Jennifer M. Young is a
Lecturer in Creative
Writing at the University
of Hertfordshire,
where her main
teaching areas are
poetry and short fiction.
Her most recent
publication is Dig! Places
: Blending Creative Writing
and Archaeology,
co-authored with J. Flatman,
in A. Pydyn and J. Flatman
(eds.) Current Research
and Education in
Underwater and Maritime
Archaeology Torun:
Nicolaus Copernicus
University Press, 2008.
began as a collaboration between Creative Writing and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. In 2005, I had plans to create a literary magazine with undergraduate students when I received an e-mail from a colleague in Computer Science, Steve Bennett, asking if I might consider creating a publication using digital technologies, and I agreed. After winning funding from our university’s Blended Learning Unit as well as from the English Subject Centre, we trialled a few ideas with the second-year poetry module before deciding to create the magazine in the virtual world of Second Life. Inside Second Life readers, in the form of avatars, can literally walk around and interact with our words, hear our voices and see us reading our work.
The island space in Second Life was purchased and managed by Steve Bennett, David Kraithman and their team, and Kieren Stokes, a recent University of Hertfordshire Computer Science graduate, designed the Orb site. The decision was that the main stage would face the end of the island, so the ocean backed the main stage. Viewing platforms were created around the main stage, which display the published pieces. Extra features were created, such as feedback spaces beneath the published pieces, writeable walls where visitors can add their own poetry, a literature quiz and free shirts. The writeable poetry walls have proved to be very popular with visitors to the site, with most contributing a new piece of poetry. Much of the feedback received relates to the poetry walls and free shirts. Stokes created the code to enable these features, as the ‘writeable’ features are not a normal part of Second Life programming. The writeable wall is limited to poetry at the moment, and work is being undertaken to allow the site to preserve the contributions.
Issue one
A call for editorial staff was distributed during the induction week of 2006-2007. Over 50 students wanted to join, which was far too many to be feasible. We asked all of the students to write a page of A4 explaining why they wanted to be on the staff. 18 people formed the final group, with people from all three years of undergraduate study.
Students from both the School of Humanities and the School of Business joined the staff. Two marketing students from Business were invaluable with early ideas for promoting the magazine. A first-year Humanities student, Jules Foreman, named the magazine Orb, which matched the ‘space’ theme of the other university publications – Satellite and Universe. Laura Stewart, a second-year student, created the Orb logo, which Ray Burnside, of ElstreeDV, designed from Stewart’s sketches.
Despite the delayed launch of the magazine’s first issue, from May to October 2007, seven stalwart students worked over the summer. They came to meetings on campus and in London, communicated by e-mail and the university’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), StudyNet and helped to get the magazine launched on 23 October.
Contributors' pieces are displayed on the viewing screens.
Helen Burke, from York St John University, chose to be
filmed reading her piece, 'The Quality Street Year' for the
first issue. Visitors can leave comments below the
viewing screen.
The first issue published works by 11 UK university students and received 125 submissions. The launch event was held at the Weston Auditorium at the University of Hertfordshire. Four student contributors read their work, and Patience Agbabi performed as a guest poet. The launch was simultaneously streamed into the Second Life site and, although ‘live stream’ is a familiar phenomenon these days, it required an immense amount of effort from many people. We had some technical glitches – all of our tests failed to work on the day of the launch, but during the actual event streaming worked perfectly. The launch was filmed live in the auditorium by technicians Lucy Bolton and James Scutt. The video was fed to an Apple computer running Quicktime Broadcaster and subsequently to a Darwin media server, (this was done with the assistance of Johann Siau, Senior Lecturer in the School of Electronic, Communication and Electrical Engineering, and Steve Bennett.) The live feed was then played inside Second Life on a video screen ‘in world.’ Brett Lucas, of the English Subject Centre, stepped in at the last minute to virtually ‘build’ the video screen for the display, as our designer had left for a teaching post in Japan by the end of the project. Our audience was small but appreciative and they responded well to both the magazine and Agbabi’s reading.
Issue two
Again, Orb had large numbers of interested students to form the staff, although the majority of them wanted to serve as the co-editors. The members of staff for the second issue were younger than for the first issue, with no third year student involvement at all. It is believed this relates to a change in curriculum.
Without the grant funding to pay for an external website builder for the second issue, the University of Hertfordshire Second Life campus team, led by campus manager Dave Lee, graciously took on the technical aspects of Orb. There are plans to move the Orb island geographically closer to the university’s main island within Second Life. With this transition, the university would like the Orb site to reflect similar construction styles, textures and overall appearances to the university site, which replicates much of the real-life University campus. If implemented in subsequent issues, this will contrast with the playful imaginary garden feel the Orb site currently has.
Visitors arrive here when they visit the island. The open-air
garden feel was designed by the first editorial staff.
For the second issue, Orb received 130 submissions, which came from a wider array of UK universities than the first issue. The second issue published works by 10 UK university students, which included the first piece of drama and the first repeat author, Rob Pringle, who had poetry published in both issues. The second issue was launched on 29 April 2008, in the Weston Auditorium, with student readings.
Student involvement
The nature of the student body of the university has made an impact on the progress of both issues. Many of the student staff for both issues have lived off campus and commuted in for classes. Most students have worked multiple days a week, which made the traditional extra-curricular time slot of Wednesday afternoon difficult for meetings. With low student numbers at most meetings, decisions were not being made. As a solution, the students began to use MSN Messenger for real-time discussions, as they were all already familiar with it. In addition, an Orb group was created on StudyNet (the university’s in-house VLE), where submission files were posted for staff to review. These solutions provided immediate fixes for the face-to-face meeting problems.
The high number of students who work while doing their courses has definitely impacted on the participation in Orb. Enthusiasm has been high at the start of both issues, but the reality of finishing coursework, keeping up with reading and working has forced many excellent students to drop out of the project. For both issues, core groups of active students emerged out of the original large staff.
The second issue had a much shorter production time, as launch for the first issue in October necessitated a later starting date for staff recruitment. The staff for the second issue seemed to maintain less enthusiasm for the project, perhaps lacking the thrill of the ‘new’ that had driven the first staff. The smaller number of active students became an issue, as some staff members wanted to wait until everyone had voted on final submissions. Eventually, decisions were reached within the smaller group of students.
No one in the staff of the second issue had Second Life technical expertise. Recruiting Computer Science students to participate has been a problem for both issues, probably because they are based on another campus. Until student expertise is available, the project will continue to use the assistance of the university’s Second Life campus team.
The Second Life campus team have offered to create a newly designed Orb site for each issue, with screen shots archived of all the old issues. My concern with this idea is the length of time it takes for students to agree on the choice of submissions for the magazine, much less a complete new visual style each year. The choice for a visual style would have to begin before the pieces of Creative Writing were selected, so the site would inevitably reflect the personal preferences of the editorial staff, rather than the content of the published Creative Writing.
The future of Orb
From left to right: Contributors to the first issue
Ella Reeves, Martin Jeyes, Polly Orchard and
Rosey Collins. Jeyes and Collins both worked as
editors for the magazine. Polly Orchard, from the
University of Southampton, read her piece
'Little Match Stick Girl' at the launch.
After two years with the majority of the work being completed by a small number of student staff members, for the 2008/2009 issue, Orb will start with a smaller staff. I consulted with Mimi Tessier, lecturer in Mass Communications at the University of Hertfordshire, and the audience at the English Subject Centre’s Creative Writing: Teaching and Technology conference in Manchester, in April 2008. Everyone recommended a smaller staff of three students. It is hoped that a smaller staff will result in a higher level of responsibility from the students. The School of Humanities has also implemented a zero-credit work module, which allows students to receive a non-weighted module listed on their official transcripts to show their participation with extra-curricular projects.
What does an interactive, virtual-world-based magazine provide that other web-based magazines do not? The creation of the magazine in the virtual world provides an alternate way to publish work, and it allows students to enhance the presentation of their writing through audio and images. Orb has a large international audience through the use of the Second Life platform.
The project has resulted in a higher profile for Creative Writing at the University of Hertfordshire, as well as strong interest in the use of the virtual world of Second Life for publishing a magazine.Student editors have gained valuable experience and increased their employability skills. Two of the four editors for the first issue, Rosey Collins and Emma Filtness, have gone on to MA-level study in Creative Writing. With strong support from the School of Humanities and the University of Hertfordshire, Orb has a successful future ahead. We look forward to the ideas of the 2008/2009 student editorial staff.
To access 'Orb' you will need to download the free 'Second Life' Client to your machine and sign up to become a member of the Second Life community. This process will also involve creating your Second Life avatar. Once in second life navigate directly to ORB by clicking on the SLURL (Second life URL) below:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/SMIRKworld/163/76/25
A Student’s View of Orb
Editing Orb could be hard work, but it was always enjoyable, and it was great to learn a bit about how a magazine is run. As a writer, before working on Orb I had never even tried to imagine what became of a piece of writing once it was submitted to a publication. To be on the other end of that process was fascinating; submissions can be debated over for weeks, and accepted and rejected several times before a final decision is made. Wading through the process with other members of the editorial team has given me at least some idea of what editors might snap up immediately, what they might um and ah over and what they are likely to reject out of hand.
Practical benefits aside, it is always satisfying to work with a group of people to create something unique and spectacular. Our hard work paid off, and I still have fond memories of the launch of the first issue, which really enhanced those feelings of shared smugness and pride.
It was a great night, and a fitting climax to all of our efforts.
Rosey Collins
Managing Editor, Orb Issue 1
You may also be interested in
other English Subject Centre work in Virtual Worlds.
