Shale's Blog

End of The Road

2011-11-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

The MBA Second Life exercise ended. Ended up a close run between two groups, both making sensible decisions. The third group slowly slipped behind, making some strange decisions, so not sure how educational this has been. Two groups getting marks of 84 and one getting 27: no tendency for group marks to regress towards the mean here! It will be interesting to read the students' reflections on the exercise. The exercise was badly affected by the difficulties of getting the Second Life viewer working on the Business School's pcs now that they have been upgraded to Windows 7. Just ran in to Frank Lassard who suggested that I should have used the Phoenix viewer instead as education had similar problems, so hopefully the problem will be sorted when the exercise is used for an honours course after Christmas.

Impact of Assessment

2011-10-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

This is the first time that we have had the performance of groups in the simulation tied directly to a mark that the students get for their operations management course. The logic for this was that by making it count a small part towards the course mark students would be motivated to analyse the decisions they make. It was decided to link it to the amount of cash their company has at a cut-off date next week because tying it to assets leads to end game strategies of running up high inventories. The students also get a good brain-washing on their courses about Lean. The effect seems to have been a tendency to cut inventories and maximise cash in the short-term, but then find that this constrains a policy to increase throughput by cutting prices because there is not the material coming down the pipeline to allow it. Simple insights like realising that with no uncertainty about the delivery of raw materials it makes sense to make the frging buffes stocks either zero or a multiple of the current batch quantity: if the batch quantity is six a buffer of two does not allow a batch to be brought forward in response to an unforeseen increase in sales.

Tying the results to assessment has also limited the role of the lecturer in coaching the groups on what they are doing. Where in the non-assessed past the lecturer would email students to inquire why they made decisions and gently pointing out alternatives, the lecturer now feels that any coaching would give the coached an unfair advantage. He has put down a series of questions on the website though to ry to get them to think about what they are doing, but I cannot see evidence that they have read any of it.

Excel Spreadsheets

2011-10-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Asked this morning to set up the decision screens in the factories to produce Excel spreadsheet versions of the historical data to help the students "reflect" on how the exercise has gone. (I think "reflect" might be a euphemism for identifying the guilty...). Compared to some of the weird requests I am asked to make, this was a piece of cake. Just used ExcelLibrary (http://code.google.com/p/excellibrary/) to dump database tables into Excel spreadsheet files on the server then put links into the ASP.NET website. The files are enormous, so that should keep the students occupied for an hour or two.

Prima Colazione del Cane

2011-10-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

Spotted today that one of the MBA students had cut a price yesterday for one item to one customer to £3000, when I presume they meant to cut it to £30000. As this is below the scrap value, result was massive surge in orders from this one customer for this one assembly. Pointed this out and was told this rapid descent into mayhem would be "educational" for the students. I then pointed out that having large numbers of orders placed on this item everyday feeding through to the requirement for forgings would generate inventory at a rate that would crash the simulation in eight hours, at which point the educational attractiveness of chaos went out of the window. The boss dived in and reset the value and I had to write a mod fast to wipe out the orders generated by the assumed mistake. I am not sure how pedagocically sound this action is.

The planning system has still thrown a surge of inventory on one family of parts into this factory, so maybe one of the students might spot this and realise increasing the capacity, if only short-term, might stop it all gumming up.

Second Life MBA Class

2011-10-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

I have been drafted in to sort out some odd little technical quirks with the simulation in Second Life. It is now being used by the current MBA class. Nice to see that the edicts that students should not appear as non-humans are being ignored. We seem to have a rich collection of furries... plus a robot, who I think is Japanese, so no cultural stereotypes here!

The simulation is set up with high inventory and low resource utilisations, just to make sure it does not spiral out of control while students are getting acquainted with it. But this means it takes time for sales managers to realise that cutting prices a bit will start to increase sales and thus get the factories running more efficiently.

Opensim

2011-08-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Following the price hike from Linden I have been asked to look at moving our virtual worlds presence from Second Life to OpenSim. It will be cheaper and demonstrate our touching faith in open software. On the suggestion that we close down the SL region immediately and shift everything across for the start of the coming semester our faith in open source in general and OpenSim in particular was found to be less rock-solid, so the plan is to run them in parallel in the coming year. Aim is to run OpenSim on a virtual server with 4GB RAM and Windows 2008 R2, but not sure exactly how much virtual real estate this will give us, and get it set up by the start of semester in mid-September. What could possibly go wrong?

Tweetject

2010-07-16T03:07:00.000-07:00

A colleague pointed me to an article by Julian Bleecker (http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf) discussing blogjects, inanimate devices that blog and I thought that this could be useful in virtual simulation exercises. The simulation is running 24/7, so it would be useful to have avatars in the simulation communicate to participants not currently inworld about what is happening. So as a trial I have set up the factory simulation to generate tweets on my ShaleBing account whenever the factory fails to meet customer orders. Getting the simulation to generate tweets is very easy, but getting it to generate messages with enough variety to make it almost seem a real person is sending them is a bit trickier. We will see whether this is useful when it is used in class next semester.

Shrinking World

2010-06-11T02:31:00.000-07:00

Heard on the Radio 4 PM programme yesterday afternoon that Linden Labs, the operators of Second Life, are laying off 30% of their staff. More details . The coverage was very negative, arguing the virtual world bubble had burst and it was all going to go a bit Friends Reunited. A lot of it does indeed look pretty pointless. However, the difference is that there are uses of Second Life that have some commercial logic and don't just depend on the buzz. In maintaining an island in Second Life for management simulations we are effectively doing two things: paying to have a server maintained and being able to make the simulations very accessible to casual visitors. If Linden Labs slipped over the side of their flat virtual World tomorrow the simulation could be shifted onto an Opensim server that we would have to maintain in the uni: but I just do not want the hassle. I suppose as a contingency it makes sense to create a shadow version on Opensim, but it is even more of a hassle to do this if we are not sure we will need to. I will add it to the to-do list...

Back to the Virtual Factory

2010-06-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

Have sorted out the Summer's shopping list of developments. The aim is to use the simulation for the autumn MBA Operations Management class. Before then I have to develop the links with Facebook. Have put a rudimentary Facebook app at http://apps.facebook.com/clemency/ Doesn't do a lot. Runs on an ASP.NET server using the SDK at http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/ Indisputably the worst documented piece of software I have ever used, and not a lot available on the web to help.

Sorting out a few problems.

2009-08-03T13:21:00.001-07:00

I have been asked to sort out a few problems with the Factory Simulation. We have been using it within courses but I have been asked to put the documentation on-line and tidy up the exercises so that we don't need a tutor standing over the students while they use it. The most significant technical problem we need to tackle is to make sure that if SL, the uni server or the networks go down it will be possible to bring the simulation back near the point it crashed. You would think we would have thought about this at the start!

Anyway, I have been given a six weeks to get it sorted so that a more robust and idiot-proofed version will be available for the new semester....

Another New Dawn

2008-01-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

When I said in my last post that I didnt think anyone in the Uni reads this blog, I was wrong. No comments on the blog, no emails to me, but I get dragged in to see the boss who says that someone has complained that I was being negative about Vue as a whole, which I dont think I was. So I have now promised to keep saying on this blog that everything is hunky-dory and we love all the other schools developing on Vue.

Anyway, to reiterate, everything is hunky-dory and we love all the other schools developing on Vue.

Back to Second Life

2008-01-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

I thought I had escaped the tedium of Second Life development, but now I have been thrown back in.

To state the glaringly obvious, the Management School lost interest in Second Life because we (they?) could not see how it would actually support our teaching. Also, apparently, we got into what in Scotland is termed a "rammy" with our neighbours in Second Life, ACE, the Uni's school of Arts, Culture and sonething beginning with "e", who would not remove their big pile of virtual crap next to the Second Life Mangement School. My boss threw all the toys out of the pram and said that if they thought it was a cute postmodernist point to make the uni's presence on second life look like a cyber-breakers-yard and the other depts, who did not have to exist next to this mess, thought it was cool, then why should we put effort in. I did point out that in all the issues raised with Education I had, in spite of his anger management issues, been able to negotiate acceptable compromises, but he just wanted to go over to their office and whack them. "They can stick that in their post-Barthist World-order", he said. . To be fair, the problem with ACE is that they actually want (love?) to stand up in front of audiences and say "We are are proud that ACE's bit of Second Life looks like a tip", as they did in a seminar before Chrstmas, but no-one in this uni has the gall to tell them that this is not supportive of the uni's involvement. I was told that if that was their attitude the whole lot of them could taking a running jump: why should we do anything to make Edinburgh's presence in SL look better and then have everyone clap along with the idea that it should look like a mess?

So I reasonably thought that Second Life was so much last year... we are now into 2008, with its blank calendar pages rolling before us like the Russian steppes, but these things come back to bite us. So now, I learn, the management school's strategy is that the building on the main island is on hold and we (I?) should now promote the activities in Vue NW, where I am now told we have developed a management simulation. Bloody marvellous... I cant bloody wait.

I suppose this will become another boondoggle to keep people from actually doing something so coarse as actually teaching students about management...

Sod the lot of them I say... fortunately, despite my colleagues always making a big thing about the sociological impacts of blogging, they dont read these things.

Graphics Cards

2007-07-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

For Second Life to be useful in education it needs students to be able to access it, both from open-access computers in the uni and from their own computers. Unfortunately, when the specification for the uni computers was set it was not expected that students would be doing anything so frivolous as MUVE, so the graphics capbilities are very poor, and most students will be using basic laptops as their own computers, so again will not be exactly cutting edge for graphics. It looks like a lot of these problems are hidden because the people developing SL in universities are the tech enthusiasts who have high spec computers. Up until this week I was using a Radeon X300 graphics card, but then my viewer started to crash randomly, and having updated drivers and ploughed through the SL wikis I found that this card has "known issues": known but not explained. I have now upgraded to a Radeon 1550 with 250 MB, and it is lovely: I can see for miles and the sea ripples most attractively. However the graphics requirements "REQUIRED to run Second Life successfully" listed on the SL website website are limted. In particular, there is no guarantee that SL will run with Intel graphics. When we roll-out Second Life for courses we will find out whether this is a problem or not. V exciting!

Sl in Education

2007-07-20T03:51:00.000-07:00

One of my colleagues pointed out to me a recently published report surveying the use of Second Life in UK education, written by John Kirriemuir. The report was commissioned by Eduserv, the UK not-for-profit organisation coordinating, publicising and funding work to develop IT in education. In compiling the report, John spoke to leading and knowledgeable figures in the use of SL in UK higher education, and also to me. His report gives a very good overview of what is going on. The main conclusions that I draw from his survey are that the level of activity is less than one might expect, considering how fashionable SL is and how widely it is being adopted in US universities, and also that most activities are being driven by enthusiasts rather than adopted strategically by the institutions. The former may be due to the residual focus on the RAE and the second impression may be false because universities approaching SL strategically are developing areas in private, ready to launch them fully-formed on an unsuspecting World. John found evidence for this covert development in finding many of the SL spaces being developed blocked to public access.

The list of web pages and slurls in the appendix is very useful when planning trips in SL: use it like you would those lists of archaeological sites in the Rough Guide to Italy. I recommend you read it now, because by next week it will be out of date.

Quintessence of Dust

2007-07-17T01:33:00.000-07:00

"the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."

Vue continues to grow: the Management School have taken on a whole region and my colleague Rad has been busy terraforming it and constructing a building for use in case study exercises. He says he will let me into the region to look around when he is happy with it. From a distance it looks like a big orange box.

Chasing Progress

2007-07-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass."

Shortly, this quiet life of Pimms, rain and watching the tennis from Wimbledon will be disrupted... I have been told that the Management School are moving into an entire island of our own, even though I pointed out that I was only joking when I said Second Life was the future of management education. I am still not clear what we are going to put on over 50k m2 of land.

The clever money is on "factory", though "bypass" or, even better, "open field" would suit me fine.

Buddies in Second Life

2007-06-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

To get some ideas about how we can develop the Edinburgh Uni presence on SL I thought I should get out and look at what other unis are doing. Paisley University have a presence called Second Scotland, subtitled a celebration of Scottish culture and innovation. Scottish culture seems to comprise Nessie, Scottish country dancing, sheep, shortbread and Irn Bru... so who drank all the buckie? I hope they are being ironic; it shows that post-modernism is alive and well and residing in Renfrew. Except, there is a really beautiful recreation of a traditional Scottish Italian chip shop, which some un-named person has put a lot of love into. Educationally, you have to ask "why?", but then "why not": it's a bit of Scottish culture worth celebrating.

New Links?

2007-06-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

The Vue island has now been extended into a new region east of the first region. At the moment this pristine area looks rather like it would make a nice links golf course: just a large gently undulating space. Making it a golf course would fit in with the vision that Vue is to communicate some idea of Scottishness to the World, but would be of limited educational benefit.

The University of Edinburgh now has two regions on SL of what is planned to be a block of nine or more, and I now wonder what on earth we are going to put in all these areas.

I was reminded of this question by two visitors to Vue. First, Joop blogged about his visit and noted "so far I did not see traces of dramatic activity" and second, I bumped into Skev Writer roaming the island who pointedly stated "there is bugger all here". I must admit that for uses that involve one person interacting with the system it is hard to see how, except for the joy of jumping on the fashion, what SL provides above a bog-standard website. However, for uses that force users to interact with each other, SL has clear advantages. But this raises two problems... First, how many communal activities can the uni dream up to fill this space, and second, to get them to work requires a critical mass of users. Tomorrow Channel Four tv in the UK is showing the 2002 film 28 Days Later, tagline "His fear began when he woke up alone. His terror began when he realised he wasn't.", which opens with great scenes of one person roaming a deserted London. For most visitors to Vue, this must be how it seems: a creepily deserted space. To get it to work needs something to draw in a crowd to make it seem real, but what? Welcome to the Second Life World of asocial networking.

"The £300k uni that gives tutorials on a virtual beach"

2007-06-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

According to the online Daily Mail: "Students from around the world are being offered the chance to study their degree in a virtual paradise." Where is this paradise? It is here.

Late last night I came in after an evening hitting the pinot grigio, much better than staying in to watch a depressing documentary on the growing incidence of liver disease, and went for a saunter round Vue. I bumped into a guy called Stormbringer Blackflag who said that Vue did not look like it cost £300,000 to build, an opinion with which I could only concur. He said he had been emailed an article from the Daily Mail saying that Ed Uni had spent £300k (like real pounds, not Linden pounds) in Vue. Something about his name made me think that Stormbringer was not in the core Daily Mail demographic; in fact he said he was from Nova Scotia, which I believe is a virtual representation of Scotland in SL, but had been forwarded the article from the online Daily Mail. So, we are not only rich, we are famous too! I always treat everything I read about Second Life in the Daily Mail as gospel, except of course the articles complaining that foreign avatars are coming over and stealing our jobs from virtually under our noses, but these are technically opinion pieces rather than news. Facts are sacred to the Daily Mail, everybody knows that. Anyway, I have not seen much of this £300,000.

Today I ran into Frank Lassard, one of the developers of the Education area in Vue, or rather he nearly ran into me in his new car. I mentioned the article and complained that I had seen little of this 300k, to which he said I was clearly not very observant and could I please take my dirty hands off his Bentley.

Branded Meeting Places

2007-06-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

The Branded Meeting Places project, a collaboration between Architecture, Culture & Environment and The Research Centre for Social Science at the University of Edinburgh, has been developing an area just to the west of the Management School. As this plot has filled up with what seem to be random objects and images I have occasionally wondered what the hell JK Jacobus, a cute little pussy, is up to, but then I realise that in his linking of mobile phone technologies with Second Life he has found the cutting edge of virtual reality and grasped it tightly with all four paws.

Tomorrow they are hosting a workshop on Brands & Meeting Places, the agenda for which sounds intriguing.

Displaying BBC Newsfeed

2007-06-16T05:31:00.000-07:00

Hi... I keep getting people wandering into the virtual Management School we are setting up in Second Life asking questions about what we are up to, which, to be fair to them, may not be obvious. Mainly we are hoping to set up a space for student interaction for both our undergraduate and postgraduate business students. To explain in more detail I thought it would be neat to write a blog answering frequent questions, or discussing what I do.

At the moment the building is a bit empty, but one feature we have put in that visitors ask about is the displaying of BBC news. This was set up as a prototype for an interactive screen to display information about courses. The interactivity is modelled on ceefax, famously according to Gary Lineker the best way to watch Wimbledon (the little-lamented football club, not the tennis... although....), with eight coloured buttons below the screen which can be touched to follow coloured links embedded in the pages. The time lags for the updates are annoying, but I think it is quite sweet. The information about the feeds, which are wml feeds produced for use by mobile phones, was found on the v v helpful http://www.backstage.bbc.co.uk/ website... very much an under-recognised resource.