Transforming Assessment Island

Transforming Assessment is an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Fellowship specifically looking at the use of e-assessment within online learning environments, particularly those using one or more Web 2.0 or virtual world technologies.

Second Life is completely user-generated 3D environment that comes with relatively easy-to-use building and scripting tools that anyone can learn. This makes it an ideal platform for engaging students in creating their own learning activities, experiences and environments, and not just be passive consumers of learning.

An island in Second Life has been developed to showcase examples of e-assessment in this virtual world.

Reference:

Transforming Assessment Island [SLURL] Available at http://slurl.com/secondlife/transforming%20assessment/254/254/23/

Assessment in Virtual Worlds using Sloodle

I attended an early morning webinar which was hosted by the University of Adelaide, Australia and presented by Daniel Jack Livingstone (University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, Scotland, UK) on "Transforming Assessment".

SLOODLE (Simulation Linked Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) integrates 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life and OpenSim with the open source Moodle learning-management system (LMS) to facilitate student interactions in the 3D world whilst maintaining the affordances of an LMS for tracking and assessing student actions and responses. The session looked at how Sloodle can be used to develop interactive educational activities by using the various assessment tools that are available. The following is a list of just a few SLOODLE tools:

• Web-intercom - A chat-room that brings Moodle chatroom and Second Life chats together. Students can participate in chats in Second Life using the accessible Moodle chatroom. Discussions can be archived securely in a Moodle database.
• Registration booth - Identity management for Second Life and Moodle. Link students’ avatars to their Moodle user accounts.
• Quiz tool and 3D Drop Box - Assess in Second Life – grade in Moodle. Set quizzes or 3D modelling tasks in an engaging 3D environment. Review grades quickly and easily in the standard Moodle gradebook.
• Choice tool - Allow students to vote (and see results) in Second Life as well as in Moodle.
• Multi-function SLOODLE Toolbar - Enhances the Second Life user interface. Use a range of classroom gestures, quickly get a list of the Moodle user names of the avatars around or write notes directly into to your Moodle blog from Second Life.
• Presenter - Quickly author Second Life presentations of slides and/or web-pages on Moodle. Present in Second Life without having go through lengthy processes to convert or upload images.

References:

SLOODLE [Online] Available at http://www.sloodle.org/blog/?page_id=2 accessed November 2010

International Office Project in SL - initial thoughts

I have researched briefly into a few of the projects that are available to us, and I have decided that I would like to build an international office for oversees staff to communicate with London, plus give out information for international students and agents in India, with the possibility of using Ustream as the communication tool.

My initial research into using Ustream is that it is a "live interactive broadcast platform that enables anyone with an Internet connection and a camera to engage their audience in a meaningful, immediate way. Unlike previous webcasting technology, Ustream uses a one-to-many model, which means that the user can broadcast to an audience of unlimited size. Ustream's platform has been used to broadcast everything from high school sporting events to Hollywood movie premieres, and people are finding new and innovative uses for it every day" (http://www.ustream.tv/about). I could create a meeting place and have a Ustream screen available for use - is that possible? More research definately needed.


Other possibilites are perhaps the creation of a Machinima based DVD advertising the International Office and what it can be accessed from there online. Again more research needed at this point.

The main things to consider are what the content should be. Realistically in the time limit that I have I don't think I'll be able to build a very large and extensive virtual international office, so I need to narrow it down and concentrate on perhaps course information. The problem at the moment is that I have to wait till the 17th November to meet with the key people from who design and run the International Office at London Met to be able to discuss what they would like the content to cover.

My other concern is that how can I embedd a pedagogical structure to this build? Basically it will be an information hub, but Eitienne Wengar comes to mind, as in would this build create a virtual Community of Practice?


References

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/international/

http://www.ustream.tv/

http://www.machinima.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima

More research into the educational value of Second Life

"Virtually all college students have had experience with games. Games represent active, immersive learning environments where users integrate information to solve a problem. Learning in this manner incorporates discovery, analysis, interpretation, and performance as well as physical and mental activity. An increasing number of colleges and universities are exploring the use of games to enhance learning. The ELI's interest in games and simulations is to gain a fresh view of cognition and learning by looking at games as the intersection of play, pedagogy, and technology."

(EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2008)


Learning Theory - Constructivist

Learners cannot be passive in a game or simulation environment. Those learners that are engaged in educational games and simulations are interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. This approach to learning is much more consistent with constructivist learning, where knowledge is constructed by the learners as they are actively problem solving in an authentic context, than with traditional based learning.

	Constructivist	Traditional
Knowledge	Constructed, emergent, situated in action or experience, distributed	Transmitted, external to knower, objective, stable, fixed, decontextualized
Reality	Product of mind	External to the knower
Meaning	Reflects perceptions and understanding of experiences	Reflects external world
Symbols	Tools for constructing reality	Represents world
Learning	Knowledge construction, interpreting world, constructing meaning, ill-structured, authentic-experiential, articulation-refection, process-oriented	Knowledge transmission, reflecting what teacher knows, well-structured, abstract-symbolic, encoding-retention-retrieval, product-oriented
Instruction	Reflecting multiple perspectives, increasing complexity, diversity, bottom-up, inductive, apprenticeship, modeling, coaching, exploration, learner-generated	Simplify knowledge, abstract rules, basics first, top-down, deductive, application of symbols (rules, principles), lecturing, tutoring, instructor derived and controlled, individual, competitive

From: Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

Social Experience

Collaboration is important in constructivist learning, as knowledge is socially constructed. One common misconception of gaming is of a lone player, secluded in front of his or her computer. With modern computer games and a good Internet broadband connection this is not the reality. Most games have a community of players who interact socially to not only discuss strategies but share experiences, and provide encouragement via websites, discussion boards, blogs, and wikis. In my opinion this can be directly linked to Etienne Wengar's thoery of "Community of Practice" (2006).

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly"

The following table is based on Wengar's Community of Practice and what it should look like. I have adapted the structure to suit SL virtual environment.

Problem solving	"Can we work on this build together and generate some ideas; I'm not clear on it."
Requests for information	"Where can I find the script to switch the lights on and off?"
Seeking experience	"Has anyone used u-Stream before?"
Reusing assets	"I have a RLO that I designed last year. I can send it to you and you can work through it."
Coordination and synergy	"Can we combine our Linden Dollars to purchase land, build a shopping mall and open shops for trading?"
Discussing developments	"What do you think of the new beta2 viewer? Does it really help with building and ease navigation?"
Documentation projects	"We have come across this issue before. Let us write it down once and for all."
Visits	"Can we come and see your interactive meeting centre? We need to establish one on our land."
Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps	"Who knows what, and what are we missing? What other groups should we connect with?"

Communities of Practice can be linked to the virtual learning environment as they are not governed by any formal structure, indiviuals and/or groups of people can and do make connections with each other where before there would of been organisational and geographical boundries.

Multiplayer Gaming

SL is a multiplayer game ,and in multiplayer games several people can play the game at the same time by using networked and Internet technologies, this can provide additional social experiences as you can play the game with others, against others, or both.

This significantly changes the nature of a computer game. In SL, users can create (construct) their own world, they can create complex objects, such as a spaceship, house or motorcycle, by combining simpler objects, such as a cube or sphere - called primitives or prims. Also, objects can be programmed for action using a scripting language (Linden Scripting). In SL, the door on your house can open when you touch it, or you can script a "ghost" door which would allow an avatar to walk through it, and you could also sit on and race the motorcycle you designed and built.

SL does go beyond the remit of a multiplayer game, where players make moves and receive outcomes. It is a virtual world, created by and inhabited by its users. This then leads into the use of SL for educational purposes...

References

John Seely Brown, "New Learning Environments in the 21st Century: Exploring the Edge," Forum Futures 2006 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Forum for the Future of Higher Education, 2006).

Richard Van Eck, "Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless," EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006), pp. 17–30.

Len Annetta, Marshall Murray, Shelby Gull Laird, Stephanie Bohr, and John Park, "Serious Games: Incorporating Video games in the Classroom," EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3, (August/September 2006).

Diana Oblinger, Simulations, Games, and Learning, ELI White Paper, May 2006.

Joel Foreman, "Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century," EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004), pp. 51–66.

Wengar, E. "Communities of Practice" http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ accessed 11th November 2010.

http://www.educause.edu/ELI/LearningTechnologies/GamesSimulationsandVirtualWorl/11263 accessed 11th November 2010.

Can we use Second Life for educational purposes?

"We live in a world that is becoming more networked every day, and the internet has grown into an essential medium for communication, socialization, and creative expression. Virtual worlds like Second Life represent the future of human interaction in a globally networked world, and students who have grown up with the Internet naturally swim in these waters."

(Rymaszewski, Au, Wallace, Winters, Ondrejka, Batston-Cunningham, 2007, p. 318)

The benefits of using virtual worlds for educational purposes vary (Stevens, 2006), it has been acknowledged that today's learners have different abilities and expectations compared to the learners of just a few years ago (Prensky, 2001). Prensky calls these learners Digital Natives, they are natives of the digital world, a world that can challenge those teachers educated in a less technologically-oriented era as in the more traditional based teacher. However, even though there is still some resistence to change, these changes cannot be disregarded in favor of the more comfortable traditional lesson. It is my opinion that we need to understand how these new technologies enhance learning and that it is necessary to ensure that these new learners' needs are being met. We need to be careful that we do not plan the learning around the technology, but use the technology to enhance the learning and engage the learner.

Second Life (SL) can offer learners the opportunity to collaborate, explore, and interact. Even though in the beginning SL was not specifically designed for educational purposes, its educational benefits have been investigated and tested in the classroom from primary level through to university level, prime example is the MSc Digital Solutions (e-Learning Technology) run by London Metropolitan University. There have been accounts of successful uses of SL which have been published online in Blogs and Wikis and also discussed at conferences. In spite of what sounds like positive feedback to SL's potential as an educational tool, concerns have also been pointed out to which I intend to research further.

Antonacci, D.M., & Modaress, N. (2005). Second Life: The educational possibilities of a massively multiplayer virtual world (MMVW). Paper presented at the Kansas Technology Leadership conference. http://www2.kumc.edu/ir/tlt/SLEDUCAUSESW2005/SLPresentationOutline.htm
accessed 10th November 2010

Arreguin, C. (2007). Reports from the field: Second Life community convention 2007 education track summary http://olpglobalkids.org/pdfs/VirtualWorldsforLearningRoadmap_012008.pdf accessed 10th November 2010.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants.
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf Accessed 10th November 2010

Rymaszewski, M., Au, W.J., Wallace, M., Winters, C., Ondrejka, C., & Batstone-Cunningham, B. (2007). Second Life: The official guide. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.

Stevens, V. (2006). Second Life in education and language learning. [Electronic version]. TESL-EJ, 10(3) http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej39/int.html

Second Life - first building session

Last semester was my first introduction into Second Life via the "On the beach" project. Since then I have downloaded the new beta 2 version of SL and so far I like the look of the new interface, but to be fair I really didn't have time to get used to the old interface as I only went into SL a couple of times a week.


Today was my first attempt of building anything in SL, which I was feeling a tad aprehensive. The objective of this session was to build a spaceship following step-by-step instructions given to us by our course leader Alan Hudson.
The step-by-step instructions were easy to follow but the actual building I found terribly frustrating, especially as in order to build in this 3d virtual environment the ability to adjust the camera angles in order to view your object properly is a must! I initially spent most of my time under the water and trying to find my way back to my object! logically I realise that it will take practice ("just like learning to drive" as quoted by Alan).




My first object to build was a spaceship. I started off by building a control box and then placing buttons within the box, these buttons had script attached to them that when clicked on the spaceship would move up/down and backwards/forwards, which did work and the sense of achievment was great!

Initial Thoughts

The aims of this module as stated in the online course brief, are to give the student an overview and understanding of the key design methodologies and pedagogic frameworks through which e-learning applications and technology are developed.

Upon reading this my initial thoughts are that I'm now going to be able to discuss with like-minded people the very basis of e-Learning, and that I'm looking forward to researching aspects of the above.