En masse, online

This post is a continuation of Wednesday's post entitled: Virtual Clans

Still other virtual clans are emerging from the cultures surrounding online leisure activities such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), strategy games and transnational special interest groups that meet en masse, online. In massively multiplayer online gaming, the ‘clan’ (sometimes referred to as ‘guild’) is the name used to describe a group of individuals who play competitively against other clan groups. One very popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, has millions of adherents who compete seriously on a regular basis in guilds with strangers they become very familiar with but never meet face to face. MMORPG clans who engage with war games sometimes name their virtual clans after real or fictitious military divisions or armies. They may further identify themselves as members of their clan by creating uniformly themed avatars (their digital altar egos) to represent themselves within cyberspace. World of Warcraft even introduced digital tabards which could be adjusted electronically to show unique features that identify a particular guild. Members then purchase their own for their avatar to wear, thereby identifying more closely with their virtual kin group.

Furthermore, virtual clans often develop their own closed newsgroups and e-mail listings to keep their geographically distributed members informed. In MMORPGs, clans can identify themselves further by developing their own virtual territories, building businesses, and earning virtual currency (Childress & Brasswell, 2006). They can be fiercely competitive and often take immense pride in their achievements at the expense of rival clans. As virtual clans become larger and more organised they also tend to become more hierarchical, even electing their own leaders – clan chieftains, and developing their own unique ‘tags’ which can be used to visually identify themselves as clan members in text communication.

In Second Life, a 3-D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) which at the time of writing has reached in excess of 8 million subscribers, there is a distinct differential between those SLifers who own land and commodities, and those who are simply ‘visiting’ and making use of these commodities. The traders and the consumers are a reflection of real life, so in effect, in-world experience mirrors our observations of real life. The use of avatars is a departure from real life with many SLifers participating in the practice of gender swapping. Even more strangely, some SLifers employ avatars that represent themselves as animals of all kinds, some common, some exotic. Still others choose to present themselves as fantasy figures, such as characters with Anime cartoon features, or aliens, wizards, pixies or fairies. Yet the clear distinction in Second Life is between the traders and those who purchase. The SLife tribe thus has at least two distinct clans, and it is highly likely that others will emerge as Second Life and other MUVEs become better established.

Tomorrow: The Tribal Web

Reference

Childress, M. D. and Brasswell, R. (2006) Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for Online Learning. Distance Education. 27 (2), 187-196.

Image source

Serious games

I watched my 14 year-old son this morning as he created avatars on our Nintendo Wii, but got a little concerned when he created a Hitler Mii and a Stalin Mii. Still, it was impressive, because from memory he also created a Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Harry Truman and Abraham Lincoln, all with very recognisable features, which leads me to believe that he must have paid a lot more attention during his History lessons than I ever did. He set them all running in a dubious U.S. 'presidential race', and I'm not sure who eventually won, but you can probably guess. The Barack Obama Mii picture here gives you some idea about how accurate these avatars can be, although I'm not sure POTUS would be too wild about the 'B.O.' label...

This led me to some thinking about games based learning, and how we can conjecture by simulating events that will never happen. My son was having great fun, but there was a serious underpinning to the games he was playing with images of world leaders. Watching him was a relevant little distraction, because I'm currently ploughing through a number of new books that have landed on my desk from IGI Global under the banner of their Information Science Reference series. The one I'm concentrating on at the moment is GBL focused and has the grand title: Games-Based Learning Advancements for Multi-Sensory Human Computer Interfaces: (Techniques and Effective Practices). It's a 372 page volume edited by Thomas Connolly, Mark Stansfield and Liz Boyle (all at the University of the West of Scotland). Despite it's very expensive tag ($195.00, or about £120) this hardback book has some readable chapters, and it tackles some relevant and emerging issues in this fast-moving field of learning technology.

The book seeks to: 'disseminate knowledge on the theory and practice of games-based learning, promoting the development and adoption of best practices'. And there are some best practices shared in the book, with stand out chapters by Nicola Whitton (Manchester Metropolitan University) who covers the use of computer games in HE, Dan Livingstone and his colleagues who discuss MUVEs and the use of Sloodle, and Colin Price (University of Worcester) who talks about the path between pedagogy and technology. He examines the metaphor of space and notions of embodiment in the context of discourse and collaborative learning. Good to see that there is also an entire section dedicated to disabilities and gender issues in games-based learning.

But there are two chapters that made the book worth reading, for me at least. The first is by Matt Sweeny and Helen Routlege - Drawing Circles in the Sand - in which they share how to integrate content into serious games. They hold that synergistic alignment of game and content is a gradual process that must be built into the game design. Too much initial instruction they argue, 'sucks the fun out of the game', but too much fun 'can make the learning harder to contextualise'. The second chapter, by the editors Connolly and Stansfield, showcases a model for Games-Based evaluation. Their model seems overtly psychological, involving the complex interplay between a number of components, including the perceptions of learners and instructors, their attitudes, motivations, and performamces. Although it appears to be hard to operationalise and there is a long way to go, this framework may point the way for games designers and tutors in the future.

My only criticism of this book (apart from the now traditional whinge that the high cost of IGI Global books puts them out of the reach of most educators), is that I could find nothing about digitial identity and the importance it plays in making games-based learning successful. Still worth a read though, if you can get your hands on a copy.

Image source

Latest MUVEs

Several articles have been published recently on the use of MUVEs in education. My mate Steven Warburton's article appeared in the British Journal of Educational Technology earlier this year. He takes a critical approach to the evaluation of Second Life as a learning environment. Here's the abstract:

Second Life (SL) is currently the most mature and popular multi-user virtual world platform being used in education. Through an in-depth examination of SL, this article explores its potential and the barriers that multi-user virtual environments present to educators wanting to use immersive 3-D spaces in their teaching. The context is set by tracing the history of virtual worlds back to early multi-user online computer gaming environments and describing the current trends in the development of 3-D immersive spaces. A typology for virtual worlds is developed and the key features that have made unstructured 3-D spaces so attractive to educators are described. The popularity in use of SL is examined through three critical components of the virtual environment experience: technical, immersive and social. From here, the paper discusses the affordances that SL offers for educational activities and the types of teaching approaches that are being explored by institutions. The work concludes with a critical analysis of the barriers to successful implementation of SL as an educational tool and maps a number of developments that are underway to address these issues across virtual worlds more broadly.

Warburton S (2009) Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), 414-426.

Another good friend of mine, Palitha Edirisingha and his colleagues at the University of Leicester, have also published an article on the potential pedagogical power of Second Life. Although it's a small scale project, the findings may yet be far reaching, particularly around our understanding of social presence in 3-D virtual environments.

This paper reports findings of a pilot study that examined the pedagogical potential of Second Life (SL), a popular three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment (3-D MUVE) developed by the Linden Lab. The study is part of a 1-year research and development project titled 'Modelling of Secondlife Environments' (http://www.le.ac.uk/moose) funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee. The research question addressed in this paper is: how can learning activities that facilitate social presence and foster socialisation among distance learners for collaborative learning be developed in SL, a 3-D MUVE? The study was carried out at the University of Leicester (UoL) within an undergraduate module on Archaeological Theory, where two tutors and four students took part in four learning activities designed to take place in SL within the UoL Media Zoo island. The learning activities and training in SL were based on Salmon's five-stage model of online learning. Students' engagement in SL was studied through interviews, observations and records of chat logs. The data analysis offers four key findings in relation to the nature and pattern of in-world 'socialisation' and its impact on real-world network building; the pattern of in-world 'socialisation' stage in Salmon's 5-stage model; perspectives on students' progress in-world through the first stage of the model—'access and motivation'—and perspectives on their entry into, and progress through, the second stage of the model—'socialisation'—and the role of identity presented through avatars in the process of socialisation. The paper offers implications for research and practice in the light of these findings.

Edirisingha P, Nie M, Pluciennik M and Young R (2009) Socialisation for learning at a distance in a 3-D multi-user virtual environment. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), 458-479.

Related links:

Kamel Boulos, Wheeler and Toth-Cohen Designing for Learning in 3-D Virtual Worlds

Kamel Boulos, Hetherington and Wheeler An overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical education

Watching the MUVEs

Recently, psychologists have been getting quite excited about multi-user virtual environments. Several studies have drawn the same conclusion: that people behave similarly in virtual worlds using avatars as they do in real life. Yee et al (2007) showed that the closer two avatars were together, the less they faced each other directly, and 'eye contact' was reduced. They also reported that two characters of the same gender kept greater distance than two characters of opposite genders. Friedman and his colleagues (2007) found that a robot avatar that was programmed to walk up to people in Second Life caused them to back away to maintain some kind of personal space. Others have discovered that real world group processes such as persuasion and influence can also work similarly in virtual worlds. Eastwick and Gardner (2009) have even detected elements of racist and other distasteful behaviours in MUVEs. Anything it seems, that happens in real life, can be found also in Second Life and other 3D avatar driven environments.

Christian Jarrett, writing in the June edition of The Psychologist (a British Psychological Society Journal) documents these and similar studies to show why psychologists are getting excited about MUVEs. He says 'The fact that people behave in virtual worlds in a way that reflects real life is exciting news for psychologists because it opens up the medium as a way of conducting large-scale social studies with relevance to the real world - projects that might otherwise be impossible or prohibitively expensive to conduct.

Jarrett makes an interesting distinction between Second Life and some of the more popular MUVEs such as World of Warcraft. WoW has game objectives he points out. This may be the reason it has so many more adherents than the somewhat sterile and therefore underpopulated Second Life. Well I wish him and his colleagues a lot of luck. They may have to wait some time to meet up with an avatar in the ghost town that Second Life is becoming.

References

Eastwick, P. W. and Gardner, W. L. (2009) Is it a game? Evidence for social influence in the virtual world. Social Influence, 4, 18-32.

Friedman, D., Steed, A. and Slater, M. (2007) Spatial social behaviour in Second Life. In C. Pelachaud (Ed.) Intelligent Virtual Agents 2007, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Jarrett, C. (2009) Get a Second Life. The Psychologist, 22 (6), 490-493.

Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F. and Merget, D. (2007) The unbearable likeness of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. Cyberpsychology and Behaviour, 10 (1), 115-121.

Image source

Imagined worlds

Here's my last post reviewing the new publication 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures'.

When we started out writing our chapter on cybercultures, Helen Keegan and I didn't know that it would eventually end up being the final chapter in the book. We first hit on the idea for the chapter while we were talking together at Online Educa - a conference held at the end of every year in Berlin. Because Helen lives in Manchester and I live in Plymouth, the best solution for our collaborative writing turned out to be Google Docs. It worked superbly. We wrote in different colours so we could track who was doing what, and eventually, the chapter was completed. We are very pleased with the result. Entitled 'Imagined Worlds, Emerging Cultures', chapter 17 focuses on the experiences found in technology mediated communication within virtual environments and we attempt to identify and explain some of the emerging practices, behaviours and self-representations. We pay particular attention to the 'imagined' elements of social networking services and multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), and specifically on relationships:

It is often the fantasy component and the freedom to let one's imagination run riot that first attracts adherents. Imagined worlds facilitate a number of experiences that could never be conceived as possible in the real world, but they also mediate familiar experiences. One familiar feature of the human experience - friendship - is increasingly mediated through new technologies and social spaces. For some, even this fundamental human experience may need to be reconceptualized (p 262).

We go on to discuss a number of experiences such as 'virtual promiscuity', weak and strong social ties, the clash of old and new media and the implications on formal learning, and discuss the breaches in cultural boundaries that have been caused through liberalized social media such as YouTube ('Star Wars Kid' for example) and Facebook. We also compare the popular digital clan cultures of Flickrites and Facebookers. We conclude with a discussion on how shifting perceptions of privacy, identity and ownership as well as friendship are being redefined due to the imagined worlds we inhabit for increasing proportions of our time.

5 get a MUVE on

Well we did it. And it worked. Last time I was that nervous was when my (first) wife kept me waiting at the altar for 20 minutes over the odds, while her chauffer searched for a place to park. We are still married 22 years later, don't worry. Today was a technological success, where we linked 5 people together using Elluminate and managed a slightly flakey audio system in a very large and echoey hotel ballroom in Kuala Lumpur. I also did a successful in-world demonstration of Second Life for the LYICT Conference delegates here in Malaysia.

Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu) moderated the panel session from his eyrie in Bremen, Germany, whilst David White came in from Oxford to talk about design issues in SL, Helen Keegan spoke from Salford about augmented reality and mixing SL and real life, and Steven Warburton, who was in London, gave a presentation on the barriers to collaboration and participation in MUVEs. They all got up at a sickeningly early hour to participate due to the time zone difference. And it couldn't have gone any better, thanks to stirling support from the local technical team here in Kuala Lumpur.

Thanks to all concerned, for making this a memorable and enjoyable experience. A lot could have gone wrong, and I was a little worried about it, I admit. But is shows that you can take risks and it sometimes pays off. Next time, perhaps we will use Second Life as the presentation platform. When we have plucked up enough courage....

SL in KL

This is going to be quite a challenge, but we don't back down from them do we? I will be chairing a live demonstration and panel of Second Life in Second Life at the IFIP ICT and Learning for the Network Generation Conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday (7 am GMT). The panel session will feature several friends from our previous bash at Online Educa Berlin last November. Steven Warburton (Kings College London), Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu), Helen Keegan (University of Salford) and David White (University of Oxford) will all be presenting as their avatars - and very colourful they all are too - and we will be using the JISC Emerge Island as our venue. I will appear as my new and improved avatar also - and although there are many technical issues to contend with and several things that could go disasterously wrong, we are going to take the risk and push the technology to see what it can do...

You are welcome to join us in world to take part and quz the panel as we explore some of the pedagogical, social and psychological issues that arise when Multi-User Virtual Environments are used for formal and informal learning activities.

Larry Snotter makes a MUVE

I thought it would be fun to give Larry Snotter another outing, so here he is, once again, in all his glory...

Tragically, trainee chat room Wizard Larry Snotter has become addicted to Second Life. His avatar, a disturbingly thin blonde woman with a twisted smile, has begun to dominate his life. His irritating little friend Nobby (himself a reformed Internet addict), takes it upon himself to help Larry to quit…

LARRY: You don’t understand Nobby. I've got to keep going back. I don't belong here in RL. I belong in your world – in Second Life. It's the only place I've got... friends.

NOBBY: Friends who don't even text Larry Snotter?

LARRY: Well, I expect they've been.. hang on, how do you know my friends haven't been texting me?

Guiltily, Nobby produces Larry’s SIM Card.

NOBBY: Larry Snotter mustn't be angry with Nobby -- Nobby hoped if Larry Snotter thought his friends had forgotten him... Larry Snotter might not want to go back into Second Life, sir...

LARRY: Give me that. Now.

Nobby frowns sadly, then runs out the bedroom door. Larry desperately chases Nobby, dashing headlong down the stairs and into the kitchen. As Larry races in, he finds Nobby standing on the bench top, waving his arms. Larry’s personal computer floats into the living room, hovering 8 foot above the parquet flooring.

LARRY: (Horrified) Nobby... Please... No...

NOBBY: Larry Snotter must say he's never going back online.

LARRY: I can't. Second Life is my home.

NOBBY: (With a tragic expression) Then Nobby must do it, sir. For Larry Snotter's own good.

Nobby snaps his fingers. The computer plummets to the floor, and smashes, sending shards of glass and pieces of plastic flying.

In a fit of rage and grief, Larry turns Nobby into a toad.

Chocolate coated raisins and termite mounds

I enjoyed a very interesting few hours over at the University of Southampton yesterday, where I was a guest speaker at the Higher Education Academy e-Learning Symposium at the subject centre for Languages and Linguistics Area Studies. The e-Learning symposium was small but intimate with around 65 delegates from about 20 universities. All of the plenary sessions were streamed out to the web, so those who couldn't attend at least experienced a flavour.

Jon Dron (formerly of Brighton University) who is at Athabasca University, gave an interesting first presentation on control and constraint in e-learning. Drawing on diverse sources such as Winston Churchill, termite mounds, Stigmergy, and chocolate coated raisins, Jon took us through a discussion on how ideas develop and learning processes work in online social environments. There was some debate over Personal Learning Environments and an interesting statement about the wisdom of the crowds vesus the stupidity of the masses. Unfortunately, we ran out of time, and so the discussion petered out.

Next up was Emma Place (University of Bristol) who talked about her concerns over plagiarism, cut-and-paste research and the general malaise that seems to be overtaking students in higher education due to digital laziness. Most of the audience concurred, and when a straw poll was taken, there was almost unanimous agreement that Internet research skills should become a part of the fabric of every undergraduate first year programme.

I gave my own presentation just before lunch (probably the best slot of the day) in which I covered some of my recent studies on wiki based learning, and unveiled my new 5 stage model of wiki activities. The model, which progresses through deeper stages of cognitive engagement and also a progression from solo to collaborative exercises can also be applied to just about any other online learning. It's easy to remember, because it's 'E' sy.... Students start by exploring, then progress into exhibition of some of their ideas, followed by explanation. Elaboration ensues in which all the group are engaged with trying to understand the ideas and this is capped by evaluation - placing value on the currency, relevancy, accuracy and other merits of the wiki content. It seemed to be well received, and at least one delegate blogged about it the same day.

After lunch there were two workshops, one on Second Life and MUVes in langaueg learning, and the other very much focused on a new tool for the creation of learning objects. Due to the long(ish) drive back home, I only got to participate in the first workshop, but the trip was worth it. And I met some interesting people, and had some interesting conversations, too.

Second Life at Educa

Second Life is much in evidence at Online Educa Berlin this year, much as I expected. Not only was our panel session - along with Helen Keegan, Graham Attwell, Steven Warburton, David White and Dai Griffith - very well attended with almost 300 delegates present in Potsdam I - but yesterday, an inspiring keynote by Sian Bayne, of the University of Edinburgh, demonstrated clearly to all those present how SL could be successfully deployed to create purposeful and open virtual learning spaces for Higher Education. Bayne was eloquent in her description of the process, highlighted many of the pedagogical issues that had emerged from creation of the space, and even demonstrated a live in-world visit.

Other sessions have also featured Second Life and have focused on other Multi-User Virtual Learning Environments - World of Warcraft has been featured, and the delegates here are under no allusion that MUVEs and other 3-D Virtual worlds are going to be hot agenda items for future e-learning conferences. Our little team are certainly planning some more jaunts into this field and will be preparing papers for other events in the coming year.

Making a MUVE

If it's Wednesday, it must be Berlin. I'm off in a few hours to catch that old orange and white bird again, this time to the heart of Germany, to speak at Online Educa Berlin. It's been over 8 years since I last spoke at Educa, when I gave a live demonstration of the then fairly new web streaming kit that multimedia company PictureTel had introduced. I did a live video link to London and spoke about the pedagogical potential of the system. On a wing and a prayer, the whole session went perfectly - and delegates crammed into the room to see it and ask questions. And of course, streaming media and videoconferencing are now a part of the fabric of many education institutions.

Online Educa is a much bigger affair now than it was in 1999, and most probably the largest e-learning event in Europe. I'm on a specialist invited panel with Graham Attwell, Steve Warburton, Helen Keegan and David White, all of whom are probably a lot more expert than I in the ways of Second Life. But, I will give it my best shot, and tell those assembled about our sexual health education and public information SIM. We will of course, be talking about whether MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments), like previous innovations, will one day become common place in education. Time now to make a MUVE...