Games, simulations and virtual worlds

Mooses and research in education and gaming??!!! Kid & sister who survived a moose attack from having played World of Warcraft!!!!

Good stories (anecdotes) don't necessarily make good research

Education is not failing and games are not a remedy!

Virtual rewards - Pavlovian

This pushed as a paradigm for gaming education here

Are games always fun? 'a system of coercion freely entered into'

A lot of the time - all you learn from a game is how to play the game!

Dill & Dill (1998) murder reinforced in vid games Goldstein (2005) no one is actually killed!!! Failure to distinguish with playing a violent game and actual aggression!

If violent games teach aggression - why aren't the researches more violent??!! ;-)

Some of the chat in WoW is more violent than on screeen gore

Given all of this - why do people make similar assumptions about games and learning???!!!

http://nosignificantdifference.org/

Knowledge constructed from what you do!

Pedagogy as agreed structure - red rugs in SL.

Traditional learning design ignores the performed pedagogy

Moving beyond heresay in research

Focus on practice not technology - common lies we tell about technology

Understand where we want to intervene in

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Good practice in blended learning

Improve teaching using an exemplar course - cross disciplinary so looking to bring good learning design from one course to others. Provide as a template

Focus on foundation courses - 1st year.

Physics failure rates went down with introduction of exemplar outline for course.

Influence of academic leader was powerful - explain what they had done and how they had done it - more than just having the outline.

Costly project funding wise and lots of good will and enthusiasm!!!!! Resource intensive.

Academic involvement with the LMS

Relationships are important: staff/student and all/LMS

Engaged staff: interested in student learing, scholarly in approach to learning and teaching, wiling to be learners, engage with students

More coordinators posted to forums under Moodle compared to Blackboard ;-) [My own experience is that Moodle easier to use, Blackboard has some irritating bugs with forums]

We assume staff are trained in how to use communication tools - but they are not!!

Effort tracker for LMS use, how much effort is put in.

Designing for learning in higher education

Ron Oliver

• more learning - more people with access, better guided, better supported
• better learing - relevant, meaningful, engaged
• better learners - self-sufficient, independent, active, willing
• better teachers - facillitators, planners, guides

The lure of technology, e.g. iPad

Lots of tools and resources to come to grips with:

• lecture theatre
• tute rooms
• presentation systems
• course management systems
• Web
• video
• elibraries
• personal mobile devices
• etc

Rare to find an institution with a consistent approach to technology

pedagogical dimensions of CBE

• relevance in real world
• ill-defined and complex
• sustained investigation
• etc

Model to use:

• learning tasks
• engage learners
• context
• learning materials
• content
• information
• learning supports
• teachers
• peers

Good learning design means that students are not only accessing information but organising it and processing it!

Designing learner interactions
Reusable and sharable learning designs, e.g. LAMS. Open education.

VET sector - task-directed, task-guided, task-autonomous.

Has learning design - ldt.eworks.edu.au

ALTC - funding research that will be useful for more than the teacher

• research as a means to an end
• programs vs projects
• seeking traction and uptake
• dissemination

Teachers are too busy to spend time in their day to how to improve their teaching!

Take-home message

• learning is what learners do not what teachers do
• teachers must design for learning
• good learning designs must be shared
• how to encourage sharing?
• success is interest generated outside of club
• need for depth in research
• seek impact
• keep coming to ASCILITE
• use the networks

Good learning hurts!!!
Technology is a means to an end!

Virtual world papers

Gregory et al.

DE Hub - aim to have Aust/NZ wide membership. Aim to enhance student learning from virtual environment. Book/s to follow on from paper.

Nice slide show of use of SL but no strong feel for why/what benefits. just a slide show. Spread of unis and subject matter. Some discussion from floor of how it is being used.

Slide show will end up on YouTube.

3D immersive virtual worlds

Scoping study funded by DE hub.
Interactive virtual simulation.
Often multi-user
Similar UK study here

Responses to ethical dilemmas

Problem solving in virtual worlds - ill structured with multiple solutions, unexpected consequences.
Re-embodied and social interactions with non-verbal comms and complex social practices. Also dynamic - the world changes as you act.

People's actions in a virtual world influenced by virtual world (doors, flying, etc i.e the model physics), the character & their tools, character goals and player goals

Designing problems for virutal world
Virutal wold
Narrative
Learning objective

Choreography - set up events and issues that are problematic within a narrative

Value of reflection after scenario as well as what occurs during the scenario!
Assessment of intentions and actions through feedback process

Teacher personality and online courses

Strategies to express teacher personality and presence in an online setting.

In an online setting only setting, students like to know something about the lecturer.

Literature has shown for years value of students expressing personality, more recently likewise the teachers. Issue can be lack of warmth, sense of humour, etc.

Some key ideas

• Emotions in learning
• Formal and informal (learning)
• Cognitive and affective
• Improved retention
• Invitational learning

Risks - online learning can be a straight jacket?

Some questions

• How best to allow people to espress their personality?
• How does this impact the course climate?
• The quality of learning?

Raised a lot of questions - not too many concrete answers though a few responses from audience. Audio welcome.

the bones of curriculum design

Issues of assessing quality
AUQA - fit for purpose, have you met goals etc
TEQSA - measured against external standards, how well do you measure up against them


Product model
Linear, cyclical, interactive
Sage on stage
Assessment - how well LOs achieved
Focused on core elements, method

Process model
Fuzzy, iterative
Guide on side
Explore how much student has learnt
Also takes into account conceptual underpinning of curriculum design

Listed a bunch of models on learning design but did not discuss in detail!!!

Managing transition from clssroom to workplace

Three stakeholder in commerce intern program: student, org, faculty.

Flexibility & quality for students and org.

Work experience during the course.

Approach - beyond duty of care. Wanting to do more than minimise risk, integrating care into the workplace.

1. involve industry in program development
2. minimise interuption to business - don't ask workplace supervisor to assess students
3. connect the two worlds
4. support introduction and set expectations
5. manage initial placement days but encourage ownership
6. Acting to contribute to relationships - student/org
7. Assess students through a flexible online medium

Teacher transformation

Study that looked at helping teacher integrate technology into the curriculum and pedagogy. Assisting teachers in knowing what was there and how to apply it.

Case of teacher who saw strongly guided scaffolding essential in teaching, focussed on tech in summative assessment. Simply integrated technology (email) into current teaching practices

Giving knowledge not enough to engender change in teaching practices because personal practical teaching theory went unchanged.

For exampe - verbatim transfer for f2f to online, transfer of knowledge.

The wiki factor

What?

Report on an intensive online biology bridging course – leapfrog biology. A four week program, starts with one face to face session. Non-compulsory or assessed but best Wiki used for next year 1^st year medicine course - again the emerging theme of authenticity where the end product is not just for a lecturer! Also competitive nature - only best one used.

Forms of scaffolding

Both hard and soft.

Hard – up there already on site.

Soft – please read the instuctions

F2f – soft. Getting them started on what project was about since only 4 weeks long.

Instructions on LMS – hard, orientation

Online synchronous chat – soft, only one but more if requested. Wiki problem solving, social.

Discussion space asynchronous – soft. Asking qs re content

Guiding questions – hard. Start group work.

Questions posed in modules – hard

Monitoring Wikis with feedback – soft, emails etc.

Group discussion pages allowed teacher to monitor how collaboration was going.

Do online activities inspire students in the science disciplines?

Use of Skype in the session to bring a colleague in! Doesn’t work as a) quality poor and b) simply reads a script! Reading a Word doc on screen instead of PPT is worse!!!!

Neat phone voting technology to see whether or not students understand and can move on, a simple way of engaging students in the classroom.

Web 2.0 assessment – creating these for assessments like Wikis, blogs, videos, etc. Lasting public products which are authentic – challenges include identifying appropriate tasks and ways of assessing them.

What is possible with Web 2.0 and content heavy units like science? Role of wikis

Issues with effectiveness – ‘I enjoyed that’ comments. Is it worth the effort???

Wikis and peer marking – what is important as a question for students to consider when peer marking. Rubric developed/provided for them to aid in marking but lecturer still marked.

Wiki marking scheme/assessment rubric

Open learning requires open minds

Examining Gen Y or Gen Me. Digital savvys or just plain dumb??

Little evidence that technology has re-wired the brain.

Are kids too wired today? Exposure to media in mid-teens up to 12 hrs a day! Time with print media less than 40 mins per day. Malcom Gladwell - 10000 hrs to become expert at something or 3 hrs per day - so what are todays youth going to be expert at? Certainly not reading print media.

Lies about technology - replace teachers, making learning easier. NOT true that technology is enough.

It is the task that matters the most - this generation faced with the biggest problems - 21st c outcomes!

Keep pedagogy AHEAD of technology!

NOTE: using exclusively ebooks increases a uni's carbon footprint.

Great talk with lots of good references to follow!!

Building the smart connected city

Lev Gonick

Abundance has supplanted scarcity - he means information shared by high speed broadband.

Universities designed to be exclusive and elitist, dealing with basic science questions. Ohio has rejected this model. One Community - non-profit building broadband and attend to priorities of community AND research.

Wifi and smart homes - energy use monitoring, updating medical records when weighing self in the morning!

Facilitating peer to peer and peer to tutor learning. Bringing the expert into the classroom - nice example of neuro-surgeon addressing classroom.

Summary: A fast broadband network allows for innovative uses of information as well as access to experts, teachers etc in a new and useful way.

LAMS

No not the wooly sort, but a computer system that helps you design learning.

http://www.lamsinternational.com/

Can run inside a LMS.

Has a progress bar - nice feature. Also a tracking tool for teacher to see where students are at realtime.

Can be used to set up conditional activities in the LMS - but note Moodle 2.0 has conditional activies so where is the gain??

Basic tutorial is found here

Teachers, technology and design

From the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. Teaching as:

• telling is traditional model
  
• fascillitation - the newer student centred approach
  
• design - often neglected
  

learning by

• listening is traditional model
  
• doing is the newer approach - more active forms of learning & focus on task

Importance of design

• diversifying student needs and expectations
• rising expectations about graduate capabilities
• technological change
• increased pressures on teaching staff - staff student ratios, fund raising, etc
  

Issues of teachers using tech when they have no teacher training! Lecturers are gifted amateurs when it comes to teaching and ignorant of the literature: often seen as meaningless or not related to their field.

LAMS used to planning pedagogy. Lecturers need vocab to talk about what is happening in lectures. Provides various activities, e.g. problem based learning (PBL) which is learner focussed and there is not one right answer. LAMS provides a generic scaffolding for this. Form you fill out as the content expert. Such scaffolding helps give lecturers the opportunity to think like (teaching) professionals.

Next came discussion on TPACK I can't follow. Link here on what TPACK is about: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge as a framework to capture some of the knowledge that is required for the inclusion of technology into teaching. Includes content, pedagogy and technological knowledge. As I see it, good design means you know what it is you want learners to learn/explore/become competent or develop mastery in, know how you are going to enable this and how best to use the technology.

Talk found other related contexts include curriculum knowledge, learner characteristics, institutional conext and educational ends.

Most academics when starting design for a new unit start with outcomes or content. Usual stuff on design, taking student feedback into account, usually not throw away all predecessor's material but familiarise and align to own teaching styles. My own experience matches this - you change emphasis and look but content only if significant gaps. Other teachers are a valued resource.

Use of virtual classrooms

Talk on using Elluminate to create a virtual classroom environment.

Importance of assigning peer-mentors for adoption of such technology to support staff in its use. Not only in training but during the teaching itself in early stages.

Value of setting up session where the lecturer is not present (unmoderated) for distance ed based courses to allow students to interact as they would if doing a f2f (face to face) course.

Value of online discussions as they can be used later in formal sessions for dealing with misconceptions etc. Also efficient dealing with common questions.

Strategic learner

Aspects of the strategic learner - surface learner without interaction. Studies for expediency, avoids sharing and adopts one approach to learning.

But, Web 2.0 means learner can network socially, i.e. be socially engaged.

Strategic learner sees knowledge as fixed, but we know it isn't (at least in part).

Web 2.0 means reconceptualising knowledge, students have to own their learning 'unschool' and move away from simply acquiring facts.

Need to change learning outcomes because these often stiffle the sorts of things you can do with Web 2.0, including the idea of summative assessment. [reflection: some content is essential so maybe Web 2.0 isn't a panecea since we still need to assess summatively]

Students feel they are so busy to help others, i.e. see collaboration online as not essential and search out the 'gospel' of lecturer contributions. This is the view of the expert as one source only, the teacher. Interesting that some lecturers are more student centred learning than students themselves.

Why do we use dialogue if we still assess in a summative sense? The reason being is that summative assessment is competitive (exam based approach) and this will often mean that dialogues (forums etc) will mean students will be less focussed on learning together and sharing and more on what tutor says - to help them pass the exam. Need to set up forums with a real focus in mind on collaborative learning and students as experts (in training?)

Transforming assessment

Margot McNeil et al. from Macquarie Uni

Sorts of things used to support assessment - easy to construct a list, Wikis, online quizes.

Interesting point - ususally knowledge and comprehension, but not developing and assessing judgements, students gap in their own learning, etc. In other words we find it hard to assess the higher order skills, metacognitive abilities since it is easier to assess definitions and application of procedures to well structured problems (answer 42, LOL).

Use of forums for formative assessment more than summative in the study. More balanced for portfolios, virutal worlds, blogs and wikis. Quizes used more for summative than formative.

Key is alignment of learning outcomes with the activities and assessment. Simply put, you get answers to the sorts of questions you ask - if you ask yes/no etc then you won't get higher learning. Not many examples, pointers given in talk though.... Left as an exercise to the reader. Need good examples/inspirations of higher order outcomes.

Authentic learning and emerging technologies

Aspects of authentic learning and emerging technologies with Jan Herrington at Murdoch

• A learning environment should preserve the complexity of the real life situation - context for deep exploration of ideas
  
• Authentic task
  
• Expert performance - access to the way an expert would think and act (so what does this do for lectures)
  
• Multiple perspectives - not just a single perspective like a text book
• Collaboration - jointly address problems, social support
• Articulation - speak about and write about learning
• Reflection - think about and discuss choices, both in and on action
• Scaffoldiing and coaching - supportive rather than didactic
• Authentic assessment - product based rather than separate testing like exams

Exampes - High School project on where soldiers went during war, free resources on web, etc. Published in local paper or web (the polished end product).

Impacts of closing a local high school - data already collected, students use and write report (Uni assignment).

Samuel Pepys online diary and comments underneath - enhanced learning from sharing of knowledge. What does this say about the expert - there is no one expert!!!

Wikipedia - controversy over this, tyranny of the idiot??? The wisdom of the crowd? Good in the context of Peyps diary, but is she not being critical enough more generally given the vast amount of crap on the net???

Also wonder on authentic task that Herrington is being too dismissive of the need for drill and practice of certain techniques - especially in area of mathematics apart from context BEFORE more complex real-life problems are given.

Ascilite2010 - opening presentation

Shirley Alexander of UTS just gave the opening presentation at ASCILITE2010. Interesting presentation that made the following observations:

• Much of research in computer managed learning has pretty much been all the same.
• Learning gains that have been ascribed to technology in the past has been due to student group work - gave example of use of laser discs instead of face to face teaching where 0.5 GPA gains were achieved, and yet it was due to the fact the disc was so hopeless students went to the library to study in groups.
• So many students are working full time, so how do we accomodate that - unlike me who studied full time and was able to wax lyrical about my studies.
• Cheating has become very sophisticated - see link below

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/