Yesterday the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWBPE) Conference began. Just after 2:00 pm (MST), I teleported to the VWBPE Stonehenge Social Hub and with a notable but surmountable fear, I managed to interact with a conference organizer enough to glean some suggestions about sessions to attend. I thus made my way to VWBPE East 2 and was able to catch the end of a fascinating presentation about the use of Second Life for clinical simulations. The presenters touted the safe but realistic environment afforded within the virtual world. They mentioned the practice that students gain in reading a vital sign machine and fetal monitor with no actual risk to a physical patient. Also noted were some general advantages of teaching “in world” such as increased student engagement and a novelty effect. The presenters made some suggestions to educators beginning their use of SL for education including starting with a small project and focusing on the strengths of Second Life. That is, use SL for educational tasks that could not be accomplished other ways.
I remained in VWBPE East for an additional session on the use of Second Life to learn language. The presenter certainly touted the capabilities of Second Life to allow emersion language learning and introduced an island that is staffed 16 hours a day where ESL students can go and speak with teachers. However, the teachers are not “teachers” on the island but are waiters/waitresses, bartenders, vendors etc. This enables students to learn by interaction!
After this presentation, I attended “Educating Through Machinima: Connecting the Learning Pixels through Virtual Film Making.” Don’t worry; I had no idea what machinima was either. And although I was tired at the end of a Friday, I did glean that the team of three presenters had created a film on Second Life, which they fully animated.
This morning my adventure began anew and I attended the latter portion of “Abstract Thoughts to Concrete Examples: Transferring Student Essays to the Virtual Realm in Second Life”. What an adventure! This literature instructor had an entire virtual realm where her students had given form to their essays. One of these included an intricate maze.
Immediately after the maze mingling, I headed to what might prove to be the most informative session of the conference. Tom Boellstorff was the presenter of Virtual Worlds, Culture and Change. An anthropologist, Tom Boellstorff studies Second Life culture. He has written a book entitled “Coming of Age in Second Life”. Clearly a leading authority on Second Life and particularly research in Second Life, Boellstorff had a “down to earth” presence. He spoke about how like all cultures, Second Life is always changing. He reminded his audience that in research we can learn the most from things that are the most everyday. Speaking of some of the uniqueness’s of Second Life, Boellstorff noted that it is possible to be immersed but not present. That is, right now as I write this, I am immersed in Second Life (sitting waiting for the next session to start) but I am not present because I am focusing on this writing. I could even get up and go get some coffee and lunch (which I am about to do) while still being immersed in SL. Several questions were asked as to whether SL is a single culture or many microcultures. Boellstorff’s treatment of this question was engaging as he described Second Life as having basic social norms but many subcultures. Boellstorff preferred the term physical world rather than real world because the term real world might denigrate SL to being something other than real. Which, he stated, is not the case.
Perhaps the portion of this session that was most exciting to me was Boellstorff’s experience with doing research in SL. He talked about the critique that some researchers have of interacting with participants solely in SL and not in the physical world. However, he noted that in fact, access to a more diverse participant group may be possible in SL and, in fact, may enhance the quality of the research. After hearing this presentation I was so elated and inspired for the possibility of doing my own dissertation research within SL. In fact, immediately after leaving the session, I purchased Boellstorff’s text on Amazon and can’t wait to receive it!
Though less engaging than the prior session, the session I attended next, “The Reality of Transcending the Virtual” raised the poignant question of what underpinning philosophy best explains virtual world interaction. The presenter argued that to best understand virtual world interactions we should change our philosophical approach, moving away from the Aristotelian binary of mind and body and toward a more Asian philosophy where connections and co-creation are emphasized.
Further afternoon sessions looked at the use of instructional design models such as the ADDIE and ARAD to design SL courses. Perhaps the most fascinating to me was the use of SL to create a virtual crime scene for a forensics course (Dr. Donald Lehman – University of Delaware). Dona Connors and Larken Shepherd of Middlesex Community College presented a fascinating session called As the Worlds Turn: In Search of the Perfect Virtual World. They talked about what is needed before deciding to use a virtual world for education (e.g. support from admin, access needs addressed, overcoming cost etc…). They discussed their use of many virtual worlds: Activeworlds, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, City of Heroes and There.com. (I posted links to all of these on the web page thread). During this session a couple of great reflections on the advantages of virtual worlds were shared. For example, most instructors see increased motivation as well as student-to-student interaction and student to instructor interaction. Many attendees to the session mentioned that office hours on SL seem to be more effective. I left this session determined to add at least one SL office hour to my online biochemistry class. Guess I might have to start to think about buying land!
The final session that I attended this afternoon was called Learning in a Virtual World: Using SL for Medical Education. The presenters spoke about the creation of a 1-hour synchronous training session for practicing physicians. The session focused on diabetes treatment and utilized a virtual patient for whom the doctors were given a profile. While I liked the idea of this interactive learning for practicing doctors, I was a bit disquieted by the profiling of the patient. She was profiled as an overweight Latina. I just felt like the profiling perpetuated marginalization.
Though most of my time was spent in sessions, during the first break of the day I did pop into a Jazz club and my avatar learned how to dance! What a laugh. I thought I had successfully stopped the animation upon leaving the Jazz club only to see my avatar break into fluid dance movements again in front of the club! It was quite a good time and only further reminded me how much I had to learn just because I needed it in order to live my full day in SL at the VWBPE Conference!
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