I've blogged about 'abductive reasoning' a couple of times before. This is a sort of action focussed speculative analysis, reasoning what might be, and is a common trait in designers.
After group heckling the atrocious film 'The Butterfly Effect' during the Emerge event in York last week, my mind has been full of time travel ideas, and I started wondering how abductive reasoning might be applied at the end of a research project, in a giant 'What if?' exercise. At the start of Open Habitat, I spent a lot of time applying abductive reasoning to the construction of project scenarios. Now that we have the benefit of experience behind us, what might we have done differently, and how catastrophically good or bad might that have been for the project? If we travel back in time to key points in the Open Habitat project, and imagine that we had made a different choice, where might we be now?
Showing posts with label openhabitat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label openhabitat. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Sunday, 1 February 2009
False Dichotomy
I love the potential for serendipitous moment when in public. As an avid fan of public transport I enjoy the excitement, and the dangers, and the opportunities for mental stimulation that mixing with all sort of strangers brings. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with nutters who happened to sit next to me on the train. I also recognise the value of closed communities, like a University degree course. When I'm at Uni, I have conversations with people that I automatically have something in common with. I know who they are, and they know who I am.
I love the potential for serendipitous moment when in Second Life. As an avid fan of random double clicking on the mainland map, I enjoy the excitement, and the dangers, and the opportunities for mental stimulation that mixing with all sort of strangers brings. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with nutters who happened to stand next to me on a sim. I also recognise the value of closed communities, like a University degree course's private OpenSim grid. If I had a Uni MUVE, I could have conversations with people that I automatically have something in common with. I would also know who they were, and they would know who I am.
It would be pretty sad if my students and I stayed inside Uni all the time, but it would be pretty pointless having a degree course if we spent all our time outside. Private is good. Public is good. Similarly, the public space of Second Life provides amazing opportunities for deep learning through role-play and engagement with worldwide communities, but a private OpenSim grid would give all of our students a safe space to inhabit. Authentic identities would enable a blending of the virtual and the real, and once hooked, the students would possess the necessary skills and confidence to stride out into Second Life as whoever they choose to be.
I love the potential for serendipitous moment when in Second Life. As an avid fan of random double clicking on the mainland map, I enjoy the excitement, and the dangers, and the opportunities for mental stimulation that mixing with all sort of strangers brings. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with nutters who happened to stand next to me on a sim. I also recognise the value of closed communities, like a University degree course's private OpenSim grid. If I had a Uni MUVE, I could have conversations with people that I automatically have something in common with. I would also know who they were, and they would know who I am.
It would be pretty sad if my students and I stayed inside Uni all the time, but it would be pretty pointless having a degree course if we spent all our time outside. Private is good. Public is good. Similarly, the public space of Second Life provides amazing opportunities for deep learning through role-play and engagement with worldwide communities, but a private OpenSim grid would give all of our students a safe space to inhabit. Authentic identities would enable a blending of the virtual and the real, and once hooked, the students would possess the necessary skills and confidence to stride out into Second Life as whoever they choose to be.
Saturday, 10 January 2009
Bigger. Better. More.
I thought I better spill some of the ideas I had whilst in London this week before they dissolve.
I took part in a one day Eduserv workshop on digital identities on Thurday, which used the design patterns format currently being explored by the PLANET project and others. This involved taking stories previously submitted by participants and working in small groups to distil patterns that might be of use to others. I've listened to various presentations about patterns before, but I could never get the image of knitting and wallpaper out of my head. It was only by going through the process of using this design patterns approach that I started to appreciate what it was all about. I still don't quite fully get it. The ultimate aim seems to be to produce a clear output - a solution to a problem within a particular context - so that others can take that and make use of it. This sets off a few warning bells for me, as it seems to suggest that it's about making written rules that others should follow, and I instinctively rebel against rules. The important thing about the process for me was the process, not the output. This process involved working with Andrew Eglinton's story about gauging his followers on Twitter, comparing it to Shirley William's Facebook story, discussing lots of aspects of identity in relation to these stories with Andrew, Shirley, Graham Hibbert, Mark Childes and Ed Barker, and pinning down our thoughts in the pattern template. The result was the identification of 'Digital Identity Panic' when previously disconnected personal social networks collide.
The value for me was the shared learning experience, with all the complex elements of socialisation, face to face communication, confidence building, bonding and fun. The thing we wrote down at the end of the session was of little value or interest in comparison to the experience of creating it, and I doubt it will be of much value to anyone else who wasn't there at the time. Does this matter? I sometimes find the obligation to measure and justify everything with cold, hard words in this strange new research world that I increasingly live in, a teensy bit depressing and possibly deeply wrong.
This leads me onto day 2 of my London jaunt, which was a major day of Open Habitat mopping up, ready for final report writing. Dave White's excellent new research assistant, Alison, interviewed me and Graham about the whole thing, from before Emerge to now. It was really good to have the opportunity to rabbit on for several hours about all of the things that I feel passionate about in relation to learning. It's all so crystal clear in the context of an interview. During the interview, I really felt it all - why we are spending all this time and effort doing this research. All of the subtleties and complexities and connection between the bigger picture and the minute details spilt out all over the place. It became evident during the interview that we moved beyond piloting half way through the project, and the thing we have been calling the second pilot is actually the embedding and implementation of the research - stage four of the UIDM. The second phase saw mass Open Sim inductions with 125 first year students, and the running of an assessed project within an existing module.
The original aim of the Open Habitat project, collaborative learning, was thoroughly tested through the use of the excellent 10 principles that Steve and Marga derived from our last London workshop. This was the bit that still remained the 'research' bit in the second pilot. This was the thing that was structured, purposeful, on-message but uncertain. As I argued with Steve Warburton when he joined us in the afternoon, collaboration is not the most important part of what we have done with Open Habitat, and it is certainly not the most successful element, but it is what we set out to test, and it is what we are best able to demonstrate our testing of. The really important but less measurable stuff like students getting better at learning more rapidly, being happier, gaining confident, enjoying a higher level of personal support and becoming more creative, are the bits that we needed no evidence of in order to proceed to implementation.
Our discussion about collaboration in London has provoked more thoughts. I think that there are two main reasons that collaborative learning didn't work out as I'd hoped in Open Habitat. The first is the nature of the students. Artist generally don't like to collaborate directly with other artists. They might put on a group exhibition, but the wouldn't share a canvas. Designers like to collaborate with everyone except other designers. They'll work with a printer and a client, but they get would find it hard to agree on the best typeface with a peer. (yes, i know this is an easily disputed generalisation, but for the sake of argument..). There is a saying that we often hear in our department - "You can't design by committee". Open source challenges that, and despite the frustrations that I have experienced trying to make collaboration work during Open Habitat, I still believe that there is potential to crack this nut. One of the reason that open source works is that it has a potentially huge worldwide community of collaborators, a fertile environment (sourceforge or whatever) to support collaboration, self-motivated participants, and lots of decentralised time to spend on the job. How well would a 3 week open source pilot work with 10 new programmers? What I'm trying to say is that the restrictions imposed by the need to measure the research - two 3 week pilots with 10 students at a time - destroyed any chance of it succeeding at the level that I would want it to. It forced us to impose a level of control through induction and briefs that denied the rhizomic swellings that I still dream of witnessing.
What we need to do now if we want to help this dream become a reality is open the doors and enable hundreds of students to access their own virtual world with no control whatsoever imposed on them. One massive blank canvas with enough room and time for hundreds of students to learn what they want with whoever they want, gently teased along by skilled tutors inquiring about each individual's learning. I probably won't get funding for this, but I don't care. BRING ON THE OPENSIM!
I took part in a one day Eduserv workshop on digital identities on Thurday, which used the design patterns format currently being explored by the PLANET project and others. This involved taking stories previously submitted by participants and working in small groups to distil patterns that might be of use to others. I've listened to various presentations about patterns before, but I could never get the image of knitting and wallpaper out of my head. It was only by going through the process of using this design patterns approach that I started to appreciate what it was all about. I still don't quite fully get it. The ultimate aim seems to be to produce a clear output - a solution to a problem within a particular context - so that others can take that and make use of it. This sets off a few warning bells for me, as it seems to suggest that it's about making written rules that others should follow, and I instinctively rebel against rules. The important thing about the process for me was the process, not the output. This process involved working with Andrew Eglinton's story about gauging his followers on Twitter, comparing it to Shirley William's Facebook story, discussing lots of aspects of identity in relation to these stories with Andrew, Shirley, Graham Hibbert, Mark Childes and Ed Barker, and pinning down our thoughts in the pattern template. The result was the identification of 'Digital Identity Panic' when previously disconnected personal social networks collide.
The value for me was the shared learning experience, with all the complex elements of socialisation, face to face communication, confidence building, bonding and fun. The thing we wrote down at the end of the session was of little value or interest in comparison to the experience of creating it, and I doubt it will be of much value to anyone else who wasn't there at the time. Does this matter? I sometimes find the obligation to measure and justify everything with cold, hard words in this strange new research world that I increasingly live in, a teensy bit depressing and possibly deeply wrong.
This leads me onto day 2 of my London jaunt, which was a major day of Open Habitat mopping up, ready for final report writing. Dave White's excellent new research assistant, Alison, interviewed me and Graham about the whole thing, from before Emerge to now. It was really good to have the opportunity to rabbit on for several hours about all of the things that I feel passionate about in relation to learning. It's all so crystal clear in the context of an interview. During the interview, I really felt it all - why we are spending all this time and effort doing this research. All of the subtleties and complexities and connection between the bigger picture and the minute details spilt out all over the place. It became evident during the interview that we moved beyond piloting half way through the project, and the thing we have been calling the second pilot is actually the embedding and implementation of the research - stage four of the UIDM. The second phase saw mass Open Sim inductions with 125 first year students, and the running of an assessed project within an existing module.
The original aim of the Open Habitat project, collaborative learning, was thoroughly tested through the use of the excellent 10 principles that Steve and Marga derived from our last London workshop. This was the bit that still remained the 'research' bit in the second pilot. This was the thing that was structured, purposeful, on-message but uncertain. As I argued with Steve Warburton when he joined us in the afternoon, collaboration is not the most important part of what we have done with Open Habitat, and it is certainly not the most successful element, but it is what we set out to test, and it is what we are best able to demonstrate our testing of. The really important but less measurable stuff like students getting better at learning more rapidly, being happier, gaining confident, enjoying a higher level of personal support and becoming more creative, are the bits that we needed no evidence of in order to proceed to implementation.
Our discussion about collaboration in London has provoked more thoughts. I think that there are two main reasons that collaborative learning didn't work out as I'd hoped in Open Habitat. The first is the nature of the students. Artist generally don't like to collaborate directly with other artists. They might put on a group exhibition, but the wouldn't share a canvas. Designers like to collaborate with everyone except other designers. They'll work with a printer and a client, but they get would find it hard to agree on the best typeface with a peer. (yes, i know this is an easily disputed generalisation, but for the sake of argument..). There is a saying that we often hear in our department - "You can't design by committee". Open source challenges that, and despite the frustrations that I have experienced trying to make collaboration work during Open Habitat, I still believe that there is potential to crack this nut. One of the reason that open source works is that it has a potentially huge worldwide community of collaborators, a fertile environment (sourceforge or whatever) to support collaboration, self-motivated participants, and lots of decentralised time to spend on the job. How well would a 3 week open source pilot work with 10 new programmers? What I'm trying to say is that the restrictions imposed by the need to measure the research - two 3 week pilots with 10 students at a time - destroyed any chance of it succeeding at the level that I would want it to. It forced us to impose a level of control through induction and briefs that denied the rhizomic swellings that I still dream of witnessing.
What we need to do now if we want to help this dream become a reality is open the doors and enable hundreds of students to access their own virtual world with no control whatsoever imposed on them. One massive blank canvas with enough room and time for hundreds of students to learn what they want with whoever they want, gently teased along by skilled tutors inquiring about each individual's learning. I probably won't get funding for this, but I don't care. BRING ON THE OPENSIM!
Friday, 5 December 2008
Nicht in Berlin
It's been painful not being in Berlin at the Educa conference this week. I was all geared up for the usual live video link, but was shocked to find that there was no stream. The only link I had was a healthy Twitter channel, but this just teased me and made me wish I was there even more. Judging from the tweets, Graham Hibbert was doing a sterling job, but I felt 'disempowered', as they used to say in the 80s. I was stuck in snowy Leeds wasting my efforts on local problems that haven't changed for 20 years and could be tackled by any number of people, when I should have been in Germany helping to shape the future of education. Well, in the absence of detailed information, that's what I imagined was happening. Even two intense blog posting sessions (Inventing the VSE concept and making sense of the entire Open Habitat project) didn't really make me feel any better.
However, this morning a tweet came through flagging up the live 'Sounds of the Bazaar' radio broadcast with Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser, and a link to a parallel chat room. Ah, this was just what I needed to cheer me up. I challenge anyone to feel negative when Graham A and Josie F are on the mic. The chatroom gave me an opportunity to talk some rubbish and tell a few bad jokes which, at the end of the day, was all I was really missing.
The parallel text chat room seemed to be some sort of instant freeby widget/gadget/mini-application type thing. Essentially, a load of random people clicked a link and signed in and suddenly we were all together in a spontaneously generated virtual text-space.
Now, there is no reason why that couldn't have been a multi-user virtual environment. Maybe Wonderland could be put to use to provide a simple on demand Java webstart 3D chat space, with open log-ins just like today. No sign-up hassles. Noobs welcome. An open 3D world just when you need it.
However, this morning a tweet came through flagging up the live 'Sounds of the Bazaar' radio broadcast with Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser, and a link to a parallel chat room. Ah, this was just what I needed to cheer me up. I challenge anyone to feel negative when Graham A and Josie F are on the mic. The chatroom gave me an opportunity to talk some rubbish and tell a few bad jokes which, at the end of the day, was all I was really missing.
The parallel text chat room seemed to be some sort of instant freeby widget/gadget/mini-application type thing. Essentially, a load of random people clicked a link and signed in and suddenly we were all together in a spontaneously generated virtual text-space.
Now, there is no reason why that couldn't have been a multi-user virtual environment. Maybe Wonderland could be put to use to provide a simple on demand Java webstart 3D chat space, with open log-ins just like today. No sign-up hassles. Noobs welcome. An open 3D world just when you need it.
Thursday, 4 December 2008
Augment with OpenSim. Immerse with Second Life.
As we start rounding up the Open Habitat project, I've been thinking about how things might be in the future. I think the relationship between OpenSim and Second Life is an important one to focus on, especially when we are considering the use of virtual worlds in a fee paying, assessment driven, accreditation dependent blended learning context. Let me try to explain:
A student applies to a course and pays fees. They want marks, because marks equal credit points, and credit points add up to a degree. Fair enough. If we want to give them marks, we need to know who they are and what they have done. If they produce work in Second Life, then we invariably need to betray the identity of the avatar, so the puppeteer can get credit for the learning. This limits the potential for the really deep learning that a full-on immersionist/role play/fantasy apporoach enables. Can the immersionist ideal ever fully function in a traditional accreditation dependent framework? How might an immersionist programme of learning function? Is there really a need for any sort of formal framework for this immersonist extreme? Perhaps the role play involves an avatar going to University. The person behind the avatar may lack the usual credentials required to gain entry into a proper University, but in Second Life, the admissions criteria might be different, and the evidence could be fabricated. Maybe the avatar could pay fees (in Linden Dollars, obviously), and this could pay for the tutorial support and course design. Maybe this already happens, I don't know. What if the teacher-avatars were playing this role? Maybe pretend teachers could learn how to teach pretend students who are pretending to learn? What about quality? Perhaps a pretend Ofsted or QAA inspector could pay an unannounced visit, and suck all of the energy and enthusiasm out of everyone with an overly simplistic snap judgement about how everyone is doing it all wrong.
I'm rambling a bit, but one of the most significant aspects of the Open Habitat project for me has been the way that I've been able to role play pedagogy. By adapting my beliefs about education to suit a virtual environment, I've had to work out what my beliefs really are. In the process, I've realised just how powerful the art education model is, and that we aren't actually implementing it as well as we should in 'real life'. Recently, I've been reeled back in by the institution to run such a real-life course, but because of Open Habitat I know exactly how to do it. And I'm doing it. And it's better. Real benefits from virtual world research.
Still rambling. Stay with me...
Back to the OpenSim thing. Lets go to the augmentationist side now. On my real life course, I have 317 students. They all use the (dare I call it) virtual studio environment that Graham built to share their joy with fellow students and staff. They don't need to sign up. If they've enrolled on the course, they just log in and start uploading. They don't need to agree to the terms and conditions of some mystery company in America. They are all called what they are called in real life. Some of them sync their Flickr accounts, but many have never heard of Flickr, and might not want to share themselves and their work with the world anyway. So, might OpenSim provide every student with an instant virtual world to create, communicate and collaborate? No sign up. No name choosing. Just download a customised client, and log in using your usual user-name and password.
In the same way that all students can upload images to the VSE, but some also choose to have public Flickr accounts, could some students then choose to sign up to Second Life and do the whole public/role play thing? If they are familiar with OpenSim, I think that they will be more likely to engage meaningfully with Second Life. This also tackles that problem of the taught delivery part of the pilots, which were great in many ways, especially in our use of the standalone version of OpenSim, but I like the rhizome thing. It's what's happened with our VSE. Graham designed a tool that everyone could log into and work out how to use, all by themselves, in minutes. We were supposed to train everybody up in the 'teacher in front' way, but we got distracted, and the students and staff just got on with it. If you make a well designed tool available to everyone, then they will work it out. Especially if it is fun and useful. If we put a button on our VSE to an OpenSim world, they would click it and log in. They would phone their friends who would also log in, their avatars would meet, and the whole thing would explode.
Right. I've convinced myself. How can we make this happen? We need OpenSim running on a server somewhere. I could do this through LeedsMet's computing services department, but I'm a bit scared of them (my problem, not theirs), so I probably won't. Is there an OpenSim community dude who might host an island for us? We would need to create 317 accounts (or 600 if we do the whole School) using the database of usernames and passwords we have for the VSE. Graham could work with a friendly OpenSim dude to do this quite quickly. We will need a tweaked version of the Second Life client. This is just a standard client with a different login URI in the arguments.txt file. Can we do this under the T&C of the opensource client? Surely we can.
I want to do it! I want to do it! Lets do it!
For me, the logical conclusion to the Open Habitat project is to create an open-source open habitat for our students. We must recognise that the Second Life focussed art & design mini pilots, despite our best efforts, have produced visitors. Only by giving the whole school their own virtual playground and plenty of playtime, will our students ever become residents in a virtual world.
A student applies to a course and pays fees. They want marks, because marks equal credit points, and credit points add up to a degree. Fair enough. If we want to give them marks, we need to know who they are and what they have done. If they produce work in Second Life, then we invariably need to betray the identity of the avatar, so the puppeteer can get credit for the learning. This limits the potential for the really deep learning that a full-on immersionist/role play/fantasy apporoach enables. Can the immersionist ideal ever fully function in a traditional accreditation dependent framework? How might an immersionist programme of learning function? Is there really a need for any sort of formal framework for this immersonist extreme? Perhaps the role play involves an avatar going to University. The person behind the avatar may lack the usual credentials required to gain entry into a proper University, but in Second Life, the admissions criteria might be different, and the evidence could be fabricated. Maybe the avatar could pay fees (in Linden Dollars, obviously), and this could pay for the tutorial support and course design. Maybe this already happens, I don't know. What if the teacher-avatars were playing this role? Maybe pretend teachers could learn how to teach pretend students who are pretending to learn? What about quality? Perhaps a pretend Ofsted or QAA inspector could pay an unannounced visit, and suck all of the energy and enthusiasm out of everyone with an overly simplistic snap judgement about how everyone is doing it all wrong.
I'm rambling a bit, but one of the most significant aspects of the Open Habitat project for me has been the way that I've been able to role play pedagogy. By adapting my beliefs about education to suit a virtual environment, I've had to work out what my beliefs really are. In the process, I've realised just how powerful the art education model is, and that we aren't actually implementing it as well as we should in 'real life'. Recently, I've been reeled back in by the institution to run such a real-life course, but because of Open Habitat I know exactly how to do it. And I'm doing it. And it's better. Real benefits from virtual world research.
Still rambling. Stay with me...
Back to the OpenSim thing. Lets go to the augmentationist side now. On my real life course, I have 317 students. They all use the (dare I call it) virtual studio environment that Graham built to share their joy with fellow students and staff. They don't need to sign up. If they've enrolled on the course, they just log in and start uploading. They don't need to agree to the terms and conditions of some mystery company in America. They are all called what they are called in real life. Some of them sync their Flickr accounts, but many have never heard of Flickr, and might not want to share themselves and their work with the world anyway. So, might OpenSim provide every student with an instant virtual world to create, communicate and collaborate? No sign up. No name choosing. Just download a customised client, and log in using your usual user-name and password.
In the same way that all students can upload images to the VSE, but some also choose to have public Flickr accounts, could some students then choose to sign up to Second Life and do the whole public/role play thing? If they are familiar with OpenSim, I think that they will be more likely to engage meaningfully with Second Life. This also tackles that problem of the taught delivery part of the pilots, which were great in many ways, especially in our use of the standalone version of OpenSim, but I like the rhizome thing. It's what's happened with our VSE. Graham designed a tool that everyone could log into and work out how to use, all by themselves, in minutes. We were supposed to train everybody up in the 'teacher in front' way, but we got distracted, and the students and staff just got on with it. If you make a well designed tool available to everyone, then they will work it out. Especially if it is fun and useful. If we put a button on our VSE to an OpenSim world, they would click it and log in. They would phone their friends who would also log in, their avatars would meet, and the whole thing would explode.
Right. I've convinced myself. How can we make this happen? We need OpenSim running on a server somewhere. I could do this through LeedsMet's computing services department, but I'm a bit scared of them (my problem, not theirs), so I probably won't. Is there an OpenSim community dude who might host an island for us? We would need to create 317 accounts (or 600 if we do the whole School) using the database of usernames and passwords we have for the VSE. Graham could work with a friendly OpenSim dude to do this quite quickly. We will need a tweaked version of the Second Life client. This is just a standard client with a different login URI in the arguments.txt file. Can we do this under the T&C of the opensource client? Surely we can.
I want to do it! I want to do it! Lets do it!
For me, the logical conclusion to the Open Habitat project is to create an open-source open habitat for our students. We must recognise that the Second Life focussed art & design mini pilots, despite our best efforts, have produced visitors. Only by giving the whole school their own virtual playground and plenty of playtime, will our students ever become residents in a virtual world.
Virtual Studio Environment
More thoughts about the virtual studio environment idea:
What is a studio environment?
Art & Design education is predominantly studio based. Large, open spaces provide students with opportunities to learn through doing, supported by peers, tutors and technicians. The space and the overall learning experience is shaped by the students and the work that they produce. The walls and floors are filled with the ongoing products of learning, and provide a focus for dialogue. Informal, conversation based formative assessment is the predominant form of academic support. Formal delivery of content is minimal, and sometimes completely absent. Knowledge is transmitted from tutors to students through individualised feedback, and by students working alongside staff who are also active creative practitioners.
What is the virtual studio environment?
The VSE provides a range of networked software tools to augment or replicate the studio environment.
The primary tool for supporting the studio environment approach is an asynchronous web-based ePortfolio-like tool with a range of familiar features.
Uploads - Let's stick our work on the walls
Students and staff are able to upload work in progress in the form of images, video and text to their personal space within this tool.
Comments - Lets chat about your work
Work can be viewed by any member of the community, and comments can be added, enabling dialogue around particular piece of work.
Groups - This is our corner of the studio
The community provides the provision for multiple membership of groups within the tool to support a range of focussed learning activities. If the VSE is used in a formal educational context, community members are automatically assigned to their relevant course and level groups. Any member of the community can set up their own group, which provides them with similar functionality to the course groups. The membership of these sub-groups is invitation, but group owners can allow open membership, permitting anyone from the wider community to join. All groups provide a list of all members of that group (all students and staff, in the case of a course group), with links to their work.
Notices - I read it on the notice board.
The tool also provides a facility for posting notices that are relevant to that group, which appear as soon as a member logs in.
Sending images to a group - Lets pin all this stuff on our wall
Any member of a group can send a piece of their work to the group which appears in the 'recent items' stream. In the case of the course groups, work is automatically shown in the course stream when it is uploaded, providing a constantly refreshing view of recent activity.
Resources - I picked up a handout with all that stuff on it
There is a section within each group for the administrator to upload core resources such as PDFs of assessment criteria, but the emphasis is on the contributions of the members.
Discussion boards - Let's have a debate about this.
A discussion board tool is provided in each group to facilitate focussed dialogue.
Messages - Can I have a quiet word?
A messaging system allows private communication between members of the community, and a facility exists for the administrators of groups to send bulk messages to members of their group. For tutors, this provides an efficient and focussed method for communicating course and level specific information, such as upcoming events or meetings. For the administrators of other groups, such as a project group, it allows focussed communication to the members of that sub-group.
Feedback - Don't tell my mates, but...
Each student is provided with a feedback section which is only visible to that particular student and their tutors, allowing a level of privacy but allowing several tutors to support individual students. Both the individual students and staff can add text to this ongoing tutorial record, and students are encouraged to record and reflect on feedback received in synchronous tutorials in this section. Students record all relevant conversations with staff, and personal tutors check this section to ensure that the conversations were understood. This also allows tutors to gain an insight into conversations that their personal students are having with other tutors.
External services - I also stuck this on the wall outside.
As well as providing a core set of tools that all students and staff can use, the VSE allows members to integrate external services such as Flickr, Delicious and Blogger. The tool can be configured by the user to either automatically publish to these tools, or to fetch new content from them. This allows members to continue using familiar third party tools, and gives them the opportunity to show their work to a wider audience whilst sharing this activity with the local community via the VSE.
Identity management - Who are you?
Like the VLE and the ePortfolio, the gatekeeper of the VSE is an identity management system. Students log-in using either a central institutional database linked to their enrolment status (if the provision is paid for and students require accreditation), or via an open identity management system.
Synchronous tools
If the VSE is used to augment a physical learning context, then the primary synchronous learning environment is a traditional studio, and the primary form of support is in the form of face-to-face dialogue and formative assessment. In this context, the tool is used to reduce the amount of time staff traditionally spend on tracking, recording and controlling students, freeing up time to maximise face-to-face learning conversations.
In a distance context, other synchronous tools are required to replicate the studio environment.
Multi-user virtual environments.
User generated content focussed MUVEs such as Second Life provide learners with an environment that is highly conducive to studio based learning. Students and staff are able to function as creative practitioners in these environments in a manner that is very similar to how they would operate in a physical studio. The production of artwork in these virtual spaces can be witnessed by peers and tutors, and the synchronous communication tools allow learning conversations to take place around the work. When identity authenticity and a closed environment are important, open source solution such as OpenSim provide the opportunity for a close integration of the 2D and 3D aspects of the VSE. Commercial services such as Second Life provide the potential for richer learning through role play and exploration, and may have a looser link with the VSE. In the case of an open community, the Second Life identity may be the authentic identity in the VSE.
Conferencing tools.
Live conferencing tools such as Elluminate can facilitate group and individual tutorials, as they provide the facility not only for voice and video chat, but also for sharing and annotating 2D artwork. The whiteboard facility acts at the 'table' of the tutorial. Any artwork placed on it can be drawn and written on, as would happen in traditional tutorial. Conferencing tools are also suitable for the traditional 'crit' or presentation of outcomes in a group situation, as well as supporting ideation and brainstorming activities. They also provide an ideal platform for collaborative working. When 3D conferencing platforms such as Sun's Wonderland platform mature, they may also provide the VSE with an enhanced environment for dialogue.
Sounds good in theory, but will it work?
The description of a VSE above is based on a system that is currently operational within the Leeds School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design at Leeds Metropolitan University. The asynchronous toolset is a php/mySQL system that has been developed in-house over the last three years, and is currently used by over 600 students and staff. The system has proved to be huge success with both students and staff alike, and over 59 000 items have been uploaded to the tool. As this VSE has been implemented on a physically located set of courses, the synchronous toolset described above has proved less necessary. However, through the JISC funded Open Habitat project, we have developed good practice guidelines for the use of multi user virtual environments in a studio context, making use of both OpenSim and Second Life with students in the School. Through our membership of the JISC Emerge community of practice, we have made extensive use of Elluminate, which has just been adopted by LeedsMet as its conferencing platform.
What next?
We need to work with others to evaluate and develop the virtual studio environment concept. We currently lack the capacity to evaluate the wealth of existing data in our current system, and we do not have the resources to turn our prototype into a robust and scalable solution. Graham Hibbert has developed the current prototype, and Ian Truelove has implemented it across the School. In addition to Ian and Graham, we need an experienced evaluator, a software developer with expertise in php/SQL, .net and service orientated architecture, networking support from LeedsMet computing services, a project manager and some funding to pay for it all.
What is a studio environment?
Art & Design education is predominantly studio based. Large, open spaces provide students with opportunities to learn through doing, supported by peers, tutors and technicians. The space and the overall learning experience is shaped by the students and the work that they produce. The walls and floors are filled with the ongoing products of learning, and provide a focus for dialogue. Informal, conversation based formative assessment is the predominant form of academic support. Formal delivery of content is minimal, and sometimes completely absent. Knowledge is transmitted from tutors to students through individualised feedback, and by students working alongside staff who are also active creative practitioners.
What is the virtual studio environment?
The VSE provides a range of networked software tools to augment or replicate the studio environment.
The primary tool for supporting the studio environment approach is an asynchronous web-based ePortfolio-like tool with a range of familiar features.
Uploads - Let's stick our work on the walls
Students and staff are able to upload work in progress in the form of images, video and text to their personal space within this tool.
Comments - Lets chat about your work
Work can be viewed by any member of the community, and comments can be added, enabling dialogue around particular piece of work.
Groups - This is our corner of the studio
The community provides the provision for multiple membership of groups within the tool to support a range of focussed learning activities. If the VSE is used in a formal educational context, community members are automatically assigned to their relevant course and level groups. Any member of the community can set up their own group, which provides them with similar functionality to the course groups. The membership of these sub-groups is invitation, but group owners can allow open membership, permitting anyone from the wider community to join. All groups provide a list of all members of that group (all students and staff, in the case of a course group), with links to their work.
Notices - I read it on the notice board.
The tool also provides a facility for posting notices that are relevant to that group, which appear as soon as a member logs in.
Sending images to a group - Lets pin all this stuff on our wall
Any member of a group can send a piece of their work to the group which appears in the 'recent items' stream. In the case of the course groups, work is automatically shown in the course stream when it is uploaded, providing a constantly refreshing view of recent activity.
Resources - I picked up a handout with all that stuff on it
There is a section within each group for the administrator to upload core resources such as PDFs of assessment criteria, but the emphasis is on the contributions of the members.
Discussion boards - Let's have a debate about this.
A discussion board tool is provided in each group to facilitate focussed dialogue.
Messages - Can I have a quiet word?
A messaging system allows private communication between members of the community, and a facility exists for the administrators of groups to send bulk messages to members of their group. For tutors, this provides an efficient and focussed method for communicating course and level specific information, such as upcoming events or meetings. For the administrators of other groups, such as a project group, it allows focussed communication to the members of that sub-group.
Feedback - Don't tell my mates, but...
Each student is provided with a feedback section which is only visible to that particular student and their tutors, allowing a level of privacy but allowing several tutors to support individual students. Both the individual students and staff can add text to this ongoing tutorial record, and students are encouraged to record and reflect on feedback received in synchronous tutorials in this section. Students record all relevant conversations with staff, and personal tutors check this section to ensure that the conversations were understood. This also allows tutors to gain an insight into conversations that their personal students are having with other tutors.
External services - I also stuck this on the wall outside.
As well as providing a core set of tools that all students and staff can use, the VSE allows members to integrate external services such as Flickr, Delicious and Blogger. The tool can be configured by the user to either automatically publish to these tools, or to fetch new content from them. This allows members to continue using familiar third party tools, and gives them the opportunity to show their work to a wider audience whilst sharing this activity with the local community via the VSE.
Identity management - Who are you?
Like the VLE and the ePortfolio, the gatekeeper of the VSE is an identity management system. Students log-in using either a central institutional database linked to their enrolment status (if the provision is paid for and students require accreditation), or via an open identity management system.
Synchronous tools
If the VSE is used to augment a physical learning context, then the primary synchronous learning environment is a traditional studio, and the primary form of support is in the form of face-to-face dialogue and formative assessment. In this context, the tool is used to reduce the amount of time staff traditionally spend on tracking, recording and controlling students, freeing up time to maximise face-to-face learning conversations.
In a distance context, other synchronous tools are required to replicate the studio environment.
Multi-user virtual environments.
User generated content focussed MUVEs such as Second Life provide learners with an environment that is highly conducive to studio based learning. Students and staff are able to function as creative practitioners in these environments in a manner that is very similar to how they would operate in a physical studio. The production of artwork in these virtual spaces can be witnessed by peers and tutors, and the synchronous communication tools allow learning conversations to take place around the work. When identity authenticity and a closed environment are important, open source solution such as OpenSim provide the opportunity for a close integration of the 2D and 3D aspects of the VSE. Commercial services such as Second Life provide the potential for richer learning through role play and exploration, and may have a looser link with the VSE. In the case of an open community, the Second Life identity may be the authentic identity in the VSE.
Conferencing tools.
Live conferencing tools such as Elluminate can facilitate group and individual tutorials, as they provide the facility not only for voice and video chat, but also for sharing and annotating 2D artwork. The whiteboard facility acts at the 'table' of the tutorial. Any artwork placed on it can be drawn and written on, as would happen in traditional tutorial. Conferencing tools are also suitable for the traditional 'crit' or presentation of outcomes in a group situation, as well as supporting ideation and brainstorming activities. They also provide an ideal platform for collaborative working. When 3D conferencing platforms such as Sun's Wonderland platform mature, they may also provide the VSE with an enhanced environment for dialogue.
Sounds good in theory, but will it work?
The description of a VSE above is based on a system that is currently operational within the Leeds School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design at Leeds Metropolitan University. The asynchronous toolset is a php/mySQL system that has been developed in-house over the last three years, and is currently used by over 600 students and staff. The system has proved to be huge success with both students and staff alike, and over 59 000 items have been uploaded to the tool. As this VSE has been implemented on a physically located set of courses, the synchronous toolset described above has proved less necessary. However, through the JISC funded Open Habitat project, we have developed good practice guidelines for the use of multi user virtual environments in a studio context, making use of both OpenSim and Second Life with students in the School. Through our membership of the JISC Emerge community of practice, we have made extensive use of Elluminate, which has just been adopted by LeedsMet as its conferencing platform.
What next?
We need to work with others to evaluate and develop the virtual studio environment concept. We currently lack the capacity to evaluate the wealth of existing data in our current system, and we do not have the resources to turn our prototype into a robust and scalable solution. Graham Hibbert has developed the current prototype, and Ian Truelove has implemented it across the School. In addition to Ian and Graham, we need an experienced evaluator, a software developer with expertise in php/SQL, .net and service orientated architecture, networking support from LeedsMet computing services, a project manager and some funding to pay for it all.
Friday, 28 November 2008
The future of the VLE - The VSE?
I've been dipping in and out of the JISC Emerge online conference as best I can over the last two days. It's great to be involved in these debates with a bunch of people that really know what they are on about.
Today's session was about the future of the Virtual Learning Environment. As the leader of a course that has 'opted out' of the institutional VLE, and built something that serves the needs of our students a lot better, I was heartened to hear other voices questioning the supremacy of the VLE. There were a couple of things that set me thinking. The big one was the connectivist thing about future educational institutions primarily serving the purpose of accreditation. This was echoed by talk of the importance of identity management and interoperability, when a range of technical services are combined by students to enhance learning. Other thoughts I had, but didn't necessarily voice, were around the importance of different sized groupings of learners. My biggest problem with our VLE is the wall that is put around each module. This denies other, in my opinion, more powerful groupings of learners. The one day project with 20 students that are, on that day, interested in learning about solving an advertising brief. The 3 year long grouping of a cohort. The 3 years worth of students on a programme. The trans-institutional and non-institutionalised groups of learners. There are many ways in which we can encourage and permit different sized learning communities, with different membership, but the VLE seems only to permit and encourage one that is based on the module.
Other thoughts: Do we have an ePortfolio tool? I keep calling our Flickr-like VLE alternative an ePortfolio tool, but it's clear that we have something that is quite different to other eportfolios. One term that was mentioned was the VRE - the Virtual Research Environment. Maybe it's that. I always think of it as being like the traditional art school studio learning environment - a space that students and staff occupy, where work is produced and stuck onto the walls, and it is discussed and reflected on. So I might invent a new thing to call our tool - the Virtual Studio Environment, or VSE. It sounds a bit more like an evolution of a VLE, and less confrontational. It also links perfectly with our Open Habitat research, as we are essentially applying the same principal there, but in 3D.
Today's session was about the future of the Virtual Learning Environment. As the leader of a course that has 'opted out' of the institutional VLE, and built something that serves the needs of our students a lot better, I was heartened to hear other voices questioning the supremacy of the VLE. There were a couple of things that set me thinking. The big one was the connectivist thing about future educational institutions primarily serving the purpose of accreditation. This was echoed by talk of the importance of identity management and interoperability, when a range of technical services are combined by students to enhance learning. Other thoughts I had, but didn't necessarily voice, were around the importance of different sized groupings of learners. My biggest problem with our VLE is the wall that is put around each module. This denies other, in my opinion, more powerful groupings of learners. The one day project with 20 students that are, on that day, interested in learning about solving an advertising brief. The 3 year long grouping of a cohort. The 3 years worth of students on a programme. The trans-institutional and non-institutionalised groups of learners. There are many ways in which we can encourage and permit different sized learning communities, with different membership, but the VLE seems only to permit and encourage one that is based on the module.
Other thoughts: Do we have an ePortfolio tool? I keep calling our Flickr-like VLE alternative an ePortfolio tool, but it's clear that we have something that is quite different to other eportfolios. One term that was mentioned was the VRE - the Virtual Research Environment. Maybe it's that. I always think of it as being like the traditional art school studio learning environment - a space that students and staff occupy, where work is produced and stuck onto the walls, and it is discussed and reflected on. So I might invent a new thing to call our tool - the Virtual Studio Environment, or VSE. It sounds a bit more like an evolution of a VLE, and less confrontational. It also links perfectly with our Open Habitat research, as we are essentially applying the same principal there, but in 3D.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Lessons ignored
I've just run a Second Life induction session for Library staff. I originally intended to do the established 'OpenSim standalone first' plan of action, but as I only had an hour with them, I decided to jump straight into the Second Life sign up, so that I could show off LeedsMet's islands.
All was going well, until the second person in the room got through the registration process. And it all came flooding back to me.
'Registration Denied!'
The old 'multiple sign-up from the same IP address' thing reared its ugly head, and I remembered why we worked out a different way of tackling Second Life induction. Anyway, it was too late to start fiddling about with Terminal to get OpenSim up and running, so I did a big screen fly through of the islands, and went onto Lecture auto-pilot.
Note to self: Follow the recommendations of your own research project in future, idiot.
All was going well, until the second person in the room got through the registration process. And it all came flooding back to me.
'Registration Denied!'
The old 'multiple sign-up from the same IP address' thing reared its ugly head, and I remembered why we worked out a different way of tackling Second Life induction. Anyway, it was too late to start fiddling about with Terminal to get OpenSim up and running, so I did a big screen fly through of the islands, and went onto Lecture auto-pilot.
Note to self: Follow the recommendations of your own research project in future, idiot.
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