New Player Education:who's Role Is It?

That's great, but just "getting something out of the lesson" may not be enough. You can show someone how to use Search well but that does not mean that they'll find what they want. That's what I meant in the cases above - you talked to those people and you didn't just see that they had learned how to Search better, you saw that they had actually found what they wanted (for example, you knew that the person had managed to get a DJ job, not just that he had looked for one in a more skilful fashion).

The question is, would they have still been retained if they hadn't found what they wanted, even given Search skill. Certainly they would not have become integrated. So the issue may not just be one of education, or may be one of other forms of integration other than education.



Um, they used to offer the OI HUD... or how is your "education HUD" different from that?

Well, I do not function on the same low level of LL Customer Service. If he did not find a Country Club using search I would have found one for him, teleported there and had him join me. I have worked with folks for days before they finally 'caught on'.

If they could not find what they wanted I would have taught them how to start their own group, blog and/or gathering place, advertise for members in classifieds and the SL forums. Several of the noobs I greeted and helped in 2005 are some of our more innovated and successful innovators today.

The issue is still how LL will increase retention by getting the new players in touch with educators as soon as they enter the world. Loitering Mentors and resident-run schools have not successfuly addressed this need. So what will LL do to increase retention?

Same concept but just more of a 'personal teleporter' for new players to find education events.

.

That's great, but you can't guarantee that there is one out there to find - or if they start their own you can't guarantee that it'll succeed. I'm not trying to attack what you're doing at all, I'm just saying that you have to be very careful when assessing the benefits of education, not to include things which are actually not directly linked to education at all. Making that mistake - the "go to a good school so you get a high-paid job" mistake (education can't affect the employment market) - has damaged education a great deal in the real world and risks damaging it more in SL.



A sort of customised, or more user friendly, version of the Events Search?

Having realistic goals and having the tools taught to you so you can pursue those goals is the best that any platform can offer.

Of course education effects the employment market. I have been running my virtual vocational school since 2005. I offer immediate job placement upon completion of classes - and all are working. Many have moved up to management positions and now sim owners. Without finding this school that teaches them how to DJ in SL or Host Virtual events many of them would be camping and frustrated today.

Yes but USER-FRIENDLY, International and with human support.

.

Sure, but the platform determines what is "realistic". The main point is that there's a huge assumption, that lack of education is the major reason people don't stay around in SL, and I think that has yet to be actually proven.



My example referred to schools in the real world, not SL. Even in SL, there is a limit to the number of places that will have vacancies for event hosts, although because the pay is so low it's not really comparable to the RL market.



Ok, great. User-Friendly - well, Search Events could surely be improved. International could be difficult, as that would mean using automated translation (which isn't very reliable) or asking event hosts to write the description of their events in multiple languages, which they might not be able to do. How would the human support work?

It has been proven. When people uninstall Second Life they are asked why. Linden Lab has the data that proves that many if not most of the drop-outs complain of being confused and unable to figure things out. Retention would be increased if many of these folks got the help they so desperately needed.

I have people trying to DJ in SL who do not even know where a file goes on their computer when they download it - or have the ability to figure out how to find it. I have to go way back to 'Basic Computing 101' before I can even start teaching them the DJ Software. There may be assumptions that more technology-savvy people are joining SL. Most I encounter do not fall into that category. Assuming that the SL platform is more 'intuitive' than it actual is is one of the key reasons that the retention rate is so low.
The U.S. Census Bureau has published reports showing education has a direct impact on people http://www.ask.com/bar?q=United+States+Statistics&page=1&qsrc=6&ab=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.census.gov%2Fcompendia%2Fstatab%2FThe more educated people are the more they excel. I d not know why you would even say that education has no major impact on retention.

The income is enough to keep a avatar in snazzy clothes and gadgets. Being able to rent a small parcel and buy a few items is enough to keep people in SL. That ability comes with knowledge on how to navigate the search so they can locate what they need to get started. Also take a look at the SL Forums employment thread. You will see pages and pages of ads looking for hosts.Over 3,000 venues and counting. Plenty of SL sustainable jobs for the masses.

I see event posts in French, German and Dutch - I am assuming they are for non-english speaking guests. The events can stay in the languages that they are posted in. The HUD DIRECTIONS can be multi-lingual (something for that legion of SL5B linguists to do in the off-season).

I'm aware of this. But I'm also relating it to my own personal experiences. When I was starting, there were several things I wanted to do that I thought I just couldn't figure out how to make work. It was only when I became a lot more experienced that I realised that they were actually things that simply couldn't be done. I wonder if the Lindens had any information on what the particular things, that these people wanted to do but couldn't figure out, were? I think that'd be really interesting.



Can you tell me which of those surveys you're referring to?



And this is exactly the danger I'm talking about. Being educated as a DJ does _not_ automatically mean you can make L$ as a DJ. The market may be strong at the moment but common sense says that it is of a limited size (there is only so much money coming in), and so the level of retention available in these terms will be strictly limited.

Worse yet, if you base retention on ability to make L$ in-world, then you will be retaining the users who do not contribute real money to SL, and failing to retain those who do contribute it. And I'm sure you can see why that's a disasterous situation.



Are you sure? On average, according to Tateru's stats, Second Life has 12,000 new signups a day. So each of those 3000 venues will hire 4 people? Every day?



That's a good idea - although I'm really surprised at the lack of support for Spanish, but there we go. So would anyone be able to post events onto this HUD or would they be checked somehow?

When I uninstalled SL from a computer I recieved an e-mail survey. I believe that was one of the questions ('what were you trying to do that you could not do". Unfortunately this is all internal LL data that they will probably never share with the users. But it is data they should pay attention to when putting together retention plans. Dismantling their educationprogram negatively impacted their retention rates. How they will fix this I am not really sure.

I was pointing you to the 'Average earnings of full-time workers by education attainment.' I feel these statistics support my claim that education has a direct impact on employment and quality of experience.

I started my school because the supply of trained SL DJs did not meet the demand in 2005. Today with 3,000 more clubs on the grid than in 2005 - that is doubly true. I have trained over 300 people to be SL DJs -and I have a 100% employment rate from those graduates. There is unlimited money coming into SL because people buy lindens and earn lindens.

Worse yet, if you base retention on ability to make L$ in-world, then you will be retaining the users who do not contribute real money to SL, and failing to retain those who do contribute it. And I'm sure you can see why that's a disasterous situation.[/QUOTE]If that were true LL would have never created FREE ACCOUNTS. SL is about content creators. These people need to be able to stay in SL long enough to learn what they need to know so they become assets.

Look at the job openings - DAILY requests for venue staff.

Just let it scrap the exiting event listings (Like Google Calendar does)

.

The problem is that it only counts "full-time workers" - in other words, people who didn't manage to get a job at all don't show up, no matter how educated they were. And yes, it's true that the unemployment rate goes down as education improves, but not to zero. Plus, in the real world, there are a much wider variety of jobs available than there are in SL.



So, out of the (by the average above) 12,960,000 people who joined SL during that time, you trained 300 (0.002%) and achieved full employment. Therefore you assume that if we trained all 12,960,000 there would be full employment for them too? I kind of doubt it.

There is not "unlimited money coming into SL". Unless you know someone who has an unlimited amount in their bank account!



Free Accounts were created to add value for corporate users and to enable users to look around the world before buying L$. The focus of SL is on content creators, but they don't pay the bills.



Sure. But not 12,000 of them.



Are you sure? Anyone can put up an "education" events, so griefers could easily exploit it. (By the way, I am listening here - I might be able to make a HUD of this type as a scripted object.)

No, it shows that there is an IMPACT of education on quality of experience. As I have been saying.

Again, proving that virtual employment ALSO improves retention. Not saying we have employed the world. And yes the money coming in is unlimited. Unless LL announces once they reach one billion Linden bought no more money will be printed.
Free Accounts were created to add value for corporate users and to enable users to look around the world before buying L$. The focus of SL is on content creators, but they don't pay the bills.

I have yet to witness a rash of 'education event greifers', lol.

.

Sure, but the question is, can virtual employment improve retention enough to be worth the Linden organising? 300 people isn't very many. Neither is 1200.



The size of the L$ supply isn't a good guide to the amount of US$ coming in - it allows for (for example) the "dead" lifetime accounts that are still accumulating L$ stipends.



Really? Weren't you around when LL paid instructors, and so a regular party for friends could be an "education event" nudge nudge?

This is a sample showing that education (Vocational education in SL) led to retention. So,yes, LL should organize a real effort to educate new players to increase retention.

Ah I only attended actual education events. But I guess gaming happens everywhere. BUT Lindern Lab never claimed gaming was the reason that they stoppped supporting education in SL.

Again - was it the _education_ that increased the retention, or the _employment_? We can't employ 12,000,000 people, but we possibly could educate them all - the distinction is very important.

The sample showed that EDUCATION played a key role in creating a positive, long lasting experience for those that engaged in it. The education could be for employment, building, scripting or just shopping. Whatever education a new player can get within the first few days of rezzing will increase their retention rate. Proven fact. And the question remains:

NEW PLAYER EDUCATION: WHO'S ROLE IS IT?

Linden Lab stopped supporting new player education in 2006. So what are they going to do now to increase their retention rate? Are they going to actually pay real money to a resident-run education group to educate the new players or hire a real professional volunteer coordinator to utilize the 3,600 volunteer force they already have?

.

Right, but what I suppose I've been trying to say is that we need to define what the goal of "new player education" actually should be. You can't increase the retention rate of just one new player, you have to think about it across the set of everyone. Learning to build or script are certainly good for many people, but classically only about 25% of the SL population have ever built or scripted. Now, granted, there might be some percentage of people who want to do so but for whatever reason don't get to, but that's unlikely to be large. Learning skills for employment again will be good for some people, but the number of jobs available is so dwarfed by the number of people coming into SL that it won't be scalable.

That's why the Lindens haven't abandoned "new player education" - it's just that they, as far as I can tell, consider new player education to just be the very basics: how to move around, fly around, find things, buy things, etc. Most newbie help places now offer refinements on these things for those who are interested in these things, which greatly helps retain the interested people, but to increase retention the problem is more likely to be how to "grab" the people who _aren't_ interested (but who could be if grabbed). And I'm not sure that plain education is the way to do that..

New player education is whatever they want to learn. Its not 'what should we teach them to increase retention' It's 'how do we get them to know immediately how to get to education events before they become frustrated and uninstall the program' AND 'who's role is it to see that the new players interface with educators as soon as possible'.

Linden Lab dropped out of supporting education in 2006

So new players are left floundering, frustrated and quitting as the retention rate stays at an dismal 10%. Maybe one day LL will put two and two together and devise a way for their new customers to interface with educators immediately. Hopefully this will not mean that LL endorses one resident-run learning group over another.

.
[/i]

But this is the thing - if the problem really is that people who are interested and want to take classes are not able to find them, then that's something that could be dealt with much better. But I'm not sure that's the problem, and I'm not sure that the number of people in that group are high enough to make a significant change to retention anyway. We really need to know from the Lindens exactly WHAT the things that people could not work out how to do, are. It may well be more of a persuasion and upselling issue than an education one.

Of course that is the problem. This post is not asking what the problem is. It is defining the problem as 'Lack of new player education has negatively impacted retention rates'. And then asking who should be responsible to address and fix this problem: Linden Lab or the Community or a coalition of resident volunteers lead by LL.

But in that case, the definition of the problem may not be correct. And since the Lindens have more information than we have, it could be that the change in their support for education is because they know that _isn't_ actually the problem.