Just Ask the Avatar in the Front Row

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Gaming & Virtual World Technologies

Just Ask the Avatar in the Front Row

5/1/2007

By Neal Starkman

What we’re doing now is about as close to magic as you’re going to get.” Whiting thinks that this is the beginning of a paradigm shift that’s going to alter the way people shop, live, work, and play. “Wait till someone realizes that you can drop a 2007 car model into a virtual world and let people drive it around,” he says. “Then, think about how much companies pay for a 30-second advertisement in the Super Bowl…”

Currently, New York Law School cosponsors an offshoot of There.com: the State of Play Academy, or SOPA, an entire academy built in a virtual world. Users can take courses in patent law, copyright law, virtual world law, and municipal WiFi policy, among others. The classes are scheduled at a wide variety of times; law professors, journalists, and technologists line up to teach them.

David Johnson joined the Law School’s faculty in spring 2004 as a visiting professor. He’s a faculty member of the school’s Institute for Information Law and Policy, where he directs the Certificate of Mastery in Digital Law Practice Technology program. Johnson reports that a number of NYLS professors who teach both online and traditional courses via various methods all concur that the level of interactivity and participation by students in online courses is noticeably higher than it is for the very same courses taught in an offline or real-world setting. That perception is right in keeping with his experience at SOPA, he adds, “aided in part by the availability of both an IM and a voice channel, so that everyone can talk at the same time without disrupting the flow of the main conversation.” What’s more, he says, those NYLS professors who have given exams to classes taking the same course (some online and some offline) report that the online groups do better on the exams: same courses, same exams. “Not surprising, really,” says Johnson, “given the higher level of interactivity in class.”

Because there are fewer reasons to be inhibited in Second Life, people in their avatar roles are less cautious about broaching potentially sensitive subjects.

Lauren Gelman, the dean of SOPA, is also the associate director of Stanford Law School’s (CA) Center for Internet and Society. “We’re trying to democratize legal education,” she explains, adding that because the SOPA classes are free, and because they can be accessed by anyone with the relevant software, there are very few limits on who can gain knowledge formerly restricted to curricula at traditional law schools. And importantly, the virtual classes have a different character than their predecessors. “These classes become conversations, where the participants are just as involved as the teacher,” says Gelman. In SOPA, the classes meet not in a classroom, but, typically, in a virtual library or coffeehouse, on a virtual couch, or by a virtual tree.