 Okay, well, thanks for thanks for being here This is actually the first tour that I've given of our Chemistry Island chemistry world So this should be fun for hopefully fun for everybody out. I'm looking forward to it what we This was the the island that I that we used for the Texas A&M General Chemistry Lab project that I told you about I guess a couple of months ago My collaborator Dr. Wendy Keeney Kinnikutt had been involved in Second Life for At least what she had been involved in using Second Life for education for several years before this and so She wanted to collaborate on on the project I had in mind and that was great because she knew a lot more about the Second Life than I did In fact, she had already established a Second-life island that's part of the Texas A&M 12th Man Island and 12th Man is a I don't know. I always associate it with their their Texas A&M football But it's it's kind of a common phrase used at Texas A&M. So they have 12th Man Island in Second Life and Wendy has a Some some chemistry Exhibits and information on that island which is right across the bridge Right behind you And so you're you're welcome to go over there and look around there's also I think other faculty have established They have some a presence there. They have classrooms and presentations and Displays and other things going on I think among Universities I found Texas A&M has probably one of the strongest presence in in Second Life now See if we look at my bearings here Actually, if we go we don't have to go through it since You'll you'll see a lot of this stuff in the actual lab, but behind us what I'm looking at over the bridge There's a big black Backdrop and then what what is actually two very large graduated cylinders. I'm sorry. I'm excuse me Ring stands with burets attached When the students first came into Second Life They had to be trained to do a couple of things like Change their their perspective of what they're seeing so you know adjusting their camera They had to They they're and how to Well, they had to pick up a pair of goggles There and so there were some other very specific tasks that they were going to need to Use our skills. They were going to need to use during the experiments And so we had a training area that was set up like I say just across the bridge there the training was mandatory because You they otherwise we found they just would muddle around and and get frustrated and and take a lot of time that That they should have been spending just doing their their live experiments So this is where they would begin and what they would what they see and what you see is a pretty well landscaped Environment the building Um That's labeled held and fells to held and fells is the the lab building that That is actually on the Texas A&M campus where they teach their their general chemistry labs This is the second virtual rendition of that. It looks nothing like the Like the the the real building Wendy specifically asked the designers to make something that looked attractive, I guess the the One on Texas A&M, which I've never visited but the one on Texas A&M is I guess an example of of brutalist architecture. It's very Square and functional and could probably withstand, you know a frontal assault by military or something so This is a much more attractive building And then if you go or you can go around the building, there's like hills behind it There's actually a couple of displays. I will mention Wendy has a set up a display for her watercolors She's a really good artist as well as a chemist and educator So actually if you go behind you can see some of her picture Version virtual versions of her watercolors, which is pretty neat But we really wanted a nice attractive area for students to To come, you know to be in Even though they spent about probably two minutes In in the landscape portion, they spent almost all their time Actually in the the chemistry lab itself, which is where we can go now There's two ways to get there If you have the HUD you can click on the little home key and it will take you into the chemistry Lab room or at least the you might say the the starting point for the lab. So you can do that Or you can do it go a fashion way and just sort of walk there It's through the doors and to the right if you go into the building You'll see that there's a lot more to the building than just the chemistry The lab itself again, we wanted to make this sort of an attractive place for students to to congregate I don't know that they actually did congregate very much. You know, they were here for a class after all But it does look nice and if you can wander through it and there's some some Looms and there's a coffee bar and some other things So if you want to meet me next in the chemistry lab again by clicking on the Home button on the HUD or you can just follow me and we'll go to the Go into the lab Right now. So it's just through these doors And to the right But like it like a real chemistry lab don't touch anything just yet Um, I don't want you to disappear and you teleport it away before you're supposed to be Okay I assume everybody is here. Um, so the outside of the building or the rest of the building is is a You know a new version of their their the actual chemistry Building at the Texas A&M, but this room was made specifically to be as authentic As an authentic replicate of the actual chemistry lab Um, we really wanted students to feel sort of comfortable like Like they had been here before they were only doing two lab experiments in second life But one we didn't want them to have to feel to become Acclimated to a new environment. We wanted to make it as similar as possible. Um, so everything in this room is a copy of what their their Regular chemistry lab looks like now I don't know if if you want to look in the On the far side, um, there's an opening into another classroom If you all want to go in there and look you can but it's Simply a classroom where the students would get their pre lab briefing. Um, so there's some slides Some slide screens set up Actually, there's still some presentations on display there Um, but it's it's nothing particularly special um now The students would come in and You can see these what are water molecules the little rotating red and white three little spheres Pairs of students um a student and that student's lab partner would each click on a um We each click on a sphere and they would be taken teleported to a lab platform We have enough lab platforms for an entire class. Um, but once you go to another platform, you'll be I go to then you're going to end up outside of my chat range. And so I won't be able to uh I won't be able to to uh communicate with you so, um If you Does anybody not have the HUD? Because I think that's going to be an easier way for us to get around Um, okay, so hearing no We're seeing no objections to that. Um, let's All go to the same lab platform now the HUD um that you were given was designed for Really designed just for the instructors of the lab course. Um, the students did not have this There's two sets of buttons. We'll look first. We'll use the ones in the uh, the blue and white portion Um, there are 12 lab platforms or 12 lab stations. Um Which is good because that means you can have 24 students Doing the experiments, which is about the right sides of a course. Um, so why don't everybody click on Lab station one in the blue and white portion And you'll be taken up there that you would you'll go to the same place as if you were as if you clicked on the um The the rotating water molecule labeled um station one But what is the thing this would just be easier So I will see everybody up there looks like everybody is disappearing It's good And here we are. All right. So this is where This is where the magic happens um Now if we look out past the edge, um of the the platform, we're actually way up in the sky. Um There are a couple of things that you can see here. Um, even before we get to the experiment you can see there's a Slag show this is showing um the same pre-lab briefing Um that the students got Earlier than the in the other adjacent classroom. Um, so if the students need to just you know Check something that they forgot about they can they can click through the the presentation slides um There is a rotating water molecule. Um That if you click on that you return to the room we were just in um There's Let's see There's a sphere. Okay. So well carry. So next to the water molecule Is this little thing with the green button if I click on that watch what happens to your HUD The lab station number one spot on the HUD just turned red Now if you were an instructor and you were on some other lab platform you would now know very Yeah, immediately that oh students in station one have a question And but maybe you've got a couple of lab instructors who are helping out one of them goes there And clicks on it and the red alert goes away. And so the other lab instructor can Then realize oh Somebody else has helped those students. You know, maybe Maybe the students had a question, but then they figured it out themselves. So they canceled the alert. Um, so It's uh, it was a very it's a very nice way for the students to um communicate Uh, you know in some ways kind of discreetly, you know instead of raising their hand and saying hey instructor I need your help. Um, you know, they could just click on a on a button and only the instructor would know that that student Oh that those lab partners needed help um Next to that is A spear if you click on that um You get a note card called laboratory links and you're welcome to do that um It has links to pdf files which contain the actual lab experiments The student in our study the students used the same uh lab manual as students in the real lab um, and so This was just another way of making that that information available to them And let's see and then there's oh and then the other Slide show is for the second lab experiment on this platform. There are in fact two lab Experiments available um we Since the the lab since all the students performed one experiment at a time um They could just go to the first one they went to is over here on the right To the right facing the the lab backdrop um and And then the next week they did the the lab experiment on the left um, so if if you're not familiar with what a chemistry lab might look like you're the uh The back the backdrop the the ground we're standing on is sort of reminiscent of a uh of a A chemistry a lab bench. Um, you'll notice that all the equipment is um all the equipment is Above uh, you know a larger scale. Um That was just to make it easier for students to see what they were doing. Um, you can in fact I believe you can fall into the sink. Um, pretty sure. I haven't tried that yet, but I'm pretty sure you can I know students could walk into the the lab balance. Um And and do kind of goofy things like that, but you know if you zoom in to The point where you don't see the back of your head then Really all you see is the lab equipment and it kind of looks like normal size. Um, so it wasn't as Kind of it looks kind of goofy, but you get you get used to it once you start doing the experiment itself um Before we do Well, I'm not going to go through and do both the experiments for you You can play around with it if you want yourself, but um One other feature of the HUD that I'll show you is so okay, so there's 12 lab stations and we're on lab station number one um And we got here using that the the blue and white portion of the HUD above that Are 12 buttons labeled 1 through 12 If you click on button number one in the at the top of the HUD the gray button Go ahead and do that and see where you end up. So just to let you They are on the other side of that black background. It's a one-way wall and And so this was used so this we could observe what the students were doing Um, without them feeling like they were being watched Sorry, I was answering a question in another window We clicked you you fell to the ground I didn't know oh That is I've never heard of that happening before that's Okay, so well you Let's see. So you you get transported to the back side of that of the the the black wall that were that I'm facing um I gave mine permission, but I didn't go anywhere So did did anybody get oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. Um, did anybody get transported to a The back side of this where you could actually see people Uh, I mean, you know see see the lab bench from behind Well, uh Sure, why that happened? Um Oh, we may have We may have had a We may have had a permissions list that only allowed certain people back there And obviously none of you are all on there, but that's Hmm Yeah, I think that that must be it Oh, okay. Well, sorry about that. Well, it is a a nice little feature that that the designers made for us um That would allow us to kind of stand back there and and uh observe the students um, okay, but From the students standpoint this um, that wasn't really something Yeah, well you In fact, we didn't a flying it's interesting you mentioned that we never um We didn't allow flying because it's really not well We really just didn't want students to spend all their time goofing off. Um, and so Um, I think now we've opened up flying because we have visitors and you know, it is easier for people to get around um Um, but yeah, we we had turned off flying or for the actual uh For the actual work. Um If you all want to come over here, I can show you some of How we actually How students would actually do the experiment Um, so this is I'm not going to go into detail about the Everything about this experiment if if you want to really learn about it download the the pdf And and you can read about it. We We designed this experiment so that students go through a series of Perform a series of steps where they assemble a little apparatus and they end up figuring out a Kind of an essential property what we call the what we call the molar mass um Of a of a particular compound. Um And this is kind of a just a very A very Important it's an important concept in uh freshman chemistry And so this is but it's sort of a theoretical idea and this is a way for them to actually go about Collecting data where they can calculate this this value associated with with the chemical the chemical they're talking about is butane um and Both of these experiments are sort of the the topics were chosen because It's texas and texas is big on one thing petroleum um butane is is a petroleum Is a compound found in petroleum and so They they find the the molecular mass of a of a petroleum compound on the other experiment On the far side is actually measuring the salinity of an estuary That that is it's another I'm going on the on the gulf coast of texas they have estuaries and so that's um Another kind of texas themed experiment they had. Um, okay, so here You can go ahead and People can click on different items and what you'll see is a Uh in well in many cases you'll see a menu pop up and it will allow you to You know give you choices of of what to do with an item um so you should be able to Click on anything and move stuff around okay, so the uh when you When you try and do certain things Um, you might get a warning saying you must first like for instance open the door to the scale so this was a This was an issue that That Wendy and I and the designers thought a lot about um And that is what level of detail do we really want? Because if somebody were to say hey take the lighter and put it on the scale The student could do that and then they would know you pick up the lighter You open the door to the scale and you place the lighter on the scale in second life we Wanted them to really think about what they were doing We didn't want the virtual lab to do a lot of the work for them. And so I think some of the Some of the steps been a little tedious like If you want to put the lighter on the scale first you have to open the door to this to the scale Well, of course you have to open the door scale everybody knows that um But we make the students do Do that explicit step um now But this to some in some of these uh Some of these steps actually have a a I guess an important aspect to them as far as good laboratory Procedure for instance you put the if you were to tell the student Way the you know find find the mass of the lighter, which is a first step experiment Um, they would know to put on the scale and of course they would know how to open the Do that but they often forget to close the door And so when they write down their um They when they try to write down the mass That's displayed on the scale screen. They'll see that it's fluctuating a little bit Well, it fluctuates until you close the door and that that's what really happens in a real lab um The the the scale is sensitive to a tenth of a milligram, which is Not very much mass and so air currents actually affect that it causes a fluctuation in the But the scale is measuring so good laboratory practice would require the students to shut the door And then the scale reaches a constant mass And that's what they record so you know some of We may have Aired too far in some cases requiring the students to do every little thing But in other cases we really had a a reason for expecting them to do that um How did they move? Okay, so It some objects move automatically if they if you click on it and there's only one um It if there's only one task for them to for the object to do You can click on it and it will do whatever it's supposed to do if there's multiple things you can do with the object um multiple places where that object could be positioned then the students get a They'll get a menu and they and they choose which action to take um Yeah, that's right Leaning on the balance table does affect things um so Now the students did comment That because the menus were effectively kind of like a multiple choice test um They The students commented that this really did make the experiments easier in second life than they would be in In the real lab um And that you know, that was a deficiency of of Of our design, um, but it was really unavoidable Just couldn't the designers didn't know how to You know Allow students to like drag and drop Objects and and you know with the mouse cursor or something like that to pick up an object and move it um So it was just sort of what we what we had to to deal with um in some cases we um In some cases we did include a lot of options. You know most of which made no sense or Were incorrect. So the students in some cases had to choose from a lot of options Um to to do the the correct Step in the procedure, but in some cases, you know, the the choices were pretty obvious um now Let's see. So There were a couple of things here. So we can This object here is uh the thermometer and If you if you were to click on this thermometer, um, there's only one choice. Well What do you do with the thermometer? You check the temperature. So that's actually not that big of a deal. Um And Trying to read all the warnings you guys are you guys are getting Um, yeah, so you you got to fill the the tub before you empty it. Um You can they need to know the pressure the pressure is displayed on the back wall. So that's um 751 tour which is about regular pressure. Um, yeah, okay, so so sha was Shao, I'm sorry Shao's uh Said limited options are not a bad thing Yeah, I mean in general that that's true. Um, although We we actually had the students perform this Um, oh my gosh, okay Um, I we we actually had students perform this experiment or at least the first step of this experiment On their own as part of a uh a lab practicum. They they performed the real lab version of this And We found that the steps that the students Performed in detail within second life um help In the lab practicum the students performed those steps Better they were more likely to to Remember how to do them. There are some steps in this process. Um We didn't think about it at the time, but there are there's there's one step in this experiment where The the lab the virtual lab sort of Does skip over some steps Or it does the work for them and it wasn't something we really thought about but it Out to be the case. Um, that particular step Did not they they did not perform that step very well in the lab practicum So we really saw a strong correlation between The detail Of the steps the students had to complete in the virtual lab And how that Reinforced the their what they were supposed to be learning. Um So I think, you know, now if we were doing a pre-lab Exercise, yeah, we we probably would allow them to skip over a lot of the little mundane aspects of this Um, but this was a complete substitute. So we we always wanted them to We really wanted them to Uh I'm sorry. We really wanted them to to Learn as many of the the same steps as they would if they did this in a real lab. Um So now we can um Okay, so you can If you want to play around with this again, well, actually, you know, let me go through and And show you what the students had to do. Um, because this is kind of a A little thing together first you fill the tub with water um And Let's see then we're gonna need to get our lighter Uh, let's see we need to remove the lighter. Okay, so the the students would have um Recorded the mass of their lighter. Um, and and they would have had to do that themselves the the Virtual lab didn't record anything for them. Um, although So In the background there's Calculations the the the lab did run a calculation. It knows what that mass of the lighter was if the students write down the wrong number That's going to show about an error in their uh insults. Uh, okay, so we're going to take Tub on the platform let's see we to Take our 50 minute 50 milliliter graduated cylinder with that above graduated cylinder um I want to Fill it with water and let's see then we uh Raise it to the surface Okay, we then take our tubing here and we connect the two And let's see then Place the tubing in the tub okay, so There was a little visual glitch here the tubing um Let's see. Oh wait. No, I'm sorry. There isn't a glitch. They have to I'm sorry, uh Insert tubing into the graduated Okay, so The idea here is that you have butane gas in the lighter You have tubing running from the lighter to a graduated cylinder that is filled with water Um, but upside down so that now when we click on the lighter We can start the release of butane And After a minute or two you'll see and you can zoom in and see this um in in more detail But the the lighter is once it opened The butane gases released it goes to the tube and it collects in the top of the graduated cylinder And we do that so that we can measure the volume of butane gas that is collected And you can already see the volume of water of course as the gas collects in the graduated cylinder um It displaces water and so Water is pushed out and you can collect a a volume of gas um So they can measure a volume of of butane gas They measure the mass of the lighter afterwards and there's a change in the mass because some of the butane gases has leaked out of it And from the difference in mass and the volume of gas they they collect they can figure out Again the the molar mass of a butane um So that they have to do several trials and so forth. Um, so that's fundamentally what the students have to do And that's what they had to do for the lab practicum um Now let's say at some point You and I were doing this experiment and We realized oh, you know what we forgot to measure the initial mass of the lighter That is a critical step. We can't get the answer to our to our experiment without that information We're gonna have to start over Okay, so in your real lab you would disassemble everything and you'd have to clean some stuff up and It'd be a big hassle here. We have a reset button And when you click that reset button the the red button right next to the scale and click that And it asks it gives me a pop-up menu that says are you sure you want to reset and I sit Yes and poof Yeah, um, yeah, and then everything goes back to where it started. Um So it was just a time saver and you know while we wanted the students to have an authentic lab experiment Experience in in second life. We also realized, you know, they have limited time And how do you want students to spend their time in lab? Do you want them cleaning glassware? maybe um But Gosh, I don't know. I think there's better things for them to be doing like the experiment Um, I'd rather them have time to try the experiment again to get a better answer You know get better data than to spend their time washing out glassware But you know, that's a judgment call and I could see how people might disagree with that. Um, but You know, that's something that The one thing I really appreciated after doing this project is Really thinking about all the reasons why you design a lab experiment a particular way Some things you don't have any control over like that. It's gotta be three hours long um You know that you have no control over that but and in the real world you don't have control over Allowing student, you know, whether students have to clean up after themselves Well, of course they have to because they no one else will um, yeah or break stuff. Yes So we if we had had more time That was the next thing I wanted the the um designers to do is to include some kind of a random occurrence of Something breaks and the students have to maybe deal with that because things break, you know, you you draw a glassware It's not a big deal. Um But it does provide something a little more authentic. Um Again, you know, is that but is that something you want? The students to to focus on during this Lab time Um, so there's a lot of choices you have More choices than I thought about or more choices than I anticipated. Um uh, you know The when you're when you when you have the power to design the lab Environment from scratch. There's a lot a lot more things to consider. Um And so, you know, you can make it as Super authentic with all the hassles as of a normal lab or you can you know have a little bit of convenience thrown in um so now if we If you go to the other, um Lab station and you play around with that that's actually a more complicated lab Experiment both in the real world and the virtual world. Um, there's a lot. It's a little more tedious I'll just give you a little bit of warning. Um, there's It's a it's a lab experiment that focuses on very careful measurements um and you know, it It's not as uh, I guess it's it's well, it's just more complicated. Um, but you're and and That really allowed us to and in that experiment we really did incorporate they need 10 milliliters of water but They're dispensed 10.5 milliliters Well, now they have to remove 0.5 milliliters Okay, they do that, but they accidentally remove 0.7 milliliters. Oh now they have to add 0.2 milliliters This is like a normal thing in the chemistry lab that you just put up with And that was something we thought would be kind of a a good learning experience for the students. Um So that so we we incorporated that into the uh Into the lab as well. So the they have to dispense a lot of liquids in that other lab experiment to do their titration, but it's a It's a very realistic process they have to go through They uh, they record notes. Um, just on a on in the lab worksheet That's part of their lab manual so We could have had a virtual lab notebook associated with this, but Yeah, I don't know those I always thought those were a little clunky um And for the you know, the students really needed to write down a relatively small amount of Of data so a sheet of paper with you know A pen Worked worked very well Um, yeah, now the the nice thing though would have been You know by having them record data into a notebook Then you know that could have been stored and you know, the instructors could have looked at that data on their own instead of you know collecting sheets of paper but Yeah, you're right. It probably would be a A big endeavor Okay, so that looks like 45 minutes so um, I think I've tried to give you sort of a A An idea of What the students experience was as well as the instructors experience and what we were able to do and Um, I think you you were able to see everything with the exception of Not being able to Behind the one-way law So is anybody I've been asking questions, but it's anybody have other questions they want to they want to ask I'll be happy to I'll be happy to answer them and hang around but um I think you you know, hopefully you you picked up on how to do everything so you're welcome to go to other lab platforms and Play around with stuff following the sink you know Mixed up chemicals. I don't think you can't hurt anything And there's always a reset button future plans. Well, I would very much like to Take Not necessarily these but I'd like to do this in a virtual reality setting um with more Emphasis on Students actually handling the chemicals in some way with with br controllers or something like that Getting rid of all those menus um For instance would be a big improvement making this a more authentic lab experience There are there's a couple of commercial. I was actually just looking at them this morning There's a couple of of commercial Publishers that are creating vr labs and they're you know, they're they're pretty neat. Um, but I think there's Oh, I think you know, we we could do better. Um So that's that's what I'm really looking at now is is Doing stuff in in virtual reality I appreciate everybody attending. This has been a lot of fun. Um And uh, like I say, you're welcome to To poke around, you know, you can you can go to other lab platforms. Um just by using the HUD And uh Like I say just You know, see if you have any questions or wonder how we how we get anything my My only uh, I have to apologize in advance. I don't know anything about the actual programming um, but if you uh If if there's something here that you like or or want to learn more how it was done I can give you the names. Um, well random coal um is the uh Is the the guy who did most of the design of the the lab experiments themselves. Um I'm typing his name in the chat And I know he's still he's still active in second life and and other types of things. Um, no, he is He lives in oklahoma actually um near um Right, I've never actually met him. Um, which was very strange to like Send somebody a check for a fair amount of money that I've never met But you know, uh, I got over that. Uh, you know, he he's he's just a uh designer in second life He's worked on a lot of other projects. Um, but uh, but windy knew him and so, uh, so he was so we hired him for this work Yeah, I know I I as although I'm It's something I have to get used to all right. I am getting used to um But I'm in real life. I'm not actually real active on social media and sharing and things like that Um, yeah, you know what that was good So many funny things happened during this project One of them was just trying to explain to people at florida tech Explain to administrators What we were actually doing like what is second life? It's like is it a software? Is it? Uh, uh, you know, is it a publishing company? I I think I I think I just I gave them just enough information that they you know Didn't ask too many other questions um And you know, it was the research was funded. So that's really all they really cared about All right. Well, um Let's see Trying to see if there's other Because if there's no other questions then uh, like I say feel free to look around and look around over at uh On the 12th man island adjacent to this There's there's actually some some neat stuff. There's there's an agricultural set of an agriculture Set up. There's um, some people doing um Education they've got some presentations over there And then there's there's windy stuff. They've got a bunch of cute things for for chemistry So, um Yeah, there's windy Yeah, yeah, actually she's given far more um She's given a lot more tours of um Of our project than I have um, I know last She I mean, I forget when the last time I saw her in the world, but she does virtual world conferences presentations and stuff um So yeah, well and she's all she is retired and so um Yeah, that bandwidth may be may be an issue Okay. Well, um, and you know if if any other questions come up or you want to take another look or talk to me about it feel free to to uh Contact me and and uh, be happy to chat some more. Okay. Take care. Bye everybody