Posts tagged quality
Further Clarifying Quality Integration/Use of Second Life
May 5th
I originally suggested the quality integration of Second Life into learning spaces to be:
to develop authentic learning projects that allow learners to engage learning content through interaction with communities and/or creation of content or products in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.
However, after reading an insightful post by Beth Ritter-Guth, there’s an element of quality instructional design that should perhaps be added. Beth’s post highlights an issue I mentioned but did not include in the, to use the term loosely, definition: using technology for technology’s sake.
Using technology simply because we can runs contrary to an essential principle of of instructional design and technology, one that I typically refer to as Occam’s Razor for Educational Technologists: use the simplest technology necessary to accomplish the learning objectives.
Unfortunately, we often do not adhere to that principle; that’s how I’m sure some faculty will bravely lead their students into Second Life to have a class discussion. Certainly, class discussions are beneficial, but if all we do with SL is provide the forum in which the discussion can occur, we’re simply adding complexity to an activity that could be conducted via any web-based synchronous text chat tool: Blackboard’s Virtual Classroom, WebCT’s Chat tool, IRC channels, any of a thousand HTML/Java based chat rooms, Group Chat via AOL IM etc.
There’s a variety of reasons to avoid adding complexity to a learning environment, but I do believe the issue Beth raises and discusses represents perhaps the most significant risk of new technologies. If we use technology for technology’s sake, it is possible to lose sight of the learning objectives while focusing on the technology. Beth provides several examples which I’ll rely on you reading rather than restating them here. Go to her blog. Bookmark it. Add it to your reader.
While quality instructional design begins with a clear understanding of the desired learning outcomes, it may be important to emphasize that point when considering exactly what represents quality integration of SL into learning spaces:
while maintaining proper focus on the desired learning outcomes, develop authentic learning projects that allow learners to engage learning content through interaction with communities and/or creation of content or products in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.
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Loading ...Health & Psychology: Self Image
Apr 28th
Peggy Sheehy at Suffern Middle School in New York began using Second Life with her students in early April (at least it appears that way on her blog).
Her blog provides several examples of what I believe is quality, value-added use of SL; they are developing “authentic learning projects that allow learners to engage learning content through interaction with communities and/or creation of content or products in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.”
Specifically, the rough draft plan Peggy describes for a Health class lesson on Self Image is outstanding. Certainly, read the blog entry for full details, but in short, students will consider media portrayals of “real beauty” and, as best they can and from their own perspective, create their avatar in their own image. They’ll then reflectively discuss, via SL, the avatars they created. Randomly assigned groups will then create attractive and unattractive avatars according to popular media standards, including boys creating attractive/unattractive female avatars and vice-versa. The avatar creation activity will be followed by “all four groups [will] hold[ing] a discussion about how they look, how they react to each other and why.”
Brilliant use of SL, in my humble opinion. Certainly, this sort of activity may have been engaged before in a face-to-face classroom, perhaps even with the use of computers to digitally enhance or alter photos to create more or less attractive self images. However, there’s an incredibly powerful authentic opportunity in SL for learners to create an appearance and then assume that appearance throughout a discussion, and potentially, over the course of several interactions with other learners in a social environment. That is truly a value-added use of Second Life to enhance the learning experience.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...I’m Back… SL Acceptable Use Policies?
Apr 26th
I’ve been absent longer than intended, but It’s been an extremely busy, non-SL month.
However, things have been moving forward in our institution with interest in SL potentially reaching a critical mass. Given recent events and discussions, I believe planning will move forward this Summer with the intent to begin this Fall supporting faculty efforts to develop SL-delivered instruction. I do hope that we’ll move forward confidently with informed caution.
I mentioned previously that one of my driving professional concerns, as an instructional technologist, is to avoid
another, although more literal this time around, “land grab” at the distance learning landscape that resulted in the “teach now; plan, administer, manage and evaluate later” approach that so many institutions had to, ended up or are still taking with regard to web-based instruction.
With the range and number of faculty and instructional leaders asking our instructional technology group about SL increasing, I was recently asked, “Are we ready to support SL now? If not, when? At what level? What sort of timeline is involved?”
I answered those questions with quite a few concerns and questions, and I’m wondering and planning to find out the extent to which these questions and concerns are being addressed in other institutions.
- How or when are we going to define an “Acceptable Use” of SL? by faculty? by students? What happens if a student publicly, through open text chat, berates and verbally assaults another student? I *know* what happens on campus, but what happens on the virtual campus? Is it as simple as applying all other Acceptable Use policies to SL? What unique issues exist with SL in regard to an AUP?
- Do we want to begin developing quality guidelines now? How are we going to support the development of resources by/for faculty? I’m assuming we’d prefer to do those things at the outset rather than playing catch up later in the “teach now; plan, administer, manage and evaluate later” approach. How concerned are we of having the same “rush to the new medium” issue that occurred with web-based instruction?
- If we’re funding faculty development, how different are the purchasing/expense management issues in SL? Are there any accounting guidelines that are impacted by allowing the purchase of Lindens? of virtual goods and services?
- To what extent do we need to train our users – faculty and students – about risks and issues related to SL? Identity issues? The “mixed realities” in SL? Mixed goals/objectives in SL?
- We have three campuses; what does it mean to build a SL Campus? We can’t really just build a virtual version of our existing campus, and I’m not sure that we’d want to. Do we build, rent? Do we go the official route and brand our use by purchasing an institutional last name? That opens a tremendous can of worms for the marketing department.
- If we’re going to engage SL as an institution, what about student services? Student training and support in SL? What’s the economic impact of SL on our student demographic?
That list only begins to scratch the surface of questions if we are to engage Second Life (a) truly as an institution – as opposed to an individual faculty member or single department, program, or disciplin and (b) in a well-organized, quality manner that offers value added instructional methods and content rather than simply replicating instruction that can be done more easily and perhaps better via other medium.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Defining quality integration of SL into learning spaces?
Mar 5th
Early in this blog, I cautioned against what I thought and still believe is poor use of the SL environment for real life educational purposes. In short, replicating existing classroom spaces for avatars to sit and receive a lecture or simply using SL as a platform for delivering messages regarding traditional assignments is, for me, an instructional technologist’s nightmare. Using SL in that manner is using technology for technology’s sake; quite simply, if SL is the coming of Web3.0 and the internet’s future, we need to engage it’s unique capabilities and not use it to simply do things that Web1.0 applications could do or teach via a unidirectional Web1.0 pedagogy.
As an instructional technologist, I believe the key to quality integration of Second Life into learning spaces is:
to develop authentic learning projects that allow learners to engage learning content through interaction with communities and/or creation of content or products in a manner not possible through a physical or standard web-based learning environment.
Thus, my goal for this blog has been to suggest ideas for doing one of those two things. My hope has been and will continue to be that content experts working as faculty or curriculum designers in specific disciplines (music, language, literature, health sciences etc) may take and develop one or more of the ideas that I’ve personally suggested or one of the ideas suggested by others of the SL education community which I’ve chosen to highlight here.
Given that definition of “quality integration of SL into learning spaces,” I would like to highlight a learning experience and project developed by Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins. Her Rhetorical Spaces project is an absolutely fantastic example of using SL to extend or create an innovative learning experience by exploiting the capabilities of the multi-user virtual environment. Professor Robbins employs both tactics I suggest in the definition above; her students are engaging the SL community and developing SL content/products they could not otherwise create in the physical or standard web environments. In my humble opinion, as an instructional technologist, this is a brilliant application of the SL environment which I believe any student would enjoy immensely.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Ultimate Distance Learning?
Jan 9th
This past Sunday (Jan 7/07), the New York Times offered an article focused on the value of Second Life to enhance or improve distance learning: Ultimate Distance Learning. As an educational technologist with an emphasis in distance learning and new technologies, I would tend to agree, and many of the activities to which the article refers – collaborative projects, social opportunities for learners, interactive discussions – are in fact valuable enhancements to distance learning, particularly given the manner in which those activities are facilitated in Second Life.
However, the leading image caught my attention before I was even able to read the article, and it made an impression.
If distance learning facilitated via Second Life begins to look too much like this on a regular, consistent basis, we should stop! Unfortunately, there’s more than a few examples of learning space in SL looking exactly like this one.
The attractive benefits of internet-based distance learning are completely lost in such an environment. Quality internet learning is fundamentally different from most face-to-face environments; internet-based distance learning has typically been asynchronous, multimedia enhanced, and learner centered/directed. Recreating the classroom environment in SL removes ALL of those features, and we end up back in a synchronous classroom with limited multimedia presented in an instructor-led format. We shouldn’t use SL to simply replicate the classroom environment; we need to find innovative ways to do things differently. Otherwise, SL actually could become the unfortunate embodiment of “learning online being no different than learning face to face.” That’s not what we should be trying to do with this medium.
Second Life offers rather unique opportunities for learners: to engage virtual, authentic activities, to collaboratively develop meaningful products and spaces, and to engage one another in socially and intellectually meaningful discussion beyond the constraints of a traditional classroom or even a traditional internet based course discussion board. There’s no reason SL learners should be sitting and listening/reading an instructor; I did attend one meaningful class on basic prims that was set, basically, in a pasture. Each SL’er found plenty of space and began rezzing prims; of course, the instructor was talking/chatting/typing as we went, but each individual could determine their own pace, and each remained active throughout the session. That’s the kind of active learning we need to be engaging.
If distance educators are to use SL to enhance instruction, we should be using SL to do things we can’t do in the classroom: attend or produce live music concerts, engage in political discussions with political leaders, participate in open SL poetry writing classes with other SL’ers, take (or create) a SL generated tour of the solar system, attend an open seminar/discussion focused on contemporary issues (Myspace as a resource?), become an art critic after visiting a SL art exhibit, peruse a library or museum exhibit, or participate in online conferences just to name a few. If we’re busy recreating classrooms and uploading powerpoints or videos into them, we’re just doing what we’ve always done, and SL is anything BUT an ordinary tool with which to teach.
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