In the book “Disrupting Class” - an exploration of what disruptive innovation is and how it could change education - lead author Clayton Christensen (along with co-authors Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson) argues that in education as in business, innovation initially starts out competing against non-consumption. Or,in other words, it’s better than doing nothing.
So, if your class can’t all feasibly travel to a foreign country for language immersion or build and decorate a building together or create programmed, interactive sculptures or get together an international group of educators to role play a customer service exercise – would creating these activities in a virtual world be better than not doing them?
And if your distance learners – an increasing number of whom live within driving distance of a campus – could meet with others for formal or informal group activities and consult with their tutor or research mentor without having to arrange for a baby sitter or transport, would that be better for them?
Educators and trainers who are coming to terms with the whys of using a 3D space often just have 2D tools to help them understand it. Videos, still images, presentations – they are not immersive tools. The best way to immerse is to dive in.
But touring virtual worlds isn’t the answer either. Whether the spaces you visit are teeming with people are devoid of life, you’re still an outsider if all you’re doing is observing. This is the problem we’re trying to tackle with ImmersED Estate, our virtual world presence built using the open source virtual world platform OpenSimulator (OpenSim).
We chose OpenSim over Second Life because OpenSim can be hosted by anyone with the hardware and supporting software needed for the program to run.It can be hosted on a LAN or even an individual computer. Some clever people have even run OpenSim off a USB.
ImmersED Estate
When visitors arrive at our estate’s Welcome Centre, they are presented with choices of activities aimed at giving them hands-on experience in using a virtual world to learn and resources to help them complete the activities and provide feedback on their experiences.
The two activities ready for you to test are the RolePlay and 3D Safari exercises.
RolePlay
The job interview Role Play area takes advantage of the ability to create a custom environment and costuming, as well as the sense of presence and level of interactivity that virtual worlds have to offer and allows educators to experience it as active participants.
Upon arrival, overview materials describe the activity and the learning objectives. Participants can choose to take the role of interviewer or that of the job seeker and are given separate sets of materials to help them prepare and carry out their roles. A fictitious company and job description are provided – or participants can choose a real-life job and company to use to better match their skills and abilities.
The outside area has a series of tutorial posters about the various in-world skills needed to complete the activity – i.e. how to walk, sit, text chat, take a photo, dress one’s avatar.
At the side of the interview building is an area where participants can choose a completely new avatar complete with hairstyle and clothing.
Supporting the in-world activity is a Moodle (an open-source learning management system) that has all the information and tutorials available in-world, plus the web site of the fictional company.
OpenSim’s voice chat on Reaction Grid (the public host) is still a work in progress. OpenSim is at the pre-Beta release stage (still in development). So users will conduct the job interview via text chat and then can afterwards copy and paste the entire transcript of the chat into a local document for review and reflection.
Because the host of our public estate keeps ReactionGrid PG so that it will be safe for younger learners, educators are invited to take part in this activity themselves and then to use it with their learners.
3D Safari
The 3D Safari exercise invites educators to put their understanding of the use of virtual worlds into action by exploring at least 3 educational sims hosted on the Reaction Grid with a colleague. They are given a set of questions to stimulate active reflection and are invited to share their thoughts with us when finished.
On the surface this is an exercise in active reflection but it will also provide educators with the chance to experience the sense of co-presence that virtual worlds provide, to see and experience a range of custom environments used in unique ways with different cohorts and to find a context to which they can relate.
The 3D Safari area has tutorial posters, an overview with learning objectives and links back to the Moodle site which also has
tutorials and resources.
Build your own 21st Century Learning Space
This is a coming attraction – we will be inviting a team of educators and one of students aged 9 to 16 to come in and create their ideal teaching/learning spaces in-world. More on this soon – register your interest by sending an email to immersed@educationau.edu.au
The SLOODLE Slab
One of the reasons we chose Moodle as our 2D support is that SLOODLE allows for interaction between Second Life and Moodle and is working towards the same sorts of activities between OpenSim and Moodle. We will start work on the SLOODLE Slab later this autumn and collaborators are very welcome.
Resources
The Moodle site
Having a 2D backup for this brave new world enables those brand new to virtual worlds to start with what might be a more familiar 2D environment. In addition to information about the estate and 2D versions of the tutorials and overviews, the site provides the opportunity for people to register and share their questions, insights and advice with others.
All the tutorial pages were created in a wiki to allow for members to contribute their own ideas. A forum area will allow people to support each other and us to interact asynchronously.
Synchronous tutorials
We will be providing regular in-world tours and training sessions throughout the month of April to get people off to a start in using the in-world resources we’ve made available. These sessions will include orientation activities such as how to navigate and communicate as well as overviews to the activities available on the island.
Welcome Centre
The welcome centre is like the home page of a 2D web site. It is a gateway to all the resources and activities on the island. Upstairs in the n00bies area, we’ve collected all the tutorials from the two activities. So if visitors prefer to focus on the nuts and bolts of virtual worlds rather than the activities – they can do so.
Resource Centre
The resource centre is a work in progress and will evolve over time. Currently the ground floor provides resources and links about the underlying educational research and philosophy of virtual worlds. The graffiti board and suggestion box invites visitors to share their thoughts and insights.
On the first floor, we make available all the in-world assets we’ve created to support the activities as freebies. So if educators decide to create their own OpenSim estate they can start out with what we’ve created and use it as they wish. We also plan to provide more information about the other educational sims available on Reaction Grid.
Get immersed!
We welcome any educator with the time and interest – whether you are a seasoned virtual worlds practitioner or just starting out – to use the facilities we’ve created and to share your experiences with us.
Start by visiting the ImmersED web site – http://immersed.net.au for information on system requirements and creating a free account with Reaction Grid so that you can access our estate.
We’d also welcome suggestions for future activities that you feel could really bring home the value of virtual worlds to education, training and careers.
Send me an email any time – kerry.johnson@esa.edu.au with any questions, bug finds or to put your name on a list for a live tour. In-world, I’m Pandora Kurrajong. Our generic avatar staffer in-world is Tessie Testa.
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