Liquid Learning

MUVEs and Second Lives

This was a presentation given at the annual King's [College London] Institute of  Learning and Teaching conference, a mainly internal affair aimed at highlighting current educational research within the institution and disseminating good practice. The talk itself formed a general, if critical, introduction to Second Life as a social virtual world and articulated the abundant issues that make SL a challenging yet compelling arena for teaching activities. What was noticeable when putting together these slides was just how *much* is going on in SL, to the extent it was difficult to capture the richness in a short session like this. One of the key threads that ran through the talk considered how the first phase of simply diving in-world and trying things out is being extended by a second phase of serious research activity - evidenced by the number of grants that have been  secured by new projects such as MUVEnation, (Open)Habitat and LLL3D. Some of the early empirical data gathering that I have carried out with fellow researcher Margarita Perez-Garcia has been a study of the non-formal learning opportunities made available to SL citizens in the form of hands-on workshops. The emphasis in this work has been to explore how teachers in short duration SL competency building classes have appropriated virtual spaces and have made use of tools and techniques that may be valuable in understanding what good practice is in MUVE-based teaching. The slides show the culmination of the preliminary data analysis in the form of a taxonomy of practices and a matrix that elaborates four areas of teaching that are formed by axes addressing control of the environment and pedagogical approach. The conclusions are that good practice in these workshops is exemplified by maintaining a close control over the teaching space combined with a reflective and  process orientated  teaching approach.

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Visualising a 3D matrix

What is the best way to represent 3D in 2D? This was one of the difficulties expressed in feedback from the Stockholm workshop where the 'interpreting technologies in use' diagram was presented: an analytical matrix comprising x,y, and z axes and offering descriptors that span active to passive, isolated to social and formal to informal. It is not a simple process to create a legible and visually attractive representation of a 3D matrix on a flat page. This is probably why in my original working of this diagram the formal to informal polarity was not included as an axes even though it is more than ever a vital part of how we interpret our use of technologies - as a brief aside I feel this dimension to be particularly relevant when we consider how emerging  Web 2.0 technologies, that are in their wider internet usage largely informal, change in style and nature of their usage pattern when placed in more formal settings ... such as education ... a good example being the institutional deployment of blogging tools.

With the three axes to deal with during the workshop one of the participants, Per Filipsson from the Nationellt Centrum för Flexibelt Lärande put  forward some rough sketches and in a series of emails since the Open Classroom Conference he has kindly sent me the digital versions which are both excellent and engaging representations, thanks Per:

Vision one: 3D matrix for 'interpreting technologies in use'

Vision two: 3D box for 'interpreting technologies in use'

 

Making the right MUVE

After a squeezing a few free minutes this morning I have found found time to publish the first set of slides from the Open Classroom Conference in Stockholm held in October 2007. The workshop itself focussed on using the tools that I have described in my previous two posts and included work on identifying critical factors impacting on the introduction of ICTs into educational settings that has been initially presented here by Margarita Perez-Garcia on her personal site, 'espheres identitaires'.

Workshop presentation: Making the right MUVE:

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