Virtual worlds stalled for corporate learning - Towards Maturity survey
There is a new report from Towards Maturity. This is based an a series of surveys of companies using e-learning. One of the PDF downloads includes longtitudinal trends since 2006. One thing that strikes me is the figures for "Virtual Worlds - eg Second Life". They confirm my impression that the use of virtual worlds for learning has not grown, it may have declined after an experiment that ended.
direct to trends
There is quite a difference between the actual and predicted results. 26% highest prediction for 2010, 9% highest actual in 2011. The 2012 actual is down to 3% so I don't know what the 20% prediction for 2013 is based on.
I find this all surprising as I like Twinity for example and the virtual worlds seem to continue as part of games. Bandwidth may have been an issue previously but not now. Maybe more people are using mobile devices without the graphics chips or processing of desktop computers.
I have been trying to promote Twinity as part of #mtw3 an online conference. There might have been a Twinity model of the Work Foundation with a detailed exterior and accurate conference rooms etc. But the street aspect of Twinity has gone, apparently because of the cost of maps data. Recently I have found that 3D models can be placed in Twinity quite easily. This is not new, just something I have tried out so I guess that virtual worlds could return quite quickly if there was some interest.
Twinity is now owned by Exit Reality. They also offer 3D hosting as part of Learnbrite
So this may be a project that will show where virtual worlds may flourish.
Another possibility is that social media now have all the possibilities for anonymous chatter and 3D will gradually be added as an extra.
I will continue to look at Twinity and use photos and video to connect with other formats.