http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9044800

Many people in my field would argue that virtual environments are the next cool technology and everyone is going to be using it for formal education. After spending the last 3 or so years really understanding how humans acquire knowledge, the notion of using a virtual environment for programmed instruction in my opinion leaves a lot of holes due to the flawed nature of the environment. In fact if true learning is a desirable outcome and performance is a metric used to assess learning, there are some points to address that specify some causes of performance problems:

• Lack of Skills or Knowledge
• Lack of Motivation
• Flawed Environment
• Improper Incentives

I’d like to address the issue of flawed environments. In a reality setting in a typical classroom, a flawed environment plays a huge factor. Examples of this is an improper student seating arrangement, or  physical conditions such as temperature control, outside noises, etc.

In a virtual interface, Human Computer Interaction design (HCI) must be addressed in order to get all plausible users involved. I think most of the appeal of Second Life is that it’s an environment designed by people in their 20s and 30s because that’s the type of users expected to be there (I think teenagers are also targeted). Apparently according to the article above there are some text size issues and interface issues that need to be worked out.

Lastly, because SecondLife is primarily a virtual social environment and not a lecturing environment, interacting with other people is a key issue. While I do admit that it has potential, I don’t think SecondLife has formal programmed instruction at its core. Like real life, there are distractions, people who don’t play nicely, people trying to make a buck or two, and even worse, developers who don’t know anything about instructional design trying to invoke a learning experience on trusting, believing participants.

Due to the nature of real world learning environments and the already surmountable problems and flaws with learning spaces that exist in reality, shouldn’t educators be concerned with fixing reality before thinking that virtual reality will solve ALL issues?

Simlandia Bot Skin

I do have to report that it was fun working with Dr. Nelson. In the midst of our busy schedules it was easier sometimes for me to show him what I was working on by creating an object that he could pretend was a bot and known only to him so it wouldn’t interfere with any of the other participants involved in the study. So I tried to pick something rather inconspicuous, like a garbage can…(I mean who wants to interact with a virtual garbage can?)

So I created the garbage can object and placed it in a super secret location known to only us. It has sort of become the secret easter egg in the environment:

I always wanted to be behind the scenes of making a secret easter egg. Now I have my wish. If for some reason a student involved in the study reads this, see if you can find the scene located above and click on the garbage can. See what you think!

I’m also about to finish up my final paper for my EDT591 class, and I need some typing to get in the writer’s mood.

As part of my experience being away from MCC for the semester, I was somewhat worried that I would have too much time on my hands. Quite the contrary; it has been just the right amount of time and every day there was something new to learn.

One of the things I did was contribute to an e-learning project using an Adobe Flex project, in a way that I wouldn’t have thought at the start of it. Dr. Brian Nelson’s area of focus is interactive multi-user virtual educational environments or MUVEE’s. Many of people who are practitioners in Ed Tech seem to always going for the latest tactic or invention. Given past experience, I’m always willing to try things out for the sake of trying, but I don’t always agree with how effective they are in the end. I’m speaking about SecondLife by Linden Labs. Many universities are opening up virtual campuses and allowing users to participate in those environment for a slew of educational experiences. The value of learning this way has merits, but as for myself I refuse to go in there and prefer to watch others. Reality as far as education is concerned as challenging as it is, is my best friend.

What I do like about Dr. Nelson’s MUVEE’s project(s) is that they are actually lab-tested and verified means of whether or not learning is achieved by way of learner participation using a virtual environment as a tool.

When I was picking the classes I would need to graduate, one of them fell through. I was already pursuing the idea of a graduate assistantship since I thought I would need to fill up the time. In the end, Dr. Nelson was able to get me to work on his project as a volunteer and have it count towards my final credit for graduation, so I got involved with his Simlandia project, which is using the ActiveWorlds browser retooled as an educational environment.

What this environment does is allow participants to collaboratively work together to solve a scientific problem. Other graduate students have been running sessions where participants involved are observed while they interact in small teams and communicate with each other using several modes. This semeseter, the mode of communication was VoIP using Skype.

Where I got to really help out was the way that the participants interact with the Bots (non player computer controlled characters) who gave out clues and hints to solving the problem. Dr. Nelson and the other grad students want to investigate the proximity effect with learning, buy putting all relevant learning content in one browser pane window. Right now the only way to interact with a bot character is to right-click on them using your mouse, and choosing from a menu of possible interactions.

What is better in our eyes is single left clicking on the bot character in question and you get a new page designed solely for interacting with the Bot.

In the end you get a page with a Flex application (which I built from scratch), and provides a learner with a new interface to interact with the bot.

In the process of doing so, (I was teaching myself the ins and outs of Flex integration using a proprietary environment) I learned some good do’s and dont’s when it comes to writing Flex code. For the sake of containment and usability, my next post will contain the common procedures that will be of most use to other people learning Flex.

My initial reactions: it is mostly an advertisement for the product in use. With that in mind, let’s just say that it is worth the investment for the sake of investigation. To me it appears that this activity is innovative and a good use of the technology. It seems ahead of its time before anyone has done a formal study on it.What could be done with this in order to prove its effectiveness in learning material other than learning to use the tool itself?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-google-testing-my-world-for-launch-later-this-year.html

I would classify this as more of breaking news, but also an opportunity for educational technologists who lament about teaching in a virtual environment that is yet to become devoid of unruly behavior. I’m referring to secondlife and its variants who propose themselves to be the next best thing to the real thing. I’m one to accept most forms of technology in its usage for education, but in my opinion the best place to learn things of a lasting nature IS real life. I know…, big shocker. I get the feeling that many of my co-workers and colleagues would disagree.

Can you learn things in a virtual 3D world? Of course you can. If given a choice of how you want to learn your favorite subject, what environment would you choose? I’m going to refer to a favorite resource of mine called Edgar Dale’s cone of experience/learning. Much like the food pyramid explains which types of food are best for our bodies, this model (if you buy into it as much as I do) explains what is best for our learning experience.

Today’s food pyramid is somewhat different than ones of yesteryear. Whereas before, the food pyramid would list the most important, the American government has now given us a new pyramid that is more in-depth and helps us make better choices about the important foods we eat.

If we transition this metaphor to the types of learning activities we choose for ourselves and others, we ought to give serious thought to the types of activities that will help us (ourselves, and our students) remember, retain, and grow as a result.

I would put virtual worlds in a category almost by themselves. While they are useful for lots of learning activities, I strongly advocate that we look for the real deal whenever possible. Learning space impossibilities such as dangerous conditions and training scenarios aside, the things that we remember most have to do with attention given to it in the first place. Often we don’t have the proper attention because our motivation isn’t there to begin with. Often our motivation is driven by some rooted emotional bias. As my Ed Psych professor from last semester quoted: “Emotion drives attention, which drives learning.”

I’d like to rephrase it into something a little more mnemonic:

Emotion drives attention which drives retention

By the way, I aim to render a really nice version of Edgar Dale’s cone of learning model using Fireworks soon. Hopefully google images will be able to pick it up in their indexing, because I’m going to be releasing it under the creative commons license.