What’s a virtual world & how should we pay attention to them?
Posted onJune 11, 2008
Filed under Helpful, Reflections, Trends | Leave a Comment
Thanks Cathy! Great summary. I was going to comment, but since I can post, 
I thought I’d do that and extend the discussion.
I think we need to refine the term “virtual world” for our audience and context and extend the conversation to include cultural, organizational and pedagogical perspectives.
Improving student learning is our main goal and it’s easy as technologists, to take a somewhat instrumentalist approach to achieving that.
Here are my In-a-nutshell attempts at refining the notion of virtual worlds for our audience and context.
Cultural: Children are growing up playing in virtual playgrounds like Habbo, Neopets, Club Penguin,etc. Read more from BBC Tens of millions of adults spend an estimated 10-20 (See footnotes) average hours per week in MMOGs and commercially available virtual worlds. The majority are white and middle class. These are not neither culturally nor socially neutral locations of play. They have emerging cultures of their own. In adult environments, there are legacy cultural mores and practices from MUDs, chatrooms, instant messaging and online communities.
Organizational: At the organizational level, these should be considered first as educational technologies. As a public institution we have students, faculty and staff from diverse cultural, SESs and technological backgrounds. We make decisions about human and technological resources to support learning.
Pedagogical: Tools are pedagogical means not ends. At the same time, there is currently more evidence of learning through play, than there is of learning through pedagogy in these environments. I DO believe people learn in them. The first questions are what, how and why. The second are: are faculty ready to change what they do, how and why.
1 Ortiz dxe Gortari, A. (2007, September). Second life survey: User profile for psychological engagement & gambling. Paper presented at The Virtual 2007 Conference: Interaction, Stockholm, Sweden.
2 Yee, N. (2006b, June). The demographics, motivations, and derived experiences of users of massively multi-user online graphical environments.
Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 15(3) 309-329.
What Exactly Is A Virtual World?
Posted onJune 10, 2008
Filed under Conversations, Reflections, Trends and tagged Add new tag, Instructional Design, Second Life, virtual worlds, Weblin | Leave a Comment
Pop quiz: What is a Virtual World?
a) A shared space
b) Avatar-based chat room
c) 3D collaborative experience
d) All of the above
e) Or something else?
With new Virtual Worlds being announced almost weekly, the question bears asking.
The Virtual Worlds Review, for example, a pioneering effort in describing the development of Virtual Worlds, suggests six features common to all Virtual Worlds:
- Shared Space: the world allows many users to participate at once.
- Graphical User Interface: the world depicts space visually, ranging in style from 2D “cartoon” imagery to more immersive 3D environments.
- Immediacy: interaction takes place in real time.
- Interactivity: the world allows users to alter, develop, build, or submit customized content.
- Persistence: the world’s existence continues regardless of whether individual users are logged in.
- Socialization/Community: the world allows and encourages the formation of in-world social groups like teams, guilds, clubs, cliques, housemates, neighborhoods, etc.
However, with more companies and institutions jumping on the VW bandwagon, I begin to wonder if the term is becoming more broadly defined.
Case in point: Weblin.
The Weblin website describes their virtual world as follows:
Weblin “turns the web into a virtual world. Your personalized weblin avatar surfs the web with you, enabling you to see friends and meet new ones on the same site as you. Weblins can chat, move, show emotion, visit lounges, and trade stuff with other weblins.”
Wow! The whole web! Sounds interesting, yes? I thought so and quickly created a weblin for myself. I chose my avatar and decided to surf the web right away.
So.. IS Weblin a Virtual World? Or maybe Virtual World lite? Yes, it allows a shared social space, communication, immediacy. However, is it persistent? Does it allow any level of meaningful user customized content? Not really.
Why is this important? For a couple of years now, educators have been using Second LIfe as the standard by which to evaluate instruction and learning in a virtual world. But not all Virtual Worlds ARE Second Life. They each have unique capabilities and characteristics that must be carefully evaluated.
Does this make Weblin and other platforms “bad”? No. But it does make them different. And a wise educator will take the time to evaluate those differences in light of what s/he is attempting to accomplish with his/her students – and then make the most appropriate choice.
Learning in Virtualities on June 24
Posted onJune 9, 2008
Filed under Announcement, Conversations, Events, Harbingers, Helpful, News | 1 Comment
SDSU-DistanceEd-SL
Posted onMay 12, 2008
Filed under Announcement, Articles, Conversations, Helpful, News | Leave a Comment
Yesterday’s LAT published a piece about corporate America’s embrace of Second Life. New World Notes’ Wagner James Au, shared some of the back story. Great journalism, it was and what I love about the blogosphere.I added my 2 cents to his post, as I have been here and there, in the Metaverse- YouTube, Twitter,etc. I’m still refining it.
The LAT article is another tidbit to add to my box-o-examples of using SL in courses at SDSU. For now. Change is always afoot.
We’re just starting to go distance-ed at SDSU. Let’s get our footing in the 2D virtual realm first. Let’s get some experience under our belts with the tools we got already. And more importantly let’s start thinking anew about teaching and learning at a distance. It’s a different paradigm, model and set of theories.
It seems that the corporate world has allowed SL to become “official” meeting places for their globally distributed workforces. And why not. It’s outrageously cheap. It’s a new approach. What it offers (small and large scale social events at cool places with cool activities) are simulations of events. I could be mistaken, but I can’t imagine that IBM hosts Aspen ski weekends for it’s middle management in RL (real life). I could be wrong.
In any event, without making this more important than it is, three conditions come to mind and make this relevant to SDSU, 1) People cannot get together face to face, 2) People value (enjoyment, connection, etc) entering SL to meet with others. 3) It’s an alternative, not the only way of adding social connection to a distance learning endeavor.
Universal Design for Learning and Virtual Environments
Posted onMay 11, 2008
Filed under Helpful and tagged design, Teach/Learn, UDL | 1 Comment
UDL or Univeral Design for Learning is a simple concept and echoes Don Norman’s point that well-designed things are self-explanatory. Unfortunately our high-tech world is riddled with far more poorly designed widgets than well designed ones. They often frustrate us or make us feel dumb. Few of us recognize them as such, but instead think there’s something wrong with us. Why would they sell such a stupid thing, we think to ourselves instead of saying What a poorly designed widget.
Consider for a moment, a learning situation which makes a learner frustrated or feel dumb. When we design learning with UDL principles, we’re in effect stating that we’re designing learning that is self-explanatory. Feeling dumb because she can’t find the syllabus in the course management system isn’t the fault of the learner but of the course designer. ENACTs UDL Guidelines
Learning that’s designed well, allows for all learners to succeed.
Applying these UDL guidelines when choosing technologies for teaching and learning is important because technology adds layers of richness and complexity to the learning endeavor and can easily muddle it.
Administration- A CMS such as Blackboard centralizes all course related administration. Over the course of their career, students become familiar with BB’s functions and the CMS becomes a utility. Building a course website is nice, when it’s done by a skilled web designer. Websites must be 503 compliant and should be easy to use. Is the time spent on webdesign better spent with something else?
Representation – Provide multiple examples of core concepts in multiple forms. Connect key ideas using varied methods.While technologies facilitate multiple representations, it’s important to consider their properties and enabling surrounding conditions. For example, 2D representations of content have more fidelity in 2D environments. 2D environments are far more accessible than 3D environments.
Expression – Identify and provide tools and scaffolding to accommodate varied entry points and paths to success. Set out clear end goals. Expression and media are intertwined; it’s important to assign the appropriate media to end goals, and have adequate scaffolding. For example, students may need to learn visual literacy in order to work successfully in a visual medium.
Engagement – Allow for alternative levels of challenge and support, and contexts for performance. Articulate long term goals in obtainable objectives. Engagement is connected clearly to course objectives not to technologies. For example, students shouldn’t spend more time dealing with the technology than accomplishing the goal. Tools facilitate not inhibit learning goals.
Assessment – Provide varied forms of assessment which align with course objectives. Use assessments which measure students’ development (knowledge, skill and emotional) accurately. When choosing technologies, consider the alignment of course objectives>assessment>technologies. Measuring students’ satisfaction with a technology doesn’t indicate they have learned.
Is Second Life an elaborate chatroom?
Posted onMay 4, 2008
Filed under Conversations, Reflections | Leave a Comment
At its base it more or less is. I’ve gleaned this sentiment from different conversations in the metaverse, mostly blogs and threads, often from people who are long time inhabitants of the web as a social space, as well as some gamers who are derisive of its ungameness.
One comparison is that to MOOs, texted-based synchronous environments, where users built and experienced the space with text-based commands and descriptions, such as “Go through the door labeled hall,” “You are in an expansive hall lined with flickering sconces . . .” MOOs were more popular with techier types than the average person in the 90s.
Visually based chatrooms, an extension of IRCs, grew in popularity in the later 90s and early 2000s, and environments such as Active Worlds and There, count among them. Both are 3D and are often compared to Second Life.
From the standpoint of education and as an educational technology, SL is little more than an elaborate chatroom for most people. When you deconstruct SL in terms of its affordances as an educational technology that is also situated in an institutional context, it quickly loses value as compared with other educational technologies.
There are other things to do in Second Life besides chat, but let’s try to understand what they are, and how and why they fit into a learning endeavor. As Stephen Downes has pointed out, SL mirrors the real world and as a result affords the same kinds of educational approaches we use in the real world. I’ve observed this too quite early on and as a result have spent little SL time involved with the educational community.
I hope to elaborate on these issues in a way that helps faculty understand this domain and its relevance for teaching and learning.
Cultures of Virtual Worlds Conference
Posted onApril 27, 2008
Filed under Reflections, Research and tagged virtual worlds | 1 Comment
I was only able to stay for one day of the conference, held at UC Irvine. It was similar to the MetaverseU conference in that some extraordinary thinkers and doers were there. Maria Bezaitis and I chatted a bit about how important metaphors are as bridges to understanding. Melissa Cefkin is doing some great thinking on interactional space. Jasmin Kafai and Deborah Fields are doing cutting edge research in education and virtual spaces with kids; and Tom Boellstorf ethnography on Second Life is due out soon. I’m also going to check out Paul Dourish’s book Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction and was glad to hear from Mimi Ito, who’s work on digital youth culture is fantastic.
The audience was primarily academic but the conversations were anything but. Students and experienced researchers presented their work, with the conference being all about emerging questions that crisscross business, education, research, schooling and entertainment.
