rest of us are feeling.

    I know that my University will not be able to pay the increased costs.  At present I'm running things on a grant and I did have enough to carry on for another year (which would give me time to try and raise more money) but this hike in costs will mean will probably have to leave at the end of this calendar year.

    I have worked hard to help my University see the value of Virtual Worlds for education and for the wider skills learners can develp there.  Unfortunately SL has just shown the educational establishment how unreliable they are.  I'm not certain the managers in Universities will be willing to take the risk of student disruption (let us not forget the National Student Survey results) and potential loss of kudos that using Virtual Worlds might cost them.

×
×
  • Create New...