Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

shared or collaborative edited by many users, instead they have to be sold (even for zero Linden
Dollars) to avatars. In fact, such complaints have already been raised about the permissions by the
co-designers in other cases, which could imply a need for more practical solutions for the object
modification/sharing system.
In the Workshop case, both individual profiles of the students and the particular social context in
which student projects were developed show important consequences in terms of students’ working
methods. As mentioned above, the workshop took place at the university campus for 3 weeks,
during which students spent most of their daily times working together in (or around) the
classroom. This can also be considered as a natural consequence of the general educational
approach at Roskilde University, which is based on group-working and hands-on creative problemsolving.
Following this overall framework of the university’s educational policies, the workshop
framed an intensive practical workload, and the need for collaboration as a major requirement.
Figure 6.2. (left) The Superheroes and Supervillains group, working in the classroom by using their
individual computers, and avatars in virtual space
Figure 6.3.(right) The Venus and the Four Moons group, using a PC to collaboratively build their objects
However, the students were free to choose their own working methods, as long as they used SL as
the platform to collaboratively create their designs. As seen above in the two figures, while one
group (figure 3) preferred to divide the tasks among each member, use different devices to log in
and use their personal avatars to operate in SL, others (figure 4) built their objects by using one
computer and getting together more closely in the physical space. Therefore, different groups chose
to work with different methods, in different places and they organized their time schedules
according to their own methods. It was also possible for any group to develop new working
methods in accordance with the requirements of the context of their co-production practices. For
instance, the Venus and the Four Moons group found it challenging to create the form of their
oversized lipstick engines by using prims. The students used brainstorming and sketching when
they worked together, thus, their main objective was to replicate the pre-determined shape of a
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