

Kristy stated although Second Life's audience was potentially worldwide, two-thirds of her participants were from North America. But the advantage of doing research this way was a shortened process time, since she didn't have to do any travel or spend time finding places to stay, "the virtual world reduced the time that is necessary in real world research. … There was no travel cost, no accommodation fees, and I did not need to leave my job. I think we can say that the virtual world is a good environment for low budget research." As the interviews were done in text, she "did not need to spend time transcribing the interview as well. … Therefore, the time to key in data was reduced as well." One challenge though was judging reactions as "there was no body language and facial or voice expression that could be observed." She took some questions and comments after the discussion, notably one person commenting the biggest problem in getting a college to approve the use of Second Life for education purposes was selling the idea to the committee.
On the day the conference opened, Linden Lab had announced the return of it's 50% discount for educational and nonprofit sims. The news was naturally greeted with cheers at the conference, and some thought it had been timed to go along with the start of the WVBPE.
The Closing Keynote was done by Dave Cormier (youtube link). Pooky Amsterdam conducted the awards ceremony.
The WVBPE conference is a yearly event, with information available at http://www.vwbpe.org/ , and has a both Second Life and Facebook groups.
Bixyl Shuftan
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