Virtuals worlds and radical pedagogy

Title slide
ESRC seminar: social learning in virtual worlds City University, London
14th March 2008
Dr Steven Warburton, King’s College London and Prism(lab) http://www.prism-lab.org
virtual worlds and radical pedagogy: exploring educational possibilities

MUVEnation ( www. muvenation .org ) - EU funded, 2 years
LLL3D ( 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 learning scenarios
target: different educational sectors; disciplines; specific educational issues e.g. motivation; specific target groups e.g. socially disadvantaged learners
project areas

MUVE affordances
Facilitating social interaction (death of distance) , social presence 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 related motivational aspects
Simulation and experiential learning
Roleplay or taking on ‘new’ roles
Strong virtual communities and identity formation (coherence around groups, sub-cultures and geography)
Identity play
Ownership of learning - opportunities for content production that are both individual and owned

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

taxonomy of Second Life practices

Mapping control of the environment against pedagogy disorientating stressful, mechanical area of good practice cognitive overload

is this the vision we have for education in virtual worlds? why do we strive for poor replications of RL/RW teaching settings?

forces us to question context social capital ethics dialogue identity assessment Informal learning collaboration creativity decentreing new digital literacies

rethinking teaching approaches for virtual worlds

augmentation (life 2.0) or immersion (alternative worlds)

where do our bodies go when we are immersed? the disappearing computer

Teaching approaches teaching approach immersion augmentation tactical, narrative, strategic culture, context, anonymity, play platform - culture? constraint, control, authenticity platform - tools? extension, flow*, bridges *Csíkszentmihályi (1990)

how do we break the monotony of augmentationlist approaches?

radical pedagogy as a critical pedagogy for socio-political action, critical consciousness (Freire, Giroux) radical pedagogy as a transformative process, participation in practice (Ascott) radical pedagogy as a discursive space for addressing education and change

Open architecture project http://www.flickr.com/photos/studiowikitecture/sets/72157604038184909/

art and design approaches dialogical transformative participation in practice perspectivalism revisability intuition creativity, inventiveness and innovation indeterminacy and improvisation instability and uncertainty interrogative disposition self-construction, self-realisation (Danvers, 2003)

towards a radical pedagogy
when designing our teaching approaches addressing the dichotomy of augmentation versus immersion provides a valuable filter for reappraising understandings of the possible
augmentation approaches question different issues such as platform choice and the affordance of in-world tool sets
immersionsist approaches question the richness of the culture and the seamlessness of activity, be it movement or narrative based discursive acts
virtual worlds challenge traditional notions of pedagogy and offer new challenges and opportunities and that might be addressed by appropriating the notions of radical pedagogy to provide a discursive space for tackling education and change

Final slide 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

Virtuals worlds and radical pedagogy

by Steven Warburton

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