Document Based and Island Based User Support

User manuals and other guide documents are popular instruments for training new users of a software system. Quite often these documents have many screenshots of the application user interface which are used to steer a new user through sequential orders of actions. However, for complex scenarios of user interactions, these types of document can become unhelpfully lengthy and less intuitive. One of the possible approaches to this challenge is to use a video tutorial that captures a demonstration of the software interface.2 _{Nevertheless, if the system is large and complex, addressing the training needs of} the entire system using video material can take a relatively larger user training time compared to documents with captured screen images of the key stages.

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For OpenSim basic user training needs we refer to the two approaches used by Second Life. Second Life has a user guide document [227] which covers basic avatar actions with the point-and-click UI and special key combinations which perform the same actions. The other method SL uses is to direct new avatars into a uniquely designed region known as Help Island. Help Island in SL is intended to be the first place an avatar interacts with the SL environment if they register through the standard process; an exception is, an institute can have its own SL registration interface through RegAPI in which new users can be directly located in desired SL regions thereby bypassing Help Island. Help Island provides training for basic functions and free content such as inventory items, body shapes and clothes for avatar customisation and opportunities to receive rewards in Linden$; these are used to motivate new users to actively engage in the Linden Labs economic model through the SL Marketplace.

There are no specific research data on evaluating Help Island compared with the user guide document for training new users. One of the major drawbacks when using Help Island for education is that its design explicitly prioritises commercial activity and entertainment use cases in SL. This can tempt some students to engage in game-like behaviour, which they may not have even imagined to be possible had they not been exposed to Help Island. Furthermore, there is no guarantee of a suitable and academically motivated group of users with High-SR behaviour to be met in Help Island when a new student enters SL; it can negatively affect the student shaping their behaviour towards Low-SR practices in learning activities. Because of these reasons, universities often bypass Help Island and locate students directly on their educational islands and provide them with the user guide document for basic tasks. For locally managed OpenSim based MULEs there is no Help Island for new users. Because of the similar functionality between SL and OpenSim and their shared client applications, OpenSim users can use the SL user guide document. However, further information such as OpenSim grid location URL and avatar user credentials have to be added to the document. The Open Virtual Worlds group at the University of St Andrews have been using a modified user guide, derived from the SL user guide for learning support activities across a range of OpenSim-based projects. Although that approach helped for login and access problems, students still showed an initial difficulty when interacting with the environment. It was evident that the document, although it includes the necessary information for completely new users in a detailed manner, is not effective for learning essential OpenSim interactions. Often, the first half of a laboratory session is used by students getting familiar with these OpenSim functions; this can take up the entire session for some students who may find it more challenging to map the training information from the guide onto the skills they practice in-world. Moreover, a greater number of support academics (lecturers, tutors, demonstrators) are usually required to help the students in building their confidence in using the learning environment during the lab session.

In SL with Help Island content, individual users train themselves without additional support mastering the various basic functions available at the client side. Also, the SL user guide and wiki have been popular places that SL users look at to clarify their doubts about the environment and how to achieve their preferred behaviours. Moreover, Second Life discontinued its in-world mentor program claiming that the Help Island is sufficient for the training needs of new users. Due to these observations and challenges in training students and academics in OpenSim, it was decided to develop in-world user support for OpenSim environments (compatible with SL). In order to set a baseline for evaluating the usefulness of the development it was decided to conduct a pre-test to compare these two approaches: a region similar to Help Island and user guide documents.

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