Task 6 - Implementing Second Life into Carroll College

Plan – there are several important questions that need to be answered before Second Life can be implemented as part of the Carroll College benefit.
What is the goal of implementing Second Life into Carroll College? Before we can move forward with such program we will need to decide why is that Second Life is needed here? Who will be using the application and how?

a. Goal - Our goal is to allow faculty and students to have classes online in a new format, in virtual reality. This format is richer than traditional online courses where the student never meets the instructor and classes take places mainly through email and Blackboard. We also want to make new students more familiar with the campus and have staff available to answer their questions at the beginning of their life on campus.
Carroll College also wants to make sure that it’s SL campus portrays the atmosphere and culture of the real life one.
According to Miller (2006) and the theory of Dual Capacity Model:
“Sitkin and associates (1992) propose that organizational communication media also have symbol carrying capacity. The symbol carrying capacity of a medium can be manifest in several ways (Fisenberg & Riley, 1988). First, media can be more or less to convey the core values and assumptions that constitute the organization’s culture.”
Second Life is high in symbol carrying capacity because values of Carroll College that are currently represented by black and white book catalog and on-campus banner will now be visible to anyone who enters SL campus. Also, is a new student trying to apply to Carroll College can’t take time or afford to come to tour the campus and talk to someone in real life, they could easily log in to SL campus and do that exactly same thing from their own home. Carroll College would also have a greeting person and help desk to answer any questions regarding admissions, or financial aid for example.

b. Target Market – people who will visit our virtual campus will mainly be faculty and students. Also new applicants and parents will be as a secondary target market. They will need to feel invited and parents will need to have confidence that Carroll College is the right choice for them.
According to Miller (2006) and the theory of Dual Capacity Model:
“An organization that values a “personal touch”, a formal letter will not provide a communication with the option to personalize a message in line with the company’s culture”.
Carroll College does value a personal touch and is also a Christian college that put an importance of family and good practice and culture on campus.
Cost comparison – there are several virtual realities available for implementation. All pros and cons will need to be considered before an application or hardware is purchased. Decision that will be made will be based on whether benefits of virtual reality outweigh the cost consequences and whether the application is a step towards the future and for the good of students and community.
Current costs of printing catalogs and sending them to newly registered students to make them familiar with CC practices could now be substituted with them going to Second Life campus and getting their questions answered there.
A price of hardware updates will be now considered to the cost of printing and sending materials to students’ homes.

Implementing Second Life. Implementation of second life will be done in few phases to make the whole project as smooth and easy as possible.

a. Communication to all departments – a college wide meeting will be held to inform everyone of this exciting new project and steps that will be taken to implement it. All parents will receive a letter notifying them of this new undertaking. During the communication process all benefits will be presented to faculty and student body.

b. Organizing a team of people will be the first step in implementation. A group of five will be empowered to make decisions on cost, hardware, and roll-out, and follow-up technical support after Second Life has been installed and running.

c. Installations will take place over the weekend when daily work is not affected. SL team will also be responsible for making sure that all stakeholders at Carroll College are properly trained on how to use Second Life and make the most of it.

d. Last stage of implementation process will be testing of Second Life. All functions will be tested to make sure that the application is working properly and that it meets our initial expectations.

Training session for all stakeholders at Carroll College. All people that will benefit from Second Life application will be divided into groups and will be invited to participate in a training session. The session will have a simple manual of all functions and options available.
User feedback and user testing will be our last stage of implementation of Second Life.
Updated and added features – as time goes on, new more useful features will be added to Second Life Carroll College campus to enhance different functions and it’s usability and versatility.
Why would an organization and its members select virtual worlds based on social
information and objective media characteristics to meet its communication needs?

Organizations would choose virtual realities based on their culture, pressure of new emerging technology and also based on what kind of benefits certain media offers. The reason why they would need consider social information model is because a new technology can fail if people in a given environment do not assimilate to new things easily. Depending on the organization’s atmosphere and their outlook on technology, an organization has to make sure that people are prepared for a big change like implementing virtual world to replace something that all employees are used to. People generally are afraid of change and they want to do things their old ways which sometimes mean a fear of anything new. According to Miller (2006):
“Once a new organizational communication technology hits the scene, it is not quickly and automatically embraced by all users. Although their ranks are becoming increasingly thin, there are still people who are reticent to a computer and many more who cringe at the thought of creating a personal Web page. What factors predict the extent to which various communication media will be used in accomplishing organizational tasks? Several theoretical positions have been offered on this question. For example, Markus (1990) suggests that new communication technologies will not be widely embraced until there is a “critical mass” of individuals who use the technology. The idea of critical mass is particularly important for communication technologies that require connectivity.”
“However, a social information processing approach suggests that an individual’s use of Web-enhanced instruction will also be influenced by interaction with others in the department.”
If a company decides to invest a substantial amount of money into a new technology, a certain culture should be created around this tool to ensure successful implementation and assimilation.
On the other hand it has been shown through research that often people who use proper media technology for specific tasks are considered more effective. An organization will need to analyze styles and frequency of communication that occurs between departments to realize certain trends and implement technology that best suites those trends or that makes them more productive and efficient. Not all tasks need face-to-face meeting:
“In general, there has been support for the basic tenets of the media richness model. Research has found that managers tend to choose rich media to deal with ambiguous tasks and lean media to deal with unambiguous tasks (Miller, 2006).”
“Recent research has also supported the basic ideas of media richness theory in the operation of organizational teams that relied heavily on communication technology. Maznevski and Chudoba (2000) found that the effectiveness of the team depended on fitting complex tasks to face-to-face meetings or conference calls and relying on e-mail for simpler messages (Miller, 2006).”

When implementing virtual technology into an organization it is important to consider all the pros and cons of the decision and how this will affect the structure of the organization. Purchasing a virtual "Carroll College " space on Second Life using Linden dollars, once translated would be significantly less expensive than using real currency and purchasing real estate. A virtual Carroll College would greatly improve access to global markets, and the entire foreign exchange program could be vastly enhanced. NCEP trips could create sites on Second Life, to give a 'virtual tour' of the trip's Carroll's New Cultural Experiences Programs works tirelessly to promote. Communication between students and faculty could potentially be increased also. If there were in person and virtual "office hours" the need for email would seem obsolete.
As with any organization implementing a new communication technology, sometimes organizations can drown in the sudden influx of data. Students, faculty and staff could suddenly be completely over saturated with campus events, ITS updates and faculty meetings. Finding a balance of accessibility and saturation is key.

Similar to any virtual organization, management is a challenge. Carroll College Student Life in Second Life would be a particularly unique issue. How do you enforce the Carroll College code of conduct with Avatars, free to explore and post anything in any way?
As far is implementing Second Life from an Individual perspective it is important to keep in mind, that the Carroll College organization is comprised of staff, faculty and students- all of which have different technology capabilities. More computer labs would have to be created on campus, and existing labs would have to be updated. This would be very costly.
Workshops would also have to be created, similar to Orientation Island. A required course freshman year, in addition to FYS could be, 'Second Life 101'. In order for an organization as large as Carroll College to implement Second Life into the organization, individual computer skills, facilities and knowledge would have to be considered.

References
Miller, K. (2006). Organizational communication: Approached and process. Organizational communication , 285-304.