My first presentation at UCB’s Center for New Media

Today I did my first presentation of my PhD project at UCB. Sadly only a few people turned up, but they seemed engaged and asked a lot of questions, so that was good. It was the first time I presented some of my recent ideas on remediation, so that was quite interesting for me personally. I clearly need to refine my thoughts and the lack of proper English vocabulary, when I want to make a specific point, is really, really frustrating, but it is all part the learning process and I feel confident that it will become easier as time passes.

Among other things I addressed one of the challenges I currently have in relation to my thoughts on remediation. I’ve incorporated several dichotomies in my models for remediation, but I only see them as theoretical/analytical tools – reality (in whatever shape it represents itself) is much more complex and I don’t necessarily consider them to be mutually exclusive. Another problem is that some of the concepts I’m using are ambiguous, so I have a lot of work ahead of me in determining how I will define these concepts, and as examples of this uncertainty I presented the following three slides:

BTW, for the presentation I’d found a nice template displaying an Ethernet cable, which I thought suited the topic very well – only later I realized that as part of the terms of use I’m not allowed to upload them to any sort of file sharing site and this is why they can only be found here in pdf format … and so I will not use that type of template again!

/Mariis

#vwbpe 2010 – 2nd day impressions (part one)

On the 2nd day of the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (vwbpe) I started out by participating in a session by Graham Mills entitled “TBinSL – Thinking Big about the Very Small”. Graham spoke of the use of SL for visualization of especially molecules,  gene data and cells and what was particularly interesting was that he rezzed various objects to support his slides such as the TB genome illustrated below.

Afterwards Graham blogged about his experience mentioning a couple of the challenges a presenter may face. First of all he forgot to lock the slide viewer, which meant that people in the audience could change the slides – for those who have not attended a presentation in-world it may seem rude or strange that the anyone in the audience would do this, but in my experience many SL users spend time running their cursors over objects to see if any are interactive – in spite of this, it was not a problem I was disturbed by during Graham’s presentation.

As I understand it, vwbpe-presenters had been encouraged to use the so-called SpeakEasy-tool by the conference organizers. The SpeakEasy-tool enables the presenter to deliver pre-typed text into local chat, while presenting thus allowing the hearing impaired or anyone else to get the information in the form of text too.  I have not tried out the SpeakEasy-tool, but judging from Graham’s post it adds yet another element to the many issues an in-world presenter needs to be aware of. Graham wisely chose to react instantly to the comments and questions in the local chat during his presentation. This local chat phenomenon is in my point of view one of the major strengths of SL because it has the potential of opening the dialogue between the presenter and the audience. Having run 4 course in-world I do however also know how complex the communication becomes, especially if you have no one to help moderate, and I can fully relate to Graham’s description of the situation.

Note that on the University of Liverpool Island it is possible to check out some of the amazing visualizations Graham and his colleagues have been working on. Graham has also started to explore some of the new features in the SLV2 such as Shared Media and shadow effects, and on his blog,  you’ll find some interesting posts on this.

The next session I attended was a presentation by Kattan Hurnung, who spoke of her experiences with “Design to develop Virtual Wolds”. In this post you’ll find both Kattan’s slides and a recording of her presentation.

Via 5 examples of designing respectively a café, a canteen, a dwelling, an office and an operating theatre Kattan presented a very interesting grid that depicted the relations between information provided if forms of text, images and/or scenarios and the expected learning outcome given by teachers prior to the start of the process of designing these different types of learning spaces.

I thought there were many interesting points in Kattan’s presentation and one of the things I took special notice of was her questioning the level of details in designs. Building in-world surely can be very time consuming and perhaps it isn’t necessary to aim for photo-realistic builds – less may suffice as long as the design appears believable.

Next up was a presentation by Kristy Handrick; “Revealing the didactic character of imagery in Second Life.” Unfortunately the technical problems I’d had the day before continued, everything rezzed incredibly slow and I had problems with adjusting the camera, so I gave up and took a break. Kristy also blogged about here experience as an in-world presenter and made an important point on how the SpeakEasy-tool can be helpful to ESL presenters, and since I’m also struggling with the English language, I think I may just try out the tool for my next presentations.

The last session I want to write about in this post was a fascinating conversation between Dusan Writer and Tom Bukowski (author of the book “Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist explores the Virtually Human”).

My computer still acted out, but the sound was good and I was really glad to participate in this since it raised a lot of questions/comments I need to look further into – here merely presented as points, but for those interested in seeing/hearing the conversation a recording can be found here.

• SL is a site of culture and cultures are constantly changing, though some things remain permanent.
• On AFK Tom discussed the difference between presence (to be present) and immersion (to be in a place) and how virtual worlds enables us to be immersed without being present.
• Tom was fascinated by the way “friendship has become the new default mode of social relations”, and questioned 1) how friending presumes a relation that is based on choice, and 2) the apparent egalitarian nature of such a relation. And how does this affect teaching – should we as educators friend our students, is it a cool egalitarian thing or is it just a way of masking the fact that we’ll be grading them?
• Tom studied SL in its own terms meaning he didn’t try to track down SL users in “actual” or “physical” world. This methodological approach naturally depends on one’s research question(s), but he draws the line with the common idea that no research project can be legit unless it also involves studying people in the actual world. It’s sort of a slap in the face of virtual worlds and it’s misunderstanding that what happens in virtual worlds is real, it is culture.
• There is more and more evidence of SL users identifying with their virtual personas/life – e.g. writing your avatar name on a receipt or wondering how many prims an actual building represents. We have just scratched the surface of ways in which virtual worlds are going to affect our actual lives.
• Technologies are neutral – the blow back could be positive or negative – that’s up to us, the users, the creators.
• There is a lag between the technology being invented and us realizing what we can do with it.
• “Techne within techne” – e.g. the ability for a group to collaboratively change the world that they’re in real time. The number one thing about a virtual world is that it is a place – techne makes the world; you can have techne inside the world, which is a new possibility.

I personally don’t agree that technology is neutral and I was a bit confused when hearing Tom at the end speak of different levels of user-control in different types of virtual worlds (to me the level of user-control indicates foundational ideas forced upon the users by the system developers), but other than that I really found this conversation highly inspirational!

Uh, and another observation I made by watching the recording of the conversation was how boring or non-interactive it appears because we don’t see the backchat on the screen. This was a very interactive event with many, many questions/comments from the audience and that is not the impression you get from just watching the recording. Both Dusan and Tom made several references to the audience, but I think it goes to prove the point that SL is a place and to get the full experience, you really had to have been THERE ;-)

/Mariis

Free PBL conference at Aalborg University – May 4-6 2010

As pre-conference to the 7^th Networked Learning conference (#nlc2010), Aalborg University invites to a free 2 day conference on Problem Based Learning (PBL) on May 4-6 2010.

Aalborg University has 35 years’ experiences in educating students through the use of an overall PBL framework, which combined with project organization, is referred to as The Aalborg PBL Model. Furthermore Aalborg University Professor, Anette Kolmos holds the UNESCO Chair in Problem Based Learning. The conference will feature international experts and scientists, a.o. Scott Barge, Harvard University who together with an expert group from Aalborg University, initiated an accreditation process of the Aalborg PBL model. Standards and criteria for proper and relevant use of the method have been outlined.

Objectives of the conference are:

• Sharing experiences and visions with universities from all over the world with leaders, scientists and practitioners meeting and discussing conditions, practise and development of PBL strategies.
• Mutual learning in order to formulate standards, criteria and conditions for developing PBL practices that may serve a common platform for collaboration and benchmarking.
• Reaching an agreement on central principles, codes, standards and visions for the proficient PBL university in the 21th century.

Important dates:
Abstract submission: March 29th
Registration: March 31st
Paper submission: April 15th

The preliminary programme can be found here.

/Mariis

Case MIL09: Student analysis of SL – part 3

PerSecond

The third student analysis of SL was conducted by PerSecond and he had asked us to meet him at our regular meeting place in front of the fireplace on MIL’s island, but was otherwise very secretive about his presentation. As we were waiting for the other students to turn up we small talked about our avatars’ clothes – a topic that seems quite popular for both gender in-world. While it doesn’t make much sense to discuss the in-world weather, I do think the interest in the avatar appearance stems from a deeper need to figure out and find your way with the new identity.

PerSecond was actually reluctant to change his appearance from the default look, when he first entered SL, because he didn’t want to put emphasis on that part, but as he learned that caring for your avatar’s appearance signals that you care for the world and are willing to make an effort to learn how to master the medium, he changed his mind. PerSecond told us that had recently received a t-shirt with his company logo, which enabled him to identify more with his otherwise estranged avatar, and as we shall see identity was part of the theme for PerSecond’s presentation. We then headed off to what turned out to be PerSecond’s own home on the Innovative Learning Island.  RL PerSecond works at VIA University College that offers a combination of vocational, higher and further education and they’ve had a presence in SL for quite some time, but it wasn’t until PerSecond entered the MIL course and thus was forced to spend time in-world that he became convinced of the teaching and learning potential of virtual worlds. For his presentation PerSecond had prepared an interesting set-up with a video screen on one wall and a slide presenter on another – a challenging set-up if you don’t master the camera:

Like Perlo & Francine, PerSecond also chose to use the Didactic Relation Model (showed above on the slide presenter) as basis for his presentation and analysis, but he also pointed to other relevant models and theoretical foundations and combined it with video clippings from a couple of other worlds most notably Blue Mars and Hipihi. PerSecond’s primary target group would be building construction students, and one of the main reasons as to why he has been hesitant with the use of SL, is the lack of possibility to integrate other 3D modeling apps in SL – something which Blue Mars offers e.g. through support of content creation tools like 3DSMax.

PerSecond showing another important tool: Revit

As part of the presentation we also went on a short tour to see part of the construction site that recently won the annual Danish e-learning award. It is one of the rare sites that also make use of relevant audio – as you enter the building you hear a lot of very loud background noise that would be normal at a construction site.

Be careful not to step on any of the dangerous cords on the floor!

Using SL for work place training is obviously what appealed to PerSecond and he also envisioned different types of role play to enhance the professional identity of the students.  There are already different outfits for the avatars to wear near the construction site, so that the students could enact different professional roles, but as another example of role playing PerSecond had prepared a little surprise for us in the shape of a second avatar, Per Memo. Per shifted between the two avatars and we were asked to comment on the presentation on IM with Memo.

PerSecond pointed to another interesting advantage of using SL as part of this training which had to do with time and flexibility. Here in Denmark it is unfortunately often difficult to find sufficient internships for our students in the vocational sector and SL could provide an excellent supplement and enable the “school part” of the education to be closer to RL practice – something which most students undoubtedly would appreciate. The ability to leave the setting and return at any time convenient for the students also would provide more flexibility.

Given the fact that PerSecond was reluctant to use SL just a few weeks ago, I was quite impressed by his presentation and not least his willingness to explore and try out the many affordances of the medium. Per will continue his work with SL as part of his Master Thesis in the spring where he may be looking into the possibility of using SL as platform for work they are doing at VIA with Chinese collaborators.

/Mariis

Case MIL09: Student analysis of SL – part 2

Lizzie & Jorn

Lizzie & Jorn, who were in charge of the second didactic analysis in the MIL course, had decided that we should start out by exploring a particular design which then would form the basis for their discussion and reflections, so we went to Teaching 4 – Iowa State University, CELT, where Thursday Xu has created a model of Wenger’s Community of Practice (CoP):

The model has been created as a kind of spiral shaped staircase and as you move up floating text with key concepts central to the theory appears. Other than that there seems to be no apparent interaction possibilities with the model.

After exploring the model we all went to Media Learning, where Lizzie & Jorn had been able to make use of a presentation setting owned by another (first year) MIL student, Inge Qunhua, who is an experienced and award winning SL teacher.

As part of their presentation Lizzie & Jorn started by analyzing the CoP model and I think it is safe to say that none of them or any of the other students was impressed by the model – above all due to the lacking interaction possibilities. My role in these discussions was mainly to listen and observe and it was quite interesting in this case because I did not agree with the students. During the MIL course we have visited other theoretical designs that are based more on interaction between the design and the avatar. Right next to the Cop model, Thursday Xu has created a build of Bloom’s taxonomy, where questions regarding the theory are posed in the local chat as you move your avatar around in the model and we have also been exploring Zotarah Shepherd’s MI build where the avatar can play instruments or solve a mathematical puzzle as examples of the different intelligences and the MIL students clearly preferred these more interactive designs.

In my opinion interaction doesn’t necessarily equal learning. I don’t think my understanding of musical intelligence is enhanced solely because my avatar can be animated to play drums though I recognize that the fun engagement and activity may play an important role in the memorizing process, but there is so much more to learning than just memorizing. In line with Wenger, I believe that negotiation as part of the creation of meaning is essential to the learning process and in this sense my pedagogical foundation obviously is dialogic and I tend to agree with Wegerif. 2006 who finds that one of the goals of education, perhaps even the most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in itself.

Judging the quality of designs for teaching and learning is however very complex and I think that one of the first things you need to clarify is whether the design is intended for single- or multiple-user purposes. In the case of the latter you of course also need to consider the role of other participants and e.g. a facilitator. Lizzie & Jorn found that the CoP model was a “stand-alone” model and therefore they didn’t find it interesting, but as part of their analysis they had also created a suggestion for an alternate CoP model to be used with their particular target group; dental hygienists. This imaginary model was presented as sketches drawn by Lizzie and put emphasis on 3 of the core concepts from the CoP theory;  mutual engagement, shared repertoire and joint enterprise:

By the end of their presentation Lizzie & Jorn also invited us to join them in trying to place the two CoP models within a third model, namely the model created by former MIL student Carsten Storgaard as I’ve referred to earlier in this post. It turned out to be quite difficult, but started an interesting discussion on models and their usability in general.

Afterwards in their reflections in FirstClass, Lizzie & Jorn, mentioned how difficult it is to teach when you’re unable to see the facial expressions and body language in general – the chat (text/voice) becomes crucial in environments like SL in order to get the sense of not talking to an empty space. One of the things Lizzie & Jorn also criticized about the CoP model was the lack of a place for discussion in the model if you’re in a lager group, but in hindsight they concluded that the need to gather (f2f) in order to discuss is more psychological stemming from our RL habits than practical, since there is no other reason to do so in SL where you always can communicate via group chat regardless of distance. They also felt that their presentation had raised more questions than answers, which for someone who believes in the value of unfinished dialogue was good to hear …

Besides the fact that I was really surprised by all of the students’ lacking recognition of dialogue as main means of learning, I do think Lizzie & Jorn did a great job and we all had a very interesting experience. It is, nonetheless difficult not to mention the irony of the situation; the students really criticized the CoP model and its apparent disability to promote learning, but judging from the discussions and the comments during the session it turned out to be an event with both challenging and meaningful negotiation of several of the topics in the course ;-)

/Mariis

Case MIL09: Didactic Design Discussion – 4

On December 3rd we had a special edition of the Didactic Design Discussion in the MIL course, since both Terry Anderson and Ross McKerlich visited us to talk about the Community of Inquiry (COI) model. The COI model was developed in the late 1990’ies as framework for evaluating educational experience in text-based online environments by D. Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson and Walther Archer. Given the COI model’s wide spread use in different educational settings it is by no means coincidental that one of the original founders, Terry Anderson, has found it important to explore the applicability of the model in new online environments such as the 3D virtual world, Second Life (SL). Together with McKerlich Anderson conducted a preliminary, qualitative exploratory study in SL in 2007 and basically confirmed that the model also can be used in assessing educational experience in 3D virtual environments (McKerlich & Anderson. 2007). Anderson and McKerlich later invited Brad Eastmann and I to participate in the continued study of COI in 3D virtual worlds and as part of this study we record different educational experiences in SL to be used for later analysis.

Terry presenting COI to the MIL students

Besides being an excellent tool with regard to analyzing interaction and communication the COI model, which consists of 3 different  types of presence indicators (cognitive, social and teaching), can also be used as a heuristic tool for designing online educational experiences. The MIL students in this year’s course are all educators involved in course designing within blended learning and they all seemed to find the COI model interesting and relevant to their current work. What I appreciate about the model is the fact that it deals with presence and not immersion which otherwise seems to be the buzz word when studying 3D virtual worlds. Even though both presence and immersion have to do with the user experience, I do find there is an important difference between the two concepts. Based on the four research cycles I’ve completed in my PhD project so far, my experience is that all users achieve a sense of presence when they enter a virtual environment like SL, which I think above all has to do with the avatar and its ability to move around and meet other avatars, communicate and interact in real time. It is, however not my impression that all users in these types of environments achieve the sense of immersion – at least not if immersion is defined by a sense of “willing suspension of disbelief” as proposed by Dede. 2005 among others.  An important part of this discussion is of course how one chooses to define the concepts and since I intend to use both presence and immersion in my own model this is something I’ll return to.

After the presentation, McKerlich introduced to our survey related to the COI study and we went on to use The Opinionater, which once again proved its worth as a great tool for initiating discussions.

/Mariis