Slideshow Transcript

1. Slide 1: MUVEs MUVEs and second lives: and second lives exploring education in virtual worlds KILT conference King’s College London 5th March 2008 Dr Steven Warburton, King’s College London and Prism(lab) http://www.prism-lab.org
2. Slide 2: introduction what are multi-user virtual environments and how can we describe them: as a technology, as a lived experience?
3. Slide 3: what makes virtual worlds so compelling to our contemporary imagination? blurring boundaries of : • corporeality and transcendance • the real and the virtual • where and nowhere • single and multiple selves (Hillis 1999, Jones 2005)
4. Slide 4: the uniqueness of SL Second Life: a unique configuration of creativity, interactivity, construction of the self and tangible economy?
5. Slide 5: SL sold on a dream? Second Life sells us a dream of possibility that is limited only by our collective imagination. We are gods and by implication bear responsibility for our creations, the good, bad, beautiful and ugly
6. Slide 6: but the reality? • \"While Second Life captures the imagination of individuals who wish to create new lives free from societal and physical limitations of ethnicity, gender, geography, sexual orientation or status; it still manifests aspects of society (American, capitalist, gendered) from which it sprung and therefore is more reflective than transcendent” (Jones, 2005)
7. Slide 7: Virtual universes landscape
8. Slide 8: Growth in Virtual Worlds
9. Slide 9: SL demographics from Linden Labs for July 2007
10. Slide 10: MUVEs in educational contexts
11. Slide 11: Q. how many institutions have created a virtual presence in Second Life? … the Eduserve July report 2007 on UK activity in SL lists over 40 UK universities and colleges that have a building, land or island on the grid. See http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/studies/slsnapshots
12. Slide 12: MUVE affordances • Facilitating social interaction (death of distance) and cooperation • Visualisation • Contextualisation • Relation to doing in the physical world (e.g. designing, building and scripting) • Informal learning opportunities e.g. language based communities • Affective nature of immersion, empathy and motivational aspects • Simulation and experiential learning (some physical constraints can be overcome) • Roleplay or taking on new roles as a lived experience • Strong communities (coherence around groups, sub-cultures and geography) • Opportunities for content production that are both individual and owned (though with transferability is limited within proprietary environments such as Second Life)
13. Slide 13: Conference and presentation spaces presentation style spaces: MetaverseU conference streamed live into SL from Stanford University (utilizing multiple media - text, audio, video)
14. Slide 14: VRR virtual reality room: a 360˚ photo-realistic space created with captured images converted into a QuickTime VR panorama and uploaded to SL (see http://sl.nmc.org/2008/01/15/vrr-demo/)
15. Slide 15: roleplay opportunities for roleplay, games-based learning and community participation: learning by role taking as opposed to learning by doing role-play and innovations that stem from games based learning
16. Slide 16: Scilands SciLands: a mini-continent and user community devoted exclusively to science and technology with over 20 science and technology related organizations (see http://www.scilands.org)
17. Slide 17: Second Health Second Health: Imperial College London commissioned virtual hospital campus illustrating healthcare of the future ( http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-QNFLD1mg)
18. Slide 18: Visualisation visualisation I: a view from the outside, a large scale biological model of the human testes
19. Slide 19: Large builds visualisation II: traveling through the large scale biological model of the human testes
20. Slide 20: Self paced tuition self guided, paced learning: following a tutorial on building objects at the ‘Ivory Tower Library of Primitives’ on Natoma
21. Slide 21: Sloodle linking teaching between 2D and 3D worlds: the ‘Sloodle’ project creating linkages between Moodle and Second Life (see http://www.sloodle.org)
22. Slide 22: where is current research focussed?
23. Slide 23: project areas • MUVEnation (http://www.muvenation.org) - EU funded, 2 years • LLL3D (http://www.lll3d.org) - EU funded, 2 years • (Open)Habitat (www.openhabitat.org) – JISC funded, 15 months • these projects aim to: – examine: good practices; what works and what does not; contexts; development and testing of specific scenarios – target: different educational sectors; disciplines; specific educational issues e.g. motivation; specific target groups e.g. socially disadvantaged learners
24. Slide 24: analysing in-world hands on workshops • workshop aims: development of specific competencies in building and/or scripting in-world objects • average length: one hour • organised by non-formal learning providers and offered to the Second Life ‘public’ • methodology: participatory observation (n=20) • followed by: tutor and instructor semi-structured interviews (n=10) • assessment: of quality of student learning experience • towards: developing a taxonomy of good practices • validation: by deploying the taxonomy against a new panel of teachers
25. Slide 25: Hatmaking workshop example I: avatars free to roam during the session
26. Slide 26: Jewellery making workshop example II: controlled learning space with avatars forced to be seated for the duration of the session
27. Slide 27: Flexi-prim workshop example III: use of scripts to help deliver instruction and synchronize with tools such as a slide presentation object
28. Slide 28: taxonomy of Second Life practices
29. Slide 29: disorientating area of good practice Mapping control of the environment against pedagogy cognitive overload stressful, mechanical
30. Slide 30: conclusions
31. Slide 31: directions • the first of phase of teaching activity in MUVEs has raised awareness and opened up the educational possibilities • the second phase of research activity is uncovering the need to match pedagogy, context and good practice in line with the unique nature of virtual worlds as a learning and teaching setting • virtual worlds represent new spaces that require new ways of thinking about education, where the design of the learning space needs to be in harmony with the pedagogical approach • a range of ethical issues are now emerging that include digital reputation management, the relationship between immersion and addiction, identity and authenticity, the moral dimensions of virtual sub-cultures
32. Slide 32: Digital literacy finally: the digital literacy and competency levels required for participation should not be underestimated. Second Life presents dificult challenges to users that are not simply technical.
33. Slide 33: Dr Steven Warburton School of Law King's College London Email: steven.warburton@kcl.ac.uk Prism(lab) at http://www.prismlab.org Liquid Learning at http://www.liquidlearning.org Second Life: StevenW Bohm Final slide