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

Shift happens again (and this time it’s personal)

In the EDEN plenary session this morning, Lani Gunawardena talked about language, identity and gender in synchronous cybercultures. She's from the University of New Mexico and her research focuses on how students and the general public from two cultures, Moroccan (n=55) and Sri Lankan (n=50), communicated through live chat with people they didn’t know. Lani argues that identity plays a key role in trust building, self disclosure and the way language forms were used to generate a sense of immediacy. Identity she says, is expressed by age, sex and location. The continual shifting and malleability of personal online identities seemed to be a pervasive phenomenon, she discovered.

Anonymity gave participants more freedom to express themselves online and enabled them to avoid all of the above. Stereotyping she claims, takes place more easily in text only environments. Mohammed for example, was labelled a ‘terrorist’ by some other users, so a change of name to ‘Green Python’ sanitised his identity and enabled him to connect more readily. Some users changed their online identities to appeal to, and connect with different audiences. Some posed as Europeans and even changed their gender so they would not be marginalised by other online users.

The techniques online chatters use to detect imposters involve asking a series of questions and then repeat them later on to check consistency. Mobile phones are also used to verify the authenticity of the person at ‘the other end’. Over emphasis and exaggeration is often an indicator that someone has manipulated their identity online.

Self disclosure and trust building enhance social presence Lani argued, and interestingly, anonymity increased the ability to self disclose personal details. However, it also encouraged superficial relationships to grow at the expense of deeper social ties. The use of idioms increased when users felt they could begin to trust each other. Emoticons were used to convey meaning when text alone was insufficient, but interestingly mobile phones and other devices were used to increase a sense of social presence and immediacy.

This was quite an interesting study, but it remains to be seen how this kind of knowledge can be used to improve or even transform the delivery of e-learning. It is a limited study given the small samples size, and may be overly prescriptive in its conclusions. However, it highlights some important principles for educators to consider when they embark on the use of synchronous methods.

Technocrappi

Technorati have let themselves down I reckon. They are supposed to be one of the best blog tracking services around. Yet a couple months ago I discovered that my posts were not being logged, (as of today, according to them, it has been 80 days since I last posted to this blog - which was a surprise, believe me) and they don't recognise any of the other blogs that have linked to mine. I have sent four pleas for help over the last 6 weeks, and other than the obligatory "If you don't hear back from anyone within a week, please accept our apologies for the delay as we may be experiencing a backlog in Support. Please feel free to send us a reminder of your ticket...etc, etc", message. Other than that, not a sausage ... not a glimmer of help... I despair.

It has upset me so much that I have decided to leave the country. On Thursday I'm off to Sweden again, via London Heathrow, where I can be mistreated by people I can actually see - i.e. airport security guards and taxi drivers rather than some faceless technocrats who seem to be a law unto themselves....

Seriously though, I have been invited back by those good folks at the University of Umea (pronounced OOH! ME! OH!), to do some staff development workshops with their ... er... staff. I'm talking about social presence in online learning again, but this time I will be taking my wiki with me. I have been told I should also take my skis, but I've already fallen out with Technorati. I don't want to make it a double whammy with my insurance company.

Text Mex

A recently published article in Interactive Learning Environments entitled 'Use of Instant Messaging in Online Learning Environments' [14 (3), 205-218] suggests that Instant Messaging is even better for students than face to face communication. The authors, Juan Contreras-Castrillo et al, give a Mexican perspective on the use of this technology, and eulogise about how good it is, at least for their sample of 43 students and 4 teachers.

It seems that remote students gave the teacher a 'virtual apple' in the form of welcoming messages, which the authors claim helped to establish a 'better social presence'. Students tended to use IM for low level stuff like superfluous chatting rather than about the course. It's a kind of passing paper messages around type of use by the sounds of it. The authors conclude by claiming that the use of IM 'increases students's satisfaction by providing continuous opportunities for interaction with the teacher and classmates'.

Not on weekends it doesn't (I hope). Sounds like a flaming nightmare for teachers who enjoy a little time off from the trials and tribs of the classroom, virtual or otherwise....