Skoolaborate: a growing success, despite government ineptitude

I spent this morning at a session organised for a team of French innovators called ‘Lead Educators : Virtual Worlds and the Immersive Web’ . I’ll talk more about that in another post but I wanted to devote this one to a topic we’ve covered previously: Skoolaborate.

Since that time, there’s been some incredible progress, with more than forty schools now involved. I had the opportunity to see Skoolaborate up close at Sydney’s MLC School today. Director of Online Learning at MLC and Skoolaborate‘s founder, Westley Field, spent an hour or so presenting the outcomes to date from the project, which was established in 2007. Essentially, the outcomes demonstrate the power of a well designed 2D content delivery system combined with the use of Skoolaborate‘s islands in Second Life. Here’s a small example of such an outcome:

The main messages I took out of the session aren’t news to educators working regularly with virtual worlds, but they bear repeating for the rest of us:

1. Virtual worlds provide a powerful complementary role within the broader learning context

2. Some students immerse themselves in the virtual world aspects, others don’t like it, and most fall somewhere in the middle

3. Having an evangelist within a school for learning innovations like Skoolaborate is crucial, but having a supportive Principal is even more important

It’s not an entirely rosy picture for Skoolaborate though. Funding has improved although it remains an ongoing battle, and the time commitment from educators involved is significant. Most importantly, I detected a level of frustration around some inequalities existing in accessing Skoolaborate. One of the most stark illustrations of inequality with it is due purely to State Government ineptitude.

Let’s use the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) as an example. Essentially, no NSW (or Australian) public schools are involved with Skoolaborate. The reason: schools falling under the control of the NSW DET cannot access Second Life. Why? The usual response on blocking content is around protecting children from unwanted information. The thing is, in the case of Skoolaborate, educators have already identified the issue and solved it. Participating schools are set up in Second Life so that only authenticated students and teachers can access in-world activities. In NSW, the private schools involved have mandatory ‘working with children’ checks and worldwide each participating school must complete their own relevant police checks for each adult participant. In fact, successful registration to access any content requires completion of the police check. This would have to make Skoolaborate one of the most child-secure online learning environments in existence.

westley_field

Westley Field – MLC and Skoolaborate

What makes this issue particularly frustrating is that key bodies within the NSW DET actually understand that initiatives like Skoolaborate are delivering for students. The NSW DET’s own Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI) has staff well and truly across virtual worlds, and there’s recognition from its General Manager down that immersive worlds will be key to further online learning initiatives. 
Given that any school should be attempting to prepare its students for the realities of the outside world, and that units like the CLI already see the potential of virtual worlds for education, why would the DET have a policy of preventing access? It’s either a politically motivated call or a case of plain ignorance at the higher levels of the DET.

Either way, some serious questions need to be asked on how long the situation will occur. This may be a case of failing to protect children by not equipping them with appropriate knowledge. How will kids know how to navigate emerging technologies if they have no exposure in their schooling?

Update: Westley Field has contacted me to correct the assertion that no Australian public schools are involved with Skoolaborate – there are in fact public schools involved, just none from NSW. He also added: “The National Government , through its values in action program is leading the way by supporting us. This support partially based on the fact that we have all three sectors involved. We are very proud of that fact.”

NoviCraft: virtual world team building

novicraft NoviCraft is one of the more fascinating virtual world business offerings by Finnish company, TeamingStream. That fascination comes not from the platform itself, but the theoretical underpinnings of it. This is a world designed purely for business-related training and team-building purposes.

I took the opportunity to fire a few questions at TeamingStream’s CEO, Petri Ahokangas, about NoviCraft.

Lowell: What platform is the application built on?

Petri: NoviCraft is built on Epic’s Unreal Engine and it was officially launched in December last year. NoviCraft is off-the-shelf multiplayer teambuilding, collaboration, and leadership training game developed by a group of learning scientists, human resource development specialists, and serious game developers for the corporate learning industry. Our customers include top HRD consultancies, big and medium-sized companies, universities and other training organizations.

Lowell: Could you give more detail on the team building specifics that are encountered in the game?

Petri: The game is pedagogically scripted to make the participants aware of the different elements of collaboration, team learning, negotiation, and leadership through five team puzzles – and thus learning from the game experience. The first puzzle focuses on enhancing communication, building of psychological trust, and giving and receiving help among the participants. The second puzzle is about encouraging exploration, coordination of work, and establishing goal orientation. The third puzzle encourages
Thinking–out–loud as a team, sharing of information and helps to create an efficient problem-solving skills for the participants as a team. The fourth puzzle brings in risk taking and strategy creation as a team. The final puzzle is about joint planning and efficient execution of the plan.

In a nutshell, all major challenges of the modern workplace have been modeled to the game and can be practiced in a safe environment in a cost effective way. NoviCraft is not a simulation, it is real collaboration between people which makes it very effective as a learning tool. The learning process is theoretically grounded, supported by metrics, and the trainer or consultant (the game master) can monitor and control the performance of the playing team.

Lowell: So what have been some of the more common utilisations of NoviCraft to date?

Petri: Typical use cases for NoviCraft include leadership and management training, cross- and multi-cultural collaboration, virtual and distributed team collaboration training, team building, supervisor training, personnel evaluation/appraisal, and coaching boards of directors and management teams. Our customers have said that NoviCraft is a fun and efficient way to learn about their teamwork skills and it helps both individuals and teams to improve. After the game the participants can go through a workshop where they can analyze their performance, strengths and areas where they need improvement. The NoviCraft game experience can also greatly add the value of traditional management and leadership training.

Lowell: What level of expense is an enterprise looking at to deploy NoviCraft?

Petri: NoviCraft’s price depends on the number of users and the constellation of the software, but the typical limited license is between twenty and forty thousand Euros (20000-40000 €) depending on the case.

Serious games initiatives are nothing new, but Novicraft seems to be one of more fleshed out models for business. At close to forty-thousand dollars Australian to implement, only the larger enterprises would consider NoviCraft, but its breadth remains appealing. What will truly differentiate NoviCraft is its touted metrics: if tangible benefits for a business are realised, its implementation costs may suddenly seem less of a barrier.

Thanks to CyberTech News for the heads-up.

Virtual Worlds Research Discussion Group

vw-research-discussion

Whilst Linden Lab list their education highlights for 2008, a standout from the past year in an Australian context has been the successful establishment of the Virtual Worlds Research Discussion Group.

Organised by organized by Greg Wadley (Uni of Melbourne), Deb McCormick (Monash Uni) and, Sabine Lawless-Reljic (San Diego State), there are weekly meetings held at alternate locations. The 2009 seminars kick off next Tuesday the 20th January with a presentation by Don Wen titled ‘A study of Avatar Personalization Systems in Three Virtual Worlds’.

Whether you’re actively involved in conducting research yourself or interested in hearing about research underway, these seminars are hard to go past. You can view to future schedule of seminars here. Second Life may be the venue of the discussions but they explore much wider horizons than that.

Education Faire and School of the Air

At The Metaverse Journal we’ve repeatedly discussed specific education projects in virtual worlds and also argued that Australian educators are key drivers in the adoption of virtual worlds in a widespread way.

Tateru Nino at Massively asks the question: does virtual education have to get dreadful before there’s widespread adoption by those who determine budgets in the education community? She uses the well-known Aussie icon, the School of the Air to demonstrate how education funding can be used in innovative ways. It’s generated quite a bit of discussion and links to our prediction that there’s unlikely to be a mainstream adoption by the tertiary sector this year.

monash_jan2008
Monash University’s Virtual Learning Research Project

Whilst the budget and policy-makers drag their feet, Linden Lab are holding their Inaugural Education Support Faire. Aimed at educators and those who provide learning support, it’s being held on the 25th-30th January this year. Linden Lab are inviting educators to present / demonstrate at the event as well.

Over to you: if you’re an educator, how do you see the barriers being broken down at the higher levels so that the self-evident opportunities of virtual worlds become clear to those not at the coalface?

Anthropology in World of Warcraft

WoW Insider have a very interesting interview with Alex Golub, an Assistant Professor within the Anthropology department at the University of Hawaii.

Golub is well underway in research on culture of raiding in World of Warcraft, with the final product expected to be a book in 2010. There’s some discussion on behaviour in raids, gender differences and effective communication strategies. One of the most fascinating aspects is Golub’s take on ‘real-life’ versus online behaviour:

One thing about studying WoW and other virtual worlds is that it has made social scientists realize that “real” and “in the same room” are just not the same things. Everyone in my guild knows each other in “real life,” because real doesn’t mean “physical world” — it means “things that people care about,” or as an anthropologist, I’d say, “things that people in a culture care about.” There is a guy in my guild who works in a cheese factory, turning over 90-pound blocks of cheese all day. I bet I know him better than he knows the guys in the control room measuring cheese temperatures or whatever, even if he sees them every day.

Read the full article here.

NZ: Literature review on virtual worlds

The dynamos at SLENZ have published a literature review titled Engaging with Second Life: Real Education in a Virtual World.

Written by Ben Salt, Clare Atkins and Leigh Blackall, it provides a superb overview of research undertaken to date and covers a wide range of education-related topics including learning design in Second Life, applying behavioural and cognitive theories and the science applications of virtual worlds.

If you’re an educator or someone just interested in the academic underpinnings or work being done in Second Life, this is a more than worthwhile read.

AVWW Doggie Bag

Anastasia

A big thanks to Feldpsar Epstein for attending the real-world AVWW event last weekend. What follows are some of the highlights from her perspective. We’d also love to hear your thoughts.

The Australian Virtual Worlds Workshop, Friday 28 November and Saturday 29 November 2008, held at Swinburne University, Hawthorn Campus, was a bit of a mixed bag. I present here some of my favourite take-away notions.

Presence in Virtual Worlds

The presence afforded by virtual worlds of many flavours can put conference and class participants on a more equal footing, where each individual has access to the event in the same way, i.e. through a common virtual world. Unlike video or phone events, where some people are present physically, and others are present through a technological medium, virtual worlds create a more compelling atmosphere, since each person has an equal presence.

Investing in understanding

It makes sense for educational institutions to make use of contractors and ‘experts’, especially where that knowledge or those skills are lacking amongst the faculty. However, it’s important also that the faculty invest some time and effort into expanding their own knowledge to the point that they understand what they are asking the contractors to do. There is little point in asking for the impossible and then feeling disappointed or cheated when it cannot be done.

Students are not just consumers of education

Students at all levels need to have input into their own education. It is important that students collaborate with and mentor not just each other, but also the faculty. This kind of education goes on in the real world all the time; failure to support it in virtual environments represents diminished opportunity for students.

VastPark – vast possibilities, simplicity in action

Vast Park is a virtual worlds platform being developed in Australia. The standards are open (as in Open Source), as is the code, to a large extent, except for pieces such as the renderer; these closed-source pieces have been introduced to cut down on the amount of work needed to be put into technologies that already exist and need not be duplicated. The Immersive Media Markup Language (IMML) was conceived with this notion in mind – “A deaf person must be able to communicate with a blind person.” This means, in essence, that rich, complex environments can be described simply, and that there is a vast range of accessibility options available.

“VastPark” is the name of the technology behind the virtual worlds that other people will create.

Hedonic Consumption Behaviours

Hedonic behaviours account for approximately 51% of intentions to use virtual worlds, making enjoyment the most significant predictor of usage.

AVWW 2008 commences

The Australasian Virtual Worlds Workshop is underway today and continues tomorrow (all day Friday and Saturday 28th / 29th November Australian time). The base for events is Swinburne University’s Koala Island.

It’s still not too late to get involved and it’s even free to join the Second Life component of AVWW (click here for landmark)

We’ll be covering both the RL and SL event over the coming two days – the event organisers have arranged a comprehensive program so do take some time to participate if you can. We’re proud to be a media partner for this event.

Check it out in-world

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research – second issue

The latest issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research has been released and this time consumer behaviour is the focus.

There’s eight research papers, of which five are peer-reviewed, plus there’s six ‘think pieces’ on related topics.

The full contents:

Peer Reviewed Research Papers

Consuming Code: Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Role of Virtual Goods in Second Life (Jennifer Martin)
Virtual World Affordances: Enhancing Brand Value (So Ra Park, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, David DeWester, Brenda Eschenbrenner, Sunran Jeon)
On the Relationship between My Avatar and Myself (Paul R Messinger, Xin Ge, Eleni Stroulia, Kelly Lyons, Kristen Smirnov, Michael Bone)
The Social Construction of Virtual Reality and the Stigmatized Identity of the Newbie (Robert E. Boostrom, Jr.)
The “New” Virtual Consumer: Exploring the Experiences of New Users (Lyle R Wetsch)

Research Papers

Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night: The Influence of Body Image on the Use of Virtual Worlds (Enrique Becerra, Mary Ann Stutts)
Symbolic and Experiential Consumption of Body in Virtual Worlds: from (Dis)Embodiment to Symembodiment (Handan Vicdan, Ebru Ulusoy)
Demographics of Virtual Worlds (Jeremiah Spence)

“Think pieces”

Surveillance, Consumers, and Virtual Worlds (Douglas R Dechow)
Second Life and Hyperreality (Michel Maffesoli)
Having But Not Holding: Consumerism & Commodification in Second Life (Lori Landay)
Metaverse: A New Dimension? (Yohan Launay, Nicolas Mas)
Virtual Worlds Research: Global X Local Agendas (Gilson Schwartz)
Real Virtual Worlds SOS (State of Standards) Q3-2008 (Yesha Sivan)

There’s some serious reading time in it all and if virtual goods, branding, avatar identification, new user experience or demographics are of interest, this is one must-read issue from a journal hitting the ground well and truly running. Well researched quantitative and qualitative studies will be key as virtual worlds expand in scope and popularity – this Journal deserves kudos as one of the pioneers of empirical observation of virtual worlds.

Distance education close-up

Coat of arms of Finland

Learning together apart: Distance education in a virtual world – Kim Holmburg and Isto Huvila

Holmburg and Huvila’s study, as related in the article link above, focuses on distributed learning opportunities for distance education students, ‘distributed learning’ meaning that multiple tools are used.

Background information

Some of the tools compared in the study were traditional face-to-face classroom teaching –  asynchronous systems such as blogs, wikis and discussion forums. Synchronous systems include chat rooms, video conferences, and lectures and classroom teaching in digital environments like Second Life.

Overall, students in the past have reported that the use of distributed learning has caused them to be more engaged with the class material. This seems unsurprising – the more learning modalities they are exposed to, the more learning styles a student has access to. Synchronous systems in particular were useful for encouraging interaction between students.

Lectures run in Second Life were found to be distinctly advantageous for distance education students. Students report preferring face-to-face classes, however they also found Second Life to be a more ‘fun’ learning experience compared to the other modalities they were exposed to. Additionally, lecturers found that students were more likely to participate in lectures run in Second Life than in face-to-face classes.

Using Second Life creates an interreality for the users – users are immersed in a digital environment, but are also making use of the real world. They are neither in one reality or the other completely. Digital environment experiences, being used the way they are at present, are best interleaved with real world experiences – students getting solely one set of experiences or the other will be missing out.

The major reason for students to prefer face-to-face education over distance education is because of perceived technical problems with remote connections, rather than a difference in perceived quality of overall educational experiences.

Some researchers have found that digital environments that the students engage well with, will positively impact on students’ emotions. Others fear that digitally mediated distance education will lead to emotional distance.

Holmburg and Huvila’s Study

This study had 30 participants – 28 female, 2 male. Of those, 6 had technical difficulties responding to the survey. Moodle, Second Life and one day of face-to-face teaching were used during the course. A classroom was built in Second Life, in which the lectures were held; the classroom closely resembled real-world classrooms to increase familiarity and emotional engagement. The course was arranged by the Centre for Open University Education at Åbo Akademi University.

Respondents were born between 1952 and 1984.

Each student was given instructions about how to use Second Life, and was expected to get to grips with it before commencing lectures.

Respondents felt that the Second Life client was not too difficult to use. Face-to-face education still rated as ‘better’, though Second Life rated as ‘better’ than web-based educational methods. Second Life was rated as the most fun method. Sixty percent of respondents felt that Second Life lectures could replace face-to-face lectures.

The assumption was made at the outset of the study that using Second Life – manoeuvring an avatar – might be challenging for students who were non-gamers. This turned out to be incorrect.

Second Life itself provides many opportunities for different modes of learning, however there are still benefits to be gained from face-to-face communication, when that is easy to organise, since this adds yet more modes.

Second Life provides significant benefits where distance education is involved. If travel time is short and travelling easy, face-to-face teaching is to be preferred. Nonetheless, Second Life increases the fun in learning, an outcome which in and of itself increases engagement and participation amongst students.

In conclusion

The authors of the study state that fun “is always a desired outcome.” This does not always seem to be the case: for many years, anything ‘fun’ has been questionable in educational circles. Hopefully, studies like this in which the fun of an activity is shown to have a positive impact on learning outcomes will go to show that education can be fun and worthwhile at the same time.

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