Health Care Collaboration & Community

in Virtual Worlds & Second Life

Patricia F. Anderson, pfa@umich.edu (a.k.a. Perplexity Peccable)

© 2009 Regents of the University of Michigan. This work is subject to a Creative Commons license.

First, Why Virtual Worlds?

• ROI– Economics– Skills building / modeling– Transferability

• Access / Audience– Global / International – Asynchronous– Synchronous

• Research Focus (Pubmed)

Why Virtual Worlds

• IBM GIO Report: http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/www_innovate.nsf/pages/world.gio.gaming.html

Social Media in PubMed

• n = 426• Largest concepts:

1. Web 2.02. Virtual worlds3. Wikis/Wikipedia4. Facebook/Myspace5. Youtube

SocMed in PubMed by Type

Del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Flickr

Folksonomy

Health 2.0

Mashup

Medicine 2.0

MySpace

Second Life

Social Bookmarking

Social Media

Twitter

Virtual Worlds

Web 2.0

Web 3.0

Wikipedia

Wikis

YouTube

Trends and New Audiences

• http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/universe-v6-master.jpg

Trends & Young Audiences

Trends & Older

Audiences

• “Overall age demographics continue much as expected. 73% of the population for September were 25 years and older. The older you are, the more time you spend in Second Life: over-45's spent an average of 64.13 hours in September, 35-44 spent 57.06 hours, 25-34 spent 45.06 hours, and the 18-24's spent less than 30 hours.

• Females spent nearly twice as long online in Second Life in September as the boys.

• Face it, your Aunt Tilley is more likely to be spending more of her time in Second Life than that early-adopting, tech-savvy young fellow.”– http://

www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/10/15/september-key-metrics-and-statistics/

http://blog.brainstormbrand.com/higher-ed-marketing/2007/02/second-life-exploding-in-unlikely-segments

New developments

• Xbox: Project NATAL – controller free gaming: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

New developments

• Emortal, the next generation playground: http://www.emotiv.com/ OR http://emotiv.com/INDS_1/inds_1.html

• http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-9958201-12.html

Trends – Mobile

Important Virtual Worlds Trends

• MediaGrid– Second Life– World of Warcraft– Wonderland– Croquet

• OpenSim

• Interoperability• Portability• Content Sharing• Security• Control

So You’ve Heard About Second Life

• Screenshot of SecondLife website

• http://secondlife.com/

Second Life is Growing …

• From ~2002 to ~2007 …

Second Life is Growing …

• From ~2007 to ~2008 …

From ~2007 to ~2008 …

Who’s There?

• Social Research Foundation: http://socialresearchfoundation.org

Who’s There? Corporate

• Adidas• Apple Inc.• Best Buy• BMW• Cisco Systems• Coca Cola• Comcast• Dell• H&R Block• IBM

• NBA (basketball, really)• NBC• Nissan• Pontiac• Reuters• Sun Microsystems• Toyota• The Weather Channel• Warner Brothers• … and many more …

Who’s There? Schools

• Bowling Green State University

• Columbia University• Duke University• Drexel University• Harvard University• New York University• Ohio State University• Pennsylvania State

University• Princeton• Stanford University• SUNY

• Temple University• UCLA & UC - Berkeley• University of Cincinnatti• University of Colorado at

Denver Medical Center• University of Kansas Medical

Center• University of Texas Medical

Branch• University of Tennessee

College of Medicine• University of Michigan • Vassar College• Virginia Tech

… and over 100 more. Source: SimTeach: http://tinyurl.com/2fen2s

More Practically …

• Professional Engagement• Economics• Discovery• Education• Productivity• Collaboration• International / Global• Qualitative Reasons

Second Life Now or Later?

• “Imagine it’s 1949 and you’re a big brand. Do you NOT participate in TV? Or, it’s 1925. Do you NOT participate in radio?”– Tuple vs. Kipple. Value of

Measuring Engagement. June 7, 2007.

What’s There? Nanotechnology Island

What’s There? Interacting with Cells

What’s There? Clinical Training

What’s There? Disaster Response Simulations

What’s There? What’s There? Health & Medical Libraries Health & Medical Libraries

What’s There? Fundraising for the Social Good

• World Aids Day

• Relay for Life

• PeaceFest

• Autism Society of America

What’s There? Advocacy & Activism

• Assistive technologies for gaming

• National healthcare reform community meetings

• Autistic Liberation front

What’s There? Support Groups & Communities

• ASA Saturday night meetings

• GimpGirl

SLHealthy

SLHealthy• Groups (261)

– Autism/Aspergers– Depression/Bipolar– Alcoholism & substance abuse– Brain injury / rehabilitation– Disabilities – Cancers

• Sims/Locations (76)• Event Calendar • URL: http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com/

What’s There?Real Life Organizations

• American Chemical Society• AAUW• MacArthur Foundation

What’s There? Real Life Organizations

• IEEE• Nature Publishing Group / Elsevier• National Library of Medicine / ToxTown• Centers for Disease Control

What’s There? Real Life

Organizations

• International Society for Technology in Education– 4783 members– 3775 Traffic

• American Cancer Society

– “Last year, the 2007 RFLofSL raised more than $118,000 and attracted more than 1,700 avatar participants to the walkathon event!”

Examples: Imperial College (London)

Examples: West Palomar Hospital

Examples: NHS Polyclinic

Examples: Ann Myers Medical Center

Ideas• Communication skills– Patient history taking– Problem solving– Cultural competencies– Ethics & role-playing

• Productivity– Meetings – Distance learning– International teaching

• Clinical space design & modeling

• Awareness

What You Need To Know Beforehand

• Tech– Bandwidth– Hardware– Screen resolution / Video cards– Frequent Downloads /

Software Updates– Firewalls

• Social & Planning– Check the calendar for

planned outages– Small Groups– SLURLS – Money in SL

If We Build It They Will Come

•Not!!!!!

What do ISTE & ACS do different?

• Meetings

• Special events

• Speaker series

• Resources

• Contacts

• Support

Best Practices• Remember, this is a SOCIAL technology.

– Get to know your neighbors– Collaborate

& communicate– Join groups– Go to meetings

& events– Take classes– Make friends– Share, give back to the community

Best Practices

• Take your time to build community first, spaces second.– This means both in Second Life and within your institution.

• Think about how this fits in with the overall social media plan.– Use technologies to integrate SL with other social media– Develop a maintenance and troubleshooting plan

• Get to know a variety of Second Life groups and communities before you make design or community decisions– Consider the culture and norms of the environment– Don’t necessarily impose real life on Second Life

Best Practices• Design for a diverse audience of varying

abilities– Use the “Marco Polo” tools for accessibility

– Work with people from Virtual Abilities

– Do usability and accessibility testing

• Rule of thumb:– Use BOTH

accessibility guidelines for real world architecture & web design

Questions to Ask• What names do you want (can’t be changed later)?• Do you want to build a model of real life or a new

conceptual space? Why?• Do you have a content plan?

– WHY it is going there– WHERE it is coming from– WHEN and how often new items should appear– WHO is the target audience– WHO is responsible for content– HOW is the content getting there

• Do you need to update your social media plan?

Training and Orientations

• Virtual Abilities: Orientation:

http://slurl.com/seocondlife/Virtual%20Ability/169/99/22

Starter Resources for SL Health & Healthcare

• SLHealthy: <http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com/>

• Healthcare Support and Education <healthcare@lists.secondlife.com>

• Groups in Second Life:– Healthcare Education– SL Medical Association– Health Support Coalition

Starter Resources for SL Science & Research

• McConaghy, T. Troy. Overview of Science-Related Stuff in Second Life. Nature Network: – http://network.nature.com/people/U475C43B9/blog/

2008/03/12/overview-of-science-related-stuff-in-second-life

• Second Life Research: – http://secondliferesearch.blogspot.com/

• Science & Technology in Second Life: – http://scilands.wordpress.com/blog/

• Second Life Researcher Resources: – http://www.slideshare.net/umhealthscienceslibraries/

second-life-researcher-resources

Videos

• Second Life Cable Network: http://slcn.tv/• Vavoom, JS. Virtual Nursing Education in Second Life, part 1 of 5.

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjLDe-ca-sw• Pennell, DrDoug. Testis Tour on OSU Medicine.

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1YuRSyzBAE• Heron, Gentle. A Second Life on Second Life.

– http://youtube.com/watch?v=UV52WRXm1Cg • Virtual Ability

– http://youtube.com/watch?v=-UQ15563i78• Depres, Draxtor. Obama healthcare team close to the ground in Second Life

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YghepF0uv3E• Qunhua, Kaiya. Second Life Public Health.

– http://www.lib.umich.edu/hsl/flash/slph.html• Peccable, Perplexity. Second Life Virtual Health.

– http://www.lib.umich.edu/hsl/flash/pandersonsl.html• Peccable, Perplexity. Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life.

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfsSGBraUhc&feature=channel_page

• These slides will be available at:– http://www.slideshare.net/

umhealthscienceslibraries