Mikhail Fominykh, Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland and Monica Divitini: "Virtual Summer School in Second Life: Supporting Creative Communities," in Demetrios G. Sampson, J. Michael Spector, Dirk Ifenthaler and Pedro Isaias ed. the 9th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age (CELDA), Madrid, Spain, October 19–21, 2012, IADIS, ISBN: 978-989-8533-12-8, pp. 27–34.

1. Virtual Summer School in
Second Life:
Supporting Creative Communities
Mikhail Fominykh, Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland and Monica Divitini
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
The 9th International Conference on
Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age (CELDA)
October, 19 2012
Madrid, Spain
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2. Trondheim, Norway
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3. Norwegian University of Science
and Technology NTNU
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4. Motivation: Supporting Learning
Communities
o Learning communities
– developing new skills and insight
– Innovation
– university education and international projects
o Community of Interest (CoIs)
– “Communities of communities” across domains
– Symmetry of ignorance
– Social creativity
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5. Proposal: Learning communities in
3D Virtual Worlds
o Proposal
– 3D VWs can benefit creating and supporting learning
communities
o 3D VWs support
– User-generated content
– Sense of presence
– Interactive features and simulations
– Boundary objects and shared artifacts as catalysts of
collaboration
– => Communities of Interest and social creativity
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6. Supporting creative communities:
Virtual Summer Schools
o TARGET
o CoCreat
o Virtual Summer School as an
innovative education form
supporting creative communities
– 3D visualizations
– Role-plays
– Virtual events
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7. Activity Design: Phases of
Collaborative Creative Process*
o Collect (searching for material and
visualizing it)
o Relate (consulting with peers)
o Create (trying out solutions, creating
associations, composing artifacts)
o Donate (disseminating results)
* Schneiderman, 2002
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8. Technology: 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs)
o Collect in 3D VWs (collaborative
exploration of virtual places)
o Relate in 3D VWs (rich synchronous
interaction with sense of presence)
o Create in 3D VWs (safe prototyping,
3D visualizations)
o Donate in 3D VWs (sharing user-
generated content)
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9. Place: Virtual Campus of NTNU
o Facilities
– Reconstructions of campus buildings
– 3D educational visualizations (student projects)
– Virtual Science Fair
– Meeting and working places
o Activities
– Virtual tours
– Cooperation technology course projects/role plays
– Research project presentations
– International seminars
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10. Activities: Structured by
Collaborative Creativity Phases
Phase Course activities
– brainstorming the topic to be visualized
– Collect – describing the design in group blogs
– participating in virtual events
– Relate – exploring other constructions
– collaborative construction
– Create – accessing building resources
– role-play presentations
– Donate – preserving constructions in the Virtual
Gallery
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11. Activities: Virtual Events
o Virtual Seminar
– Formal learning settings
– Five presentations of related EU projects
– Q&A session
o Virtual Guided tour
– Informal learning settings
– Experience teaching and cooperation techniques,
Hawaiian culture, and virtual places
– Feedback session
– Reflection in individual blogs
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12. Cooperation seminar in the virtual
campus of NTNU
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13. Guided tour to the virtual campus
of COE UHM
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14. Activities: 3D Educational
Visualizations and Role playing
o Constructionism
– learning more effective through the design of
personally meaningful artifacts
o Social Constructivism
– learners co-construct their environment and
understanding together with their peers
o Role playing
– active behavior in accordance with a specific role
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15. Role-playing presentation of a
student project
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16. Role-playing presentation of a
student project
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17. Study: Exploratory Case Study
o Participants
– 37 students in small groups (3–4 students)
o Data
– direct observation
– virtual artifacts (chat log and 3D constructions)
– group and individual blogs
o Data analysis
– constant comparison method
– coding
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18. Target group
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19. Results: Four Phases
Course activity Observation
Collected data
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20. Results: Collect Phase
Course activity Observation
– creativity in process
– brainstorming the topics
– tools used
– discussing the design in
– synchronous and
group blogs
asynchronous modes
Collected data
– creative idea generation
process (4)
– creativity not affected by
the technology (3)
– blogging pro(17)vs. con(5)
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21. Results: Relate Phase
Course activity Observation
– participating in virtual – feedbacks to the seminar,
events including positive and
– exploring other negative aspects
constructions – inspiration from exploring
other constructions (5)
Collected data – how creativity affected by
+ geo. independence (15) other constructions (1)
+ novelty (5)
+ comfort of use (8)
– technical problems (15)
– attention distractions (6)
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22. Results: Create Phase
Course activity Observation
– does 3D space benefit or
– collaborative construction hinder creativity
– accessing building – how resources affect
resources creativity
– categorization of
Collected data constructions
‒ 3D space benefit o role-playing stages (3)
creativity (5), hinder (3) o facilities (5)
‒ res. affect creativity (0), o museums (4)
ease constructing (3)
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23. Results: Donate Phase
Course activity Observation
– role-playing as a learning
– role-play presentations activity
– preserving constructions – inspiration and motivation
in the Virtual Gallery by sharing constructions
– how suitable 3D VWs are
Collected data for supporting
+ efficiency and safety (4) communities
+ contact with audience (3) o intern-l collaboration
+ offering experience (5) o virtual visits
‒ not enough realistic (5) o knowledge sharing
‒ effort required (2) o in the long term
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24. Discussion: Four Phases
Course activity Observed effect
Virtual SS facility
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25. Discussion: Collect Phase
Course activity Effect
– establishing an initial
– brainstorming the topics
domain, engaging issues,
– discussing the design in
insights, and practices for
group blogs
learning communities
Facility Effect
– provided initial motivation
– set of resources
and facilitation for
– joint feedbacks sessions
collaboration and
– feedbacks to the blogs
brainstorming
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26. Discussion: Relate Phase
Course activity Effect
– participating in virtual – establishing new
events connections and multi-
– exploring other membership in learning
constructions communities involved
Facility Effect
– boundary objects – enable dialog and
(exhibition booths and collaboration between
slides from projects) learners from diverse
– formal and informal backgrounds and
meeting and workplaces disciplines
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27. Discussion: Create Phase
Course activity Effect
– collaborative construction – unleashing social
– accessing building creativity in the
resources participating communities
– establishing a joint
Facility practice and trying out
– possibility of accessing different solutions
building resources, both
student constructions
from earlier generations
and various building tools
and facilities
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28. Discussion: Donate Phase
Course activity Effect
– role-play presentations – involved the reflective
– preserving constructions dialog in the communities
in the Virtual Gallery with innovative expression
forms
– visualized results are
Facility
available 24/7 in Second
– seminars on role-playing
Life as a part of the Virtual
in a workplace context
Gallery, thus constituting a
– storage and retrieval
shared repository of
facilities for 3D content
community knowledge
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29. Implications: Learning Communities
in a Virtual Summer School
o 3D visualizations
– community building
– dissemination of educational content
– exchange of ideas in a virtual workplace
– creativity across boundaries of different CoIs
o Suggestion
– explore alternative and innovative ways of visualizing,
storing, and managing community knowledge
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30. Implications: Learning Communities
in a Virtual Summer School
o 3D visualizations
– alternative possibilities for teaching
– presenting innovative concepts and research results
in an easy-to-understand way
o Suggestion
– these possibilities should be further explored
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31. Implications: Learning Communities
in a Virtual Summer School
o Virtual events
– integral part of the educational process and of the
Summer School
– different types of events and corresponding modes of
learning
o Suggestion
– provide both social and educational spaces for
community building
– provide collaborative creative activities
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32. Implications: Learning Communities
in a Virtual Summer School
o Role-playing
– a powerful disseminating tool
– an integral part of the collaborative creative process
– can also serve as workplace training for students (as
identified by their feedback)
o Suggestion
– further exploration of the potentials of role-playing
and serious games for supporting learning at the
workplace
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33. Implications: Learning Communities
in a Virtual Summer School
o All the mentioned elements are
interconnected and supplementary to
each other when supporting creative
communities
– without the role-plays, the results of 3D visualizations,
were not fully obvious
– 3D visualizations served as boundary objects and were
necessary for joint understanding between CoIs
– Virtual events created opportunities for generation and
exchange of new ideas as well as new ties between
communities
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34. Conclusions
o Proposal
– 3D VWs can benefit creating and supporting learning
communities
o Virtual Summer School in Second Life
– Framework for community building, collaborative
creativity, and idea dissemination
– Implications for future use
– Challenges
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35. Thank you!
Mikhail Fominykh
mikhail.fominykh@svt.ntnu.no
Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland
ekaterip@idi.ntnu.no
Monica Divitini
divitini@idi.ntnu.no
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