Wonderland 0.4 – Demo video
What to notice
It’s helpful to understand that Wonderland has been envisioned as a platform for working/collaboration across distance. It provides a more immersive experience than you could achieve with current available technologies such as video and phone conferencing, web-conferencing and chats.
Two things to consider in a virtual environment are its capacity to facilitate users achieving specific tasks alone and together and its effectiveness at compensating for the missing sensory and contextual information we take for granted when we’re face to face.
The first point is not difficult to address. We call it task analysis, which means you break down a task into small components (sub-tasks) in order to understand how to design learning it. It gets tricky when you must also consider sensory and contextual information needed. We easily recognize the barriers to learning created by a classroom with fixed seating, inadequate lighting or instructional equipment, the same holds true in a virtual environment. Most of use use classrooms, we don’t build them. And we may walk into a technologically sophisticated room like our Learning Research Studio and have to learn how to use it technically and pedagogically.
So lots of things to think about.
Watch this video and you’ll see how Wonderland developers are designing for accomplishing specific tasks as well as compensating for missing sensory and contextual information. For example, when an avatar is speaking his body gestures and his name title (above his head) pulsates. This facilitates verbal communication and compensates for some of the visual information we have when we talk to people face to face. What else?
Suzanne
Universal Design for Learning and Virtual Environments
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.
Immersion and Usability in SL
In an interesting discussion around immersion and usability in Second Life verses World of Warcraft, Rick van der Wal made some great points regarding interface/interaction design. I’d like to think through them as they apply to formal learning (i.e. institutional, sequential, hierarchal and evaluated learning) in SL.
So far, Second Life has been applied like an educational technology in formal learning contexts. It seems to be used to deliver and enhance a course or a part there of. In terms of design, I see at least two design levels instructors should consider: The software (environmental) and learning space (situational).
Environmental issues impact any formal learning context. The design of a classroom, its equipment, the location of a campus, its services, etc., all impact the process. To compare SL with another technology, a course management system (also a virtual environment) is arguably the most sophisticated educational technology a typical college instructor works with in terms of its environmental and situational design affordances. It is designed so that s/he can create an elaborate virtual learning space. Most instructors however must learn how to design that space and often rely on support from instructional designers and technicians. The situation represents a fundamental shift in their role and work habits. The same conditions apply to Second Life, with the added challenge that it is designed not for learning but for entertainment. What this translates into is something akin to considering creating a learning space in the back lot at Paramount Pictures. It can be done, but why would you, unless students were learning how to make movies.
This is my essential argument regarding formal learning in Second Life. Except in courses for which the environment (not the situation/learning space) is part and parcel of their goals, it has questionable learning value when set against educational technologies on the whole. I’m arguing for situated learning that honors situated cognition, two theories of learning seldom utilized in formal teaching practices.
Circling back around to Ricks point, SL has considerable environmental usability issues that overlay all other situational design issues which in turn impact the degree to which learners can be immersed (unaware of) the software.
