Ken Panko, Manager of the Instructional Technology Group, (ITG) introduced Reid Lifset, Associate Director of the Industrial Environmental Management Program and graduate student Matt Eckelman from Forestry and Environmental Studies (FES). Lifset, an associate research scholar and Matt Eckelman, a doctoral student, initiated the Elihu Paper Co. project in Second Life with the help of the Instructional Technology Group based on their desire to take their students on a virtual field trip of a pulp and paper mill in their course “Greening Business Operations.” The course has a goal of explaining the biophysical basis for industry pollution, introducing techniques for environmental assessment and increasing the familiarity of students with industrial settings. It incorporates 3-5 field trips per year to such businesses as Cytec and Sikorsky, among others. Last year Lifset stumbled across the Instructional Technology Group website and contacted Ken Panko. ITG had already purchased an island in Second Life so the group was excited when Lifset approached them last year about using Second Life for a virtual field trip. ITG’s Yianni Yessios, Manager of Web Technologies, spearheaded the actual construction of the Second Life site.
Matt Eckelman said that the course’s field trips are always the students’ favorite part of the course. The scope and challenges of industrial environmental management are more apparent when visiting industrial sites. Both Lifset and Eckleman stated that they had wanted to take the students on an actual tour of a pulp and paper mill, but they were limited both by geography and the types of industry present in contemporary New England. The pulp and paper industry had been historically important to the New England economy but there are currently no integrated pulp and paper mills in Connecticut. Given that paper production is a potentially highly-polluting industry that also relies on forest resources, a tour of a pulp and paper mill was of particular interest to FES.
Lifset and Eckelman then took us on a tour of the Elihu Pulp and Paper mill in Second Life. We walked through the recycled paper and virgin paper (from wood) processes with the avatar Yianni Baar. Information about the structure of the mill and process of producing paper has been embedded into the Second Life scale model. The floating question marks in Second Life serve as portals to a blog containing various webpages, PDFs, spreadsheets, and videos about structures and processes in real pulp and paper mills. The sound in Second Life is realistic because it was recorded in a pulp and paper mill in upstate New York. The focus of facility visits-including virtual tours- ranges from regulation and compliance to pollution prevention to broad issues of sustainability. Site visits require students to write a report and follow the main goals and arch of the class.
At this point, only students in the class have access to the mill in Second Life. Next time, the manager from a paper mill will hopefully participate as an avatar and give the tour. This is not a self-guided tour, but a guided tour led by Reid and Matt using Skype for voice. The tour was 3 hours long in Second Life, whereas a real tour would have been limited to between 40 – 60 minutes.
Yianni Yessios talked about the process of putting this virtual field trip together. The virtual environment has to be built and that takes time. Once built, it becomes an infinitely expandable instructional tool. It is a great pedagogical model, but there is overhead at the start of this type of project. Questions to ask when justifying the upfront costs: What is the lifespan? What is the population for this instructional tool? Two struggles were identified during this project. First, was defining the primary purpose of the tool; the tour was not to be self-guided but more like an actual tour. They wanted the students to get a feel for what it is like to be in a paper mill. The second struggle was the cost. When totaling the cost in money and resource, it became apparent that industry can better afford to build visualizations like this rather than higher education.
Other faculty at Yale are now interested in using Second Life. Future goals are to polish the current tour; build engineering analytics to allow users to do simulations within the mill; and build a metal smelter with funding from grant proposals.
If you’d like to see for yourself what the Pulp and Paper Mill tour was like in Second Life, please click the link below: