Is it a bird, is it a game? No, its Glamstart !

I had the privilege this week of popping over to Glamorgan Uni in order to attend one of their CELT talks.  This one was about GlamStart, a fresher game coded by Martin Lynch.  Martin is one of that rare breed of highly competent technologists who can also communicate very effectively in a public forum.  I enjoyed my play with the software and took the liberty of grabbing a few piccies for you in order to explain it further.

You can read more about Glamstart at http://glamlife.glam.ac.uk/gettingstarted/1367/glamstart 

After logging in, you are greeted by your Dean (or in my case a random Dean speaking to you via a video:

 

 You then get to create your online persona including character, job and accommodation:

 

 

This then puts you into your room – where you can interact with all of your facilities including tv, computer, pda (for lecture times etc) and of course, bed!  The video links on the side are unlocked as you progress and find things in the game:

 

You can move your mouse around whichever room you are in and click – at which the character will walk over to that position / item. The “map” button takes you to the map of the campus that you can use to enter different areas:

Of course, I went straight to the LRC or Learning Resource Centre for a nose around …

Once inside, you can go venture into different rooms and interact with different characters via embedded videos and faq’s:

But don’t forget to keep an eye on the time and check out your PDA for the next lecture that you may need to rush off to !

At the end of each hard day, you may choose to watch some TV

… before receiving notification of your outcome for that day :-

I think that there are 10 days in all with rewards that translate in to free printing vouchers.  All in all VERY NEAT – well done all!

I discussed next steps with Martin and how making it a living environment (possibly akin to secondlife) might be an idea – and combining it with the MLE to bring people into it and so on and so on.  And the whole “community” element of that for distance learners, part-timers, pre-enrollers … oh the mind boggles!

But for what it is now, I think its another great way of finding out about the University for people who don’t like to look at linear text intensive web pages – and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what it is – information and communication in an alternative format with embedded incentives.

(Hey Mike, just imagine what WE could do with a bunch of coders available to get on with this sort of stuff … !)

Top effort Glam!