All University Day – A “Virtually” Fantastic Event

Penn State University recently celebrated “All University Day”.  This day brings together students from all of Penn State’s campuses and recognizes those students and campuses during the halftime celebration of a Penn State football game.  Penn State World Campus participated in this event and ten of our amazing students traveled from their homes in Texas, California, South Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with us here at University Park campus.

Our students arrived on Friday afternoon and evening and we welcomed them with a tailgate featuring local BBQ, great conversation, and the opportunity to mingle and meet World Campus staff members and the Nittany Lion himself.  Saturday’s events consisted of a rehearsal for the halftime celebration, a tailgate for all the participants, and a fantastic football game between Penn State and Illinois that evening.

This year’s event also featured something else – a virtual component. For the first time, All University Day was also celebrated in a virtual world.  Penn State World Campus now has a private area in the virtual world of Second Life and the All University Day celebration there consisted of a virtual tailgate, guided tours, a live musical performance from a former World Campus student, and the opportunity for students, staff and faculty to meet and mingle with each other.  Throughout the course of the day, visitors included Penn State faculty members, staff members, World Campus students, prospective students who were considering attending Penn State, and Penn State graduates. It was truly an amazing day and wonderful experience.  Hours after the “official” event concluded in Second Life, several staff members and students remained watching the Penn State vs. Illinois football game online while discussing the game with others in Second Life.

Second Life and education have been hand-in-hand for years and this environment certainly provides us with the opportunity to learn and experience our learning in ways not possible in the physical world.  These virtual spaces are not limited to classes, however, and Penn State World Campus plans to use Second Life as a way to provide our students with a way to connect with their education in a very different way.  Online students face different challenges than resident students not the least of which is developing a sense of belonging and pride in their campus experience.  Creating a virtual campus space for our students is the first step in personalizing online education, unlocking the power of informal learning and connections, and building a community of learners.  We’re looking forward to meeting you there.

[cross-posted to Terra Incognita]

Marketing in Virtual Worlds

Clicking through my RSS feeds tonight, I came across this great post in Massively.  It does a great job of talking about marketing in Second Life and how someone really has to spend time in the space to *understand* the space.

“Where are your marketers going wrong in virtual worlds? There’s a bit of a list, but we’ll talk about two particularly relevant ones here. One is mistaking the medium for the market, and the other is failing to understand how people are using the medium.

Mistaking the medium for the market is a pretty obvious one, but that doesn’t make it any less prevalent. It is a classic stereotyping mistake. Take a look at Second Life; “Freaks and geeks” is one of the most common views of the demographic. Another is that it is slanted towards the younger crowd (say, under twenty-fives or even under twenties). Both of those views are, essentially, dead wrong. If you’re operating your marketing strategy based on these views, you’ve shot yourself in the foot from the get-go.”

………………

“What you need to do now is to understand how the users are using the medium. That’s more than just a quick field-trip.

Just as you would do with marketing and product development in the physical world, you need to go and actually use the new media yourself. You need to interact with people, watch people, and find the gaps. If you don’t understand why people are using the medium or how they are using the medium, the odds are good that the only effect your messages will have will be negative.

Find out how people are using the medium, and the sorts of messages they are receptive to in that medium. Look for spaces in which your messages will fit, and how to place them there. Otherwise you’re just blowing your marketing budget on pissing people off.

You won’t absorb a new medium in an hour, or a day — and like more established media (newspapers, magazines, radio, film and television) the position of each medium in the attention-space of the market changes slowly over time, as do the uses that the market puts them to. As with these older, more established media, you have to keep current.

Every medium is a challenge and an opportunity, even the older media. Human interactions with media are constantly evolving and changing, and if you are keeping up, you will be more successful than those who are lagging behind.”

Read the whole post here. Please.

who loves tulips?

I do, I do!

NMC Horizon Report and what it might mean for Outreach

Every year, the New Media Consortium (NMC) releases their Horizon Report detailing some key ‘emerging technologies’ to keep an eye on.

This year the list is as follows:

1. Grassroots video
I think this has some pretty significant implications for WPSU and really gives them an opportunity to lead the way in this by working and collaborating with local schools and teens to produce video.

2. Collaboration Webs
Wikis, Blogs, Shared documents.. fall under this category. Just think of how much we could accomplish in Outreach if we take advantage of things like this to share ideas, solve problems, and connect with each other.

3. Mobile broadband
We can think about different ways to connect with students and provide them mobile-friendly ways to access our information.

4. Data mashups
New ways to access and organize information.

5. Collective Intelligence
This basically means that together we can accomplish amazing things. By giving students a space like Second Life where they can meet other World Campus students, and begin to connect and network with each other – wonderful things will happen. Also, using the sorts of tools I mentioned previously (wikis, blogs, shared documents) along with just meeting each other and learning about each other will make us a stronger organization.

6. Social Operating Systems
This idea is that the the network is about the people and not the content. Once again, in using tools like Second Life to connect students with each other, with their advisers and with Penn State, we open doors for them that didn’t exist. We give them experiences, and show them different ways of thinking. Just as we have meetings here in Outreach to innovate and learn from each other, providing these experiences for our students will help them grow and learn in a new and unique way.

We talk a lot about ‘value-added’ learning here in C&DE. These sorts of things are what will give us value. Giving our students new experiences, new ways to connect, and the technological skills to succeed in these environments will truly change their lives – and that goes way beyond handing them a degree.

tuesday’s tulips

Prettiest tulip photo yet. Richard, your tulips miss you! (and so do we)

so close to blooming

In today’s tulip update you can clearly see the beginnings of what will be some pretty gorgeous tulips.  Monday’s post will very likely show these flowers in all their glory, so hold on to your seats, folks!

working the late shift tonight and catching up..

My co-worker is taking a much deserved vacation this week and he typically works 12-9 so we’ve all been taking turns covering his shift this week. Today’s my turn.  Although it’s a bit weird to be here this late, it’s wondrously peaceful and a really great time to be able to catch up on work uninterrupted.

I’ve spent a lot of time tonight catching up on some blogs.  Second Life in Education, Second Life Education Events, Massively, TechCrunch and several others always have really great information and it’s a fantastic way to know what’s going on quickly.   Google reader is my friend.

I also found out today that my poster “Social Networking and Community Building for Online Students” has been accepted for the TLT Symposium that will be held at the Penn Stater on March 29.  This is great news, but also now means that I have to actually DO a poster about that.  It’ll be fun and another opportunity to meet people from all over Penn State.

I also have a meeting scheduled for this coming Monday with Brett Bixler from ITS here at Penn State to discuss PSU’s overall presence in Second Life and brainstorm about what we can do to better organize what we’re presenting in that space.  As I’ve mentioned before, Penn State’s presence in Second Life right now…. not so great.  I’m hoping we can change that.

SL THON is also coming up on Friday, Feb 22 and I’m in the process of lining up musicians in Second Life to play for that event.

tulips are better than none

tulip check!

Today’s tulip check.. with a new background. Lookin’ GREAT!

proposals and more proposals

I’ve been in a proposal-submitting phase the last week or two. In the last few days I’ve submitted a proposal for the Hendrick’s Conference at Penn State, the Department of Defense Worldwide Education Symposium to be held next year in Atlanta, The Sloan-C Conference coming up this fall in Orlando, and I’ve helped another co-worker submit to NACADA that will be held in Chicago this October.

In addition, I’m traveling to the Sloan-C Symposium to be held in Arizona May 7-9, but I didn’t submit a proposal for that one! Whew!