On the face of it the task of creating and replicating museum exhibits and spaces within the virtual ... Crowdsourcing, is also, for example, an integral part of the business strategy that is the music .... Facebook page (SL STARFLEET, 2011).
Crowdsourcing and Pedagogy: Some Reflections on the Museum as Collaborative Learning Space Nikola S. Nikolov, Rajat Gupta Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Limerick, Ireland Micheal O’hAodha UL Library, University of Limerick, Ireland Abstract Recent years have seen the relatively staid and conservative environment of the museum begin to unlock the potential that is the new wave of technologies as incorporated within the social web and the advent of better technologies for collaboration and ubiquitous learning. Some – only a few, as of yet - have embraced the use of 3D game technologies for the purpose of developing affordable, easy-to-use and more pleasing virtual environments, a process that many term “edutainment”. Virtual reality technologies contain enormous potential for the provision of more vivid or enhanced aesthetic experiences on the part of new museum visitors, whether these visitors are physically-present or engaging with the exhibits within the virtual world. On the face of it the task of creating and replicating museum exhibits and spaces within the virtual environment may appear overly-difficult or costly in terms of time, effort and resources expended. In this paper we propose a more collaborative approach to the design of the virtual museum space, one which can provide an eminently-viable solution to the need for affordable and engaging amalgam of exhibits and information, one which can overcome many of the traditional limits which museums have traditionally faced. In this paper we propose an outline model for engaging an online community in the continuous development and improvement of museum space. We base our model on observations on communities and museum spaces in the 3D online world Second Life as well in addition to our own experiences with a community students collaborating on the development of a shared 3D virtual space.
1 Introduction The term “Social collaboration” is frequently mentioned today, albeit that not everybody is agreed on its exact nature or extent. In essence, social collaboration denotes the processes which engage people, help them interact and which encourage them to share information and ideas in order to achieve a common goal. It can be argued that the web is one of the most “natural” environments of all for effective social collaboration, the dissemination of information and the creation of new developments as based on the power of ongoing innovations in social media and the sphere of digital artefacts and spaces more generally.
1.1 Crowdsourcing One approach to enhanced social collaboration in the virtual world is “Crowdsourcing”. Crowdsourcing is a term was first coined in 2006 in a Wired Magazine article (Howe, 2006), by researcher Jeff Howe. On his blog he defined “crowdsourcing” as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined entity, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” (Howe, 2008). Crowdsourcing is an element in lives of the current generation of web users who expect to personalize and shape their own learning experience, the museum experience included. It involves the “activisation” of content which was previously considered static and its transformation within a dynamic environment where there is the opportunity to contribute, 1
modify and share. It can incorporate any or all of the following activities – a range which extends from: the sharing of photos on Flickr, knowledge-sharing and collaboration via Museum-related blogs, social tagging or opportunities to create separate or additional personalized content – parallel interpretations through the use of podcasts for example. In essence, crowdsourcing can encompass a very broad range of options, each of which engages the general public in the process of participatory design. It is not an employee’s obligation to carry out something the employer asks for. Instead, a large group of people are available and willing to perform a task the outsourcer has asked for. Crowdsourcing can also be a time-saver (depending on the number of people involved), and it also allows the recruitment of contributors globally, thus achieving 24/7 productivity. In the field of collaborative translation, Facebook is the most recent example of the use of crowdsourcing for its translation. In March 2008, the entire Facebook website was translated into French in a 24-hour period by 4,000 dedicated French speakers (Sawers, 2009). Examples of crowdsourcing and its benefits can be found in all aspects of daily life. Many would argue that it is an extension of the social media-generated “human wave” that precipitated recent social and political change in Egypt and neighbouring countries. Crowdsourcing, is also, for example, an integral part of the business strategy that is the music business or a business as global as t-shirt design (Threadless.com), photography marketplaces (iStockPhoto.com) and scientific innovations (Innocentive.com), to mention a few. Threadless.com, for example, is a web based t-shirt company which invites a crowd to submit their t-shirt designs as well as to each other’s designs. A notable example of high creativity and revolution is the construction of a car by tweets. This approach has changed the way car industry used to work. As a result, General Motors has started a blog called the Lab (General Motors, 2011) and a “feedback loop” where customers can share their opinions.
1.2 Virtual Worlds and Museum Space In this paper we explore a number of issues as relating to crowdsourcing and its employment for the enhanced design and improvement of the museum space. As part of our investigation, we propose a model by which a particular crowd is invited into a 3D virtual world in order to collaborate on the development of shared virtual museum space. The concept virtual world usually refers to an “online fantasy game, where actors create their own world and interact with others”. (Bishop, 2009) One of the best-known examples of a virtual world is Second Life - a proprietary 3D virtual world created by Linden Lab. (Linden Research, Inc., 2011) While similar to a 3D game on the surface, it does not offer any goal that needs to be achieved by the user. On the contrary, the world is initially empty and all content is either user-created by using the tools provided in the virtual world or uploaded by users to the virtual world. In addition, users are allowed to sell content to each other, thus Second Life can be also considered as a virtual economy. While being a commercial playground, Second Life has also found some not particularly commercial applications such as building domain-specific online communities, social networking, education, showcasing projects, etc. In particular, there are hundreds of museum and galleries in Second Life at the moment of writing this paper. In the case of any museum space, there are a number of essential factors which define the quality of the user experience its successful design and implementation of the space, factors
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where crowdsourcing can prove a particularly useful collaborative tool. These include such aspects as: 1. Exhibit Selection. The selection of the most appropriate exhibits; by necessity, this task must take into account the significance of particular exhibits, the message that the virtual space most wishes to communicate and the profile of the museum’s visitors. 2. Exhibition Space Design. The exhibition space needs to be designed in a manner that is appropriate for the exhibits selected; it must permit a diverse range of entry and access points and different levels of freedom and flexibility in terms of the movement of the museum users. 3. Selection of Most Effective Presentation Methods. For each exhibit, the most prominent presentation methods are selected. In the virtual environment, this aspect can include a range and combination of approaches including audio, video, 3D models and textual description. 4. Interaction Design Levels. The range and extent of user-exhibit interaction needs to be specified at this point. While certain exhibits may be available for viewing only, others may incorporate the flexibility for movement, rotation, or even deconstruction and reassembly. There is an intimate correlation between interaction design and the presentation methods. Inevitably, some presentation methods are by nature more restrictive than others (e.g. 3D photos as compared with the interaction that is possible within 3D models). 5. Digitisation of Exhibits. This refers to the creation of digital representations for each exhibit and is a process which is normally undertaken only after the presentation and interaction requirements for each exhibit have been decided upon. 6. Exhibit Placement. The positioning of exhibits within the exhibition space. In the virtual context, it is digital representations of the exhibits which are placed in appropriate locations within the museum space. 7. Interaction programming. The definition of all specified interaction capabilities as associated with each exhibit and as sequenced within the available facilities as relating to the development environment. (Lepouras, 2004). In the next section we will take a closer look at museums and galleries in Second Life. Then in the third section of this paper we will describe our own experience with a relatively large group of college students collaborating on the development of their shared 3D virtual space and we will propose how crowdsourcing can be employed for the development of museum space in a virtual world. Finally, in the last section we will draw some conclusions from this work.
2 Museums and Communities in Second Life Currently, the Second Life search returns over 500 results in total for the words “museum” and “gallery”. (Linden Research, Inc., 2011) Some of those are either official or unofficial replicas of real museum and galleries, while others solely exist in the virtual world. Notable examples include the 3D replica of the Old Masters Picture Gallery Dresden (Henning, 2010), a 3D replica of the Neolithic village Çatalhöyük created by the Anthropology department at the University of California, Berkeley (OKAPI, 2011), the unofficial International Spaceflight Museum (ISM Corporation, 2011), to mention a few. 3
There are museums in Second Life which go beyond the idea of exhibiting artefacts and creating virtual replicas of existing museum spaces by also building online communities around them. We have chosen two different in nature examples to demonstrate how an online community can be related to a museum space in Second Life. The first example is a small scale project called Art Mecho Museum which contains various art installations related to both the history of animation and current Japanese animation (see Fig. 1). Both the installations and the museum space are created by a team of Christopher Bolton and his students (Bolton, 2007). The museum has no equivalent in the real world and this allows it to have features which can be implemented only in a virtual world. For example, the rotating zoetrope tower is one such features that represents an original 19th century design by the animation pioneer Eadweard Muybridge. (Muybridge, 1979) The Art Mecho Museum is an example of a museum space created by the collaborative effort of an online community. However, it does seem that the collaborative work had finished with the completion of the project and there are no signs of an ongoing online community built around the museum.
Figure 1. The Art Mecho Museum with its rotating zoetrope tower.
As a different in nature second example we would like to consider the Star Trek Museum of Science in Second Life (SL STARFLEET, 2011). It is a science museum which also acts as a hub for an online community of science and Star Trek enthusiasts. The community has also a Facebook page (SL STARFLEET, 2011). Unlike the Art Mecho Museum (considered above) the Star Trek museum is privately owned and it does not allow members of its community to develop the museum space. Members of the community are allowed, however, to purchase virtual homes on the virtual land owned by the museum. In many respects the Star Trek Museum of Science acts as a real world museum which would meet visitors and offer interactive installations and guided tours for them (see Fig. 2). The two examples considered above demonstrate the two ways of creating and engaging an online community around a museum in Second Life. To the best of our knowledge there is no 4
example of museum space in Second Life which is the ongoing result of large-scale crowdsourcing. Based on our experience with college students (described in the next section) we would like to propose that this also could be achieved.
Figure 2. Installations in the Star Trek Museum of Science.
3 Online Collaboration in Shared 3D Space In this section we would like to describe our experience with a relatively large group of students (around 80) for the duration of one academic semester. While not strictly related to development of museum space, we believe our experience may shed some light on issues related to how an online community collaborates on the development of shared 3D space. We also believe that such collaboration can be fruitful not only for developing online museum spaces but also for taking into account the stakeholders’ opinions for the development and improvement of real world museum spaces. For the purpose of teaching event-driven programming we had a 3D online world set up on a server in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick. On the server side we run the OpenSimulator which is the open-source alternative to the proprietary Second Life service. (OpenSimulator, 2011) Around 80 students had to share a relatively small 3D virtual space (256x256 meters). The students were not allowed to make changes only to a very small part of the virtual space reserved for demonstrations and programming examples provided by the teaching staff. The biggest part of the space was a sandbox for the students where they could change the terrain permanently and create or place any objects for 48 hours. The initial behaviour of the students in the sandbox during the first couple of weeks of the semester resembled chaos. There was little collaboration or consideration for other people. A small number of students changed the terrain chaotically, filled the virtual space with more objects it could handle. Fig. 3 shows some pictures of the virtual space form the first few lab sessions. The involvement of the teaching staff was mainly to clean the virtual space after the lab sessions. No other control over the students’ behaviour was involved. After the few first weeks, the community of students showed some signs of self organisation. They not only 5
stopped changing the terrain randomly but we could witness them modifying the shared space to make it better for the whole community. This was most likely due to the two factors. First, the initial excitement of having complete freedom in the virtual space was gone; and second, the students realised it is for everybody’s benefit to keep the virtual space well organised so they can work on their project in a nice environment.
Figure 3. Pictures of the initial state of our virtual space shared by around 80 students who were allowed to change the terrain and create any objects.
We witnessed students changing the terrain to more regular one, removing the big “mountains” and leaving a small ridge which acted as a separator between the working spaces of project groups. A few relatively permanent buildings appeared such a tower with a rotating top. Fig. 4 shows some pictures of the more matured look of our shared virtual space.
Figure 4. The mature look of our shared virtual space after the students realised their interest in keeping the space better organised.
Based on this observation we believe that the following steps may form a model for continuous development of museum or gallery space by interest stakeholders may give fruitful results: Step 1. A real world museum designates virtual space for its 3D online representation. Appointed staff may create an initial 3D replica of the museum or start simply with an empty space. Step 2. The museum invites interested stakeholders to express their ideas about the development of the museum space by either modifying existing 3D structures or creating new such structures.
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Step 3. The museum appoints staff member to monitor the 3D space for inappropriate content. Based on our experience with our group of college students we believe the monitoring needs to be minimal for resolving conflicts between the stakeholders. A study by Alonso et al. has shown that to control a motivated community can be a challenging task (Alonso, 2008). A highly motivated individual may attempt to control and lead the rest of the crowd. As a result the crowd may eventually lose interest in the task. Apart from that, the result of such collaboration may be subtle, unorganized, and unstructured if there is no specific strategy and sequential workflow for performing the task. And in the case with crowdsourcing there is no such strategy or workflow. The way to solve this problem is to introduce moderation, i.e. somebody in-house to manage the community without leading to a dictatorial hierarchy. The same result has been found in relation to crowdsourcing. From one side, crowdsourcing is a problem solving business model which can be very efficient; however, when the management is not good, it can also become unstructured and thus inefficient like crowdslapping (Brabham, 2008). Crowdslapping is the resistance by the crowd which may destabilize the online community and would pose a threat to the problem solving capabilities of the crowd. Our experience with college students collaborating in a shared virtual space has led us to the same conclusions. We believe that such collaboration (or crowdsourcing) can be very efficient when properly moderated.
4 Conclusions In this paper we have proposed the use of crowdsourcing for the development of museum space in a 3D virtual world by stakeholders. Based on examples from Second Life and our own experience with students collaborating in shared 3D space we believe this type of relationship between a community and museum can be beneficial not only for developing 3D virtual museum but also for taking into account the opinions of stakeholders for the improvement of real world museum space. When properly moderated a shared 3D virtual space can be an efficient collaboration environment where stakeholders can express their ideas for the development and improvement of museum space and this way make a potentially contribution to the real museum space represented in a 3D virtual world.
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Brabham D.C. Crowdslapping the Government: First Amendment Protections for the Crowd in Government crowdsourcing Ventures [Journal] // Annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. - 2008. General Motors [Online] // The Lab. - 2011. - http://thelab.gmblogs.com/. Henning A. [Online] // Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. - 2010. http://www.dresdengallery.com/. Howe J. Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business 1st ed. [Book]. - [s.l.] : Crown Business, 2008. Howe J. The Rise of crowdsourcing [Online] // Wired. - 14 06 2006. - 03 12 2009. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html. ISM Corporation [Online] // ISM The International Spaceflight Museum. - 2011. http://slispaceflightmuseum.org/. Lepouras G., Vassilakis, C. Virtual museums for all: employing game technology for edutainment [Journal] // Virtual Reality. - 2004. - 8 : Vol. 2. - pp. 96-106. Linden Research, Inc. About Linden Lab [Online] // Linden Lab. - 2011. http://lindenlab.com/about. Linden Research, Inc. Second Life Search [Online] // Second Life Official Site. - 2011. http://search.secondlife.com/. Muybridge E. Muybridge's Complete Human and Animal Locomotion [Book]. - [s.l.] : Dover Publications, 1979. OKAPI Okapi Island in Second Life [Online] // Open Knowledge and the Public Interest. 2011. - http://okapi.wordpress.com/projects/okapi-island-in-second-life/. OpenSimulator [Online] // OpenSimulator. - 2011. - http://opensimulator.org. Sawers P. Facebook’s un-rebellion [Journal] // Multilingual. - 2009. - p. 62. SL STARFLEET [Online] // Star Trek Museum of Science. - 2011. http://www.sabrizain.org/startrek/. SL STARFLEET Facebook [Online] // Star Trek Museum of Second Life. - 2011. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Star-Trek-Museum-of-Second-Life/182523743484.
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