Virtual Learning Worlds

As part of the Learning in 3D Blog Book Tour, I wanted to focus on a few themes that I’ve encountered during my time working with, and researching, different types of virtual worlds. Instead of focusing on a specific chapter or attempting to summarize parts of the book, I selected three different categories that are all touched on (some more than others) in Learning in 3D.

1. User Interfaces (UIs)
I find the interface obstacle very interesting. I’ve designed many interfaces (mostly in 2D) as well as researched UIs in the context of emergency response scenarios. Interfaces come up throughout the book. One quote I particularly like is from Karen Keeter (IBM), in Chapter 9:

At the same time, I believe that the onus is on developers to design for
new users, while still enabling advanced users.

Karen identifies UIs as one of the primary obstacles for newcomers experimenting in virtual worlds, and I couldn’t agree more. In the past, I remember reading about the “typical Second Life experience” for first time users. Nearly 90% of people that create a Second Life account NEVER come back. I believe the UI has a lot to do with this statistic.

One idea around this obstacle is the use of Phased interfaces.

Chapter 8 deals with the diffusion of innovation, touching on typical fears people have about entering a virtual world:

People know what to expect in a 2D virtual class session or in a face to face classroom. Not so with a VIE. The interface, functionality, and experience level with VIEs are not universally high, and the lack of familiarity causes resistance and/or fear among potential users and decision makers.

In addition to the interface and functionality obstacles, a huge trade-off exists between what’s FAMILIAR in a virtual world, and what’s USABLE. People might know what to expect in a face-to-face class session on the human heart. They also might know what to expect from a 2D virtual class session on the human heart. Both of these scenarios might involve diagrams of the heart, maybe a small model of the heart for students to pass around and discussions on blood flow and the major heart compartments. But in 3D, you can do all sorts of wild things like make the avatar a red blood cell, funnel the avatar through the heart, pointing out compartments along the way, allowing the avatar to stop and examine different things, measure blood flow, capture data from the simulation…if designed right, these are powerful, very usable experiences. But trying to mimic a f2f or 2D lesson or activity in 3D is generally NOT very usable…but it is familiar. Avatars passing around a small virtual model of a heart is something familiar, something we might experience naturally. Flying through a heart at high speeds as a red blood cell, not so much.

* NOTE: worth pointing out at this point is that I contributed to Chapter 7 of this book, specifically addressing design decisions and usability vs. familiarity when designing 3D spaces.

2. Informal Learning
Chapter 2 addresses concerns around formal learning vs. informal learning in virtual worlds.

The autonomous learner problem has two core issues: (1) where the need for learning typically arises and (2) how web technologies make it increasingly easy for people to become on - demand learners.

I think it’s too early to tell how virtual worlds play into this. I consider myself an on-demand learner, and I find myself relying on Google, Facebook and my IM contacts to provide critical information on-demand. I struggle to envision a scenario where I open up a virtual world and go seek information on-demand. I have been told that virtual IBM’ers often interact informally in Second Life, and managers of virtual teams are finding value in “management by virtually walking around”, similar to how managers in co-located, physical spaces communicate to team members.

Still, virtual worlds (specifically MMOs) are fantastic training environments for meta-skills such as problem solving, collaboration, teamwork, leadership and basic mathematics (see Steinkuehler, J.Gee, C.Aldrich, C.Quinn, J.Bower and several others). One interesting aspect of this learning comes from things that happen OUTSIDE the virtual world, such as through VoIP, Discussion Boards, IMs and other communication where people are talking about the virtual world and their experiences within.

With training professionals reporting anywhere from 50% to 95% of learning occurring informally, this is an interesting space that virtual worlds will play a role. Design will play a critical role in this evolution (from Chapter 3):

Even if the goal is to foster informal learning, the VIE must be structured appropriately to encourage and enable interaction between and among learners. If not, the result is a virtual ghost town. No one comes to visit, and the place is empty

3. Characters
This comes a bit more from game design, but also applies to virtual worlds. One thing that connects us to learning and our learning environment are the characters, or people, we interact. Sometimes it’s an instructor that tells great stories about his or her experiences that allows you as the learner to relate better and put more context around the content. Perhaps it’s a friend, that pushes you in a course to perform better.

The beautiful thing about virtual worlds is that we can fabricate characters (sometimes called non-player characters or NPCs) with artificial intelligence (AI). The last three years has seen an explosion in the depth of story and character development in video games, to the point that the player starts to care about their virtual, AI-controlled companions (for example, check out either Mass Effect game or Dragon Age: Origins). Even in MMOs like World of Warcraft, Blizzard is placing more priority on creating characters with deep back stories, providing a new, higher-level of engagement between the player and the game world.

These are three areas I find critical to the adoption and success of virtual worlds as learning/training environments. If we figure out how to create phased interfaces, quality informal learning spaces and characters the learner can empathize with, we’ll have a learning environment unlike any other.

Valve recently announced some statistics around Steam, their digital distribution system (and so much more) for games.

Userbase: over 25 million
Peak concurrent users for 2009: 2.5 million
Sales increase in 2009 over 2008: 205%

What astonishes me is the year-to-year growth. Steam is now 5 years old, and EVERY YEAR since its debut, year-to-year sales has increased over 100%. Is this trend going to continue another 5 years or will we start to see a leveling out?

The new job is keeping me very busy and I unfortunately haven’t had time to write much…at least not here. Two recent bits of gaming news caught my attention:

1. Harmonix, the creators of the original Guitar Hero game and now the Rock Band franchise, is offering courses at Berkleemusic.com.

Say what?

Harmonix announced the Rock Band Network nearly a year ago, a place where musicians can go and upload their own, original music and distribute much like developers distribute software on Apple’s appstore (see an old post for more info). Creating and publishing music to the Rock Band Network is not trivial…it’s actually very difficult. In addition to providing musicians with tutorials online, Harmonix is going to offer courses via Berkleemusic.com (Berklee’s online learning efforts) to help artists and other industry folks get their tunes on the Rock Band Network and, as Harmonix puts it, get paid!

2. Metaplace, the recent brainchild of MMO industry veteran Raph Koster, has shut down. You can read the closing notification and closing FAQ on the Metaplace website. I had high hopes for Metaplace. It was on the web, built in flash. It had multiple worlds, all loosely coupled together. It had massive amounts of user generated content. It had an e-commerce engine supporting it all.

…and it failed. From what I can gather from the announcement, the business model simply was not working. At the end of the FAQ, they do talk about licensing the technology, and that is something they do NOT plan on doing.

Welcome back, Second Life! I’m unsure how Second Life has survived this long, but I have a feeling its relationships with companies such as IBM and government organizations certainly helps. Organizations aren’t exactly licensing Second Life from Linden Labs, but it is somewhat similar. Metaplace never really had a parrallel offering, something where government or academia could pay a small (or large in some instances) fee for virtual property and maintenance. In Metaplace it was all free…but you would think some model existed similar to Second Life to pull in the government, academic and maybe even corporate folks.

I know I was looking forward to exploring and maybe even migrating my College’s presence from Second Life to Metaplace.

The majority of my game purchases come from three studios:
Valve
Blizzard
BioWare

The first two studios are often listed in the top three of the industry, and BioWare is rapidly reaching the same status. As Blizzard develops Cataclysm, the next expansion to World of Warcraft, I’m hoping for some serious innovation. The best place for innovation? The 5-player dungeon experience in WoW.

The dungeon experience is my favorite part of the game; grouping with 4 friends for an hour or so, laying waste to enemies and collecting better gear for your character. Once you move in to 10 and 25-man dungeons, the level of commitment goes up, the stress goes up, and arguments crop up between players from time to time. No thank you!

But the 5-man experience gets very boring after a while. The dungeons are very scripted, with packs of enemies in the same spot every time. The bosses are in the same place, and do the same things, each time you run the dungeon.

Why not try and use the technology that powers Valve’s franchise Left 4 Dead within WoW’s dungeons, at least the 5-man dungeons? Specifically Valve’s AI Director, described by Wikipedia:

The artificial intelligence of Left 4 Dead features a dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing and difficulty called the “Director”. Instead of fixed spawn points for enemies, the Director places enemies and items in varying positions and quantities based upon each player’s current situation, status, skill and location, creating a new experience for each playthrough. The Director also creates mood and tension with emotional cues, such as visual effects, dynamic music, and character communication.

If Blizzard could implement this in the context of 5-player dungeons, I have a feeling players would continue to pay their subscription fees for a much longer period of time.

Left 4 Dead Gameplay

Warcraft 5man dungeon Gameplay

I’m still primarily a PC gamer. I have an Xbox, have a Wii, have played games on a PS3 many times, but the PC is where the majority of my gaming time is spent. For me, it’s a matter of the mouse + keyboard vs. the controller. Well, primarily the mouse. It’s more accurate, easier to use, more intuitive and simply navigates both the worlds and the menu structures much easier than a controller.

People have claimed PC gaming is ‘dying’ for many years now. Initially these discussions stemmed from popular games like Halo and God of War only appearing on consoles (eventually receiving PC ports). Many good games have arrived on consoles first, but because they turn into cash-cows for the publishers, they usually make it to the PC. So I don’t buy this argument regarding PC gaming being on the decline.

Enter Steam, Valve’s digital distribution platform. I’m a HUGE Steam fan, buying the majority of my games from the service. I was a little irritated that Dragon Age: Origins on Steam did not release at midnight on release day. No, on the east coast, it actually unlocked at about 3PM on release day. For some reason Modern Warfare 2 didn’t unlock on Steam until 2-3 days after its midnight release in the States. Is this the trend for the foreseeable future? Are PC gamers going to be left behind, literally, when AAA titles come out in favor of the brick-and-mortar outlets?

A decade ago, most games were developed for PC, then ported to consoles. That trend has now reversed. Again, I single out Modern Warfare 2, where the developers neglected to even change some of the language for the PC port, where users are getting messages like “Reconnect to Xbox Live” and “Press the right trigger to fire”. I ran into similar messages in Far Cry 2 on the PC. This is what we have to look forward to, PC gamers.

Finally, this weekend I decided to play through Dragon Age: Origins a second time and wanted to grab all the Downloadable Content (DLC). In an effort to give purchasers an added bonus, the game shipped with a special code you can redeem for a DLC pack that contained a new quest line as well as a new party member, Shale. I believe this was done to encourage people to buy the game new vs. used (the code is a 1-time use). When I couldn’t figure out how to redeem my pre-order information for the DLC pack, I found this on the BioWare website:

* The Stone Prisoner is available through first purchase redemption. A Rave card containing a code and download instructions will be available. The Rave card is not available with digital download copies of the game. The Stone Prisoner can be purchased seperately.

Irritated, I went to the BioWare store and found that the Stone Prisoner is a $15 download (that came FREE for PC/Xbox/PS3 pre-orders in retail stores). The other DLC pack, the Warden’s Keep, is a $7 download.

That’s $22 for DLC, nearly half the price of the game itself. You would think that sending digital customers a redemption code via email would be easier (and cheaper) vs. printing and sending a “Rave Card” with a code on it.

I’ll stop ranting now. I guess it’s time to go master the Xbox controller…

I was going to do this in an email, then I realized putting together the recipient list might take the better part of the morning, and I still would probably forget to include people I’ve worked with over the last ten years. Starting tomorrow, 11/17/09, I’ll be working for the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE) at Penn State. I’m very excited to start working with Undergraduate Education across the Penn State system to better the student learning experiences around the State. Also, the position is an academic appointment, primarily research-focused, so I will be able to put the Ph.D. degree to use immediately.

My 10+ years in IST has been a fantastic experience, and I wanted to thank everyone that I have worked with during this time. I’m going to avoid listing all the names (again, I’m sure I would forget people and that list would be LONG), but instead the areas I worked:

IST Solutions Institute - What a great experience. Working with a small team of highly innovative and skilled people, doing great things in the online learning space since October of 1999! I’m not sure I will ever experience such a unique culture and work environment as we had in SI. Thank you to everyone I worked with as a member of the Institute, I learned a great deal from everyone and had a fantastic time.

IST Instructor - From the PA Governor’s School for Information Technology, to IST undergraduate courses to guest lecturing in graduate courses around campus…I never realized I had a passion for teaching until given the opportunity to get in the classroom. Teaching can be equal parts fun and frustrating, but for me it has been a great learning experience and incredibly fun. Even with SITE, I am looking to continue my teaching experience at least once a year moving forward.

IST Research - I have been lucky to be part of many interesting and engaging research projects over the last three or four years. Looking at virtual worlds for learning and simulation, games as data analysis and design making environments to supporting several faculty in Second Life…I feel I have learned a great deal about grants and scholarly writing from all the colleagues I have worked with in this area.

Education Technology Services - My work with ETS grew from my work in the gaming and virtual world space with IST. Getting the educational gaming commons up and running was a monumental challenge, but extremely rewarding. I hope the EGC continues to do great things and I plan on staying involved as an affiliate.

Office of Learning Initiatives - my time with OLI was short, but still a good experience. Good luck to everyone working on the new online learning initiatives, you have a large task at hand that will be very challenging to meet, but I’m sure you will exceed expectations.

Back to your normally scheduled game and virtual worlds posts in the near future!

I’ve leveraged wikis over the last 2 years for a wide variety of tasks, each time learning something new and valuable about how these platforms can be used. A few years ago, we used a wiki as a documentation repository for all the projects and tasks our unit was responsible. It helped a great deal if someone was sick for a workshop or had to deal with an emergency. Someone else on the team could quickly jump into the Wiki and help out. An unintentional finding during this experiment is that a wiki can help a great deal when it comes to turnover. A few people left the unit, and the new people got up to speed incredibly fast, being able to peruse the wiki and see all our projects mapped to personnel.

I’ve also used a wiki in one of my courses, where students were in teams tackling one of eleven different inter-related research topics. Phase one of the project was a basic literature review authored in the wiki. Phase 2 required each team to go out and read the other teams’ work, and create relationships between pages where the research topics intersected. The next time I teach an upper-level course, I will definitely use this assignment again.

I also use wikis for information retrieval, especially things like wikipedia and wowwiki.

So how does this play into games and learning? I first started using a wiki when I was in the Burning Crusade Beta test. If you’ve ever played WoW, often times you are toggling between the game and a web browser, checking wikis or item/quest databases to help guide your game experience. During a beta test, these databases are predominately empty because of how new the content is. With a wiki, we had thousands of people creating and editing pages as they were the first group of players to experience the new content. People were documenting quest storylines, monster types, new item drops…you name it, people were constantly in the wiki while they were playing, documenting everything. On one hand this is similar to the strategy guide scene in games, but the wiki method is MUCH faster and I would argue more accurate because many authors are contributing.

The same thing is taking place now with Dragon Age: Origins. This game came out just over a week ago, and similar to WoW I see thousands of people using this wiki to document the story arcs, races, classes, items and quests.

I refer to this type of activity as mutual knowledge construction, and I think it has huge potential value for education. But…

With games, those of us playing, and more importantly contributing to these wikis, are highly motivated. Whether intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, we are motivated to contribute to the massive collection of knowledge and information on these wikis. When I think of how to implement something like this in the classroom, this is where I struggle. In a graduate class I think this could work wonders, but in an undergraduate class, especially a general education class…I struggle to overcome the motivation barrier that I think is key to making something like this work. Hopefully this summer or fall 2010 I’ll have a chance to give this a go, asking students to collectively create a wiki over the course of the semester that both informs and motivates to dig deeper into a subject area. Once I have the assignment fleshed out, I’ll be sure to share.

I’m spending some time recently talking about the evolution of platforms, specifically computing platforms. As part of my IST 110 course, I spend time talking about the history of computer games. The earliest iterations of home entertainment systems had no cartridges; the game software was on-board, embedded in the hardware of the device. A good example is Atar’s PONG. Eventually the manufacturers moved away from this model and towards a model of the console as a platform. The Atari 2600 is an early example of this. Today, with things like Xbox Live and the PS Network, consoles continue to expand their roles as platforms with each new iteration.

Another good example is Apple’s iPhone. Samsung, Nokie, Motorolla or any other cell phone manufacturer could have approached the phone as a platform, but they chose to simply build phones. From the very start, Apple conceptualized the iPhone as a platform, not merely a phone. If you glance at the app store, and associated market data, you can see this is paying off.

Our automobiles are well on the way to being platforms. Ford is rolling out Ford Work Solutions in their trucks, morphing your truck from a simple means of transportation to the hub of your business.

Here at PSU, we’re using Movable Type, what some consider to be a basic form of blog software, as a platform. We’re exploring MT as a means for portfolio development, online learning delivery and even personal content management.

I was interested to read last week that BioWare, makers of some of the best video games on the market today, are looking at two of their franchises as platforms: Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. What does that mean exactly? It’s too early to tell, but with the advent of downloadable content (DLC) and episodic content, game developers can no longer create games in a traditional framework, where the game is a self-contained close system. Developers now need to build a game, always thinking about how they can leave the framework open for DLC, user-generated content and other options that starts to make the game have similar attributes as a platform.

It never ceases to amaze me how much my blog, and now Twitter, have turned into quasi-personal content management systems. CMS might be too strong in this instance, but I find myself continually going back to my blog and twitter stream to find a URL or some nugget of information that I forget, but becomes relevant months or years later.

With that being said, I had to work on a flowchart recently. In the past I used Omnigraffle, but it was tedious to re-apply for a demo license each time I wanted to use it. So I hit the web and a colleague up for some ideas.

Webspiration - this is what I’m currently using for my project. My students found this over the summer and used it for a web design project. Not bad, but no features to export to my knowledge, only print. Very similar to Google Docs in that you can invite collaborators, track changes, see change logs and other nice collaborative features.

Gliffy - Suggested by the Frenchman, I also used this in the past. I probably should have stuck with this for my recent project, but I wanted to give other tools a shot.

SlickPlan - I do not have any experience with SlickPlan, but it appears to be made by web designers, for web designers. Worth checking out.

I finally stepped away from Warcraft for a bit to try a few other MMOs, namely Champions Online and Aion. Both games are solid to a point, but both games fall short where Warcraft succeeded:

Content.

Warcraft launched with an incredibly high number of quests (guided tasks that offer a variety of rewards in the game). The game provided all the players a common framework to work within, but also allowed players to experience the same content in different ways. Some quested with friends, others solo. Some became deeply involved in the lore of the world via the quest system, some simply clicked through the dialogue to get to the action. Regardless how you played, questing was a core framework. Quests in Warcraft was one large part of the success of the game, and also building a community of players that all had a common experience to bring them together.

On the professional side, I have witnessed many online communities emerge. Many fail, some limp along while few succeed. With a new position on the horizon, one of the challenges might be to build community. Luckily a PSU, we have a community in place already that is fairly successful, so it would be building off that community vs. creating community from the ground up.

I see a lot of commonalities between Blizzard’s implementation of a massive questing system and growing a successful online community.

1. Blizzard released Warcraft with thousands of quests. With an online community, it needs to BEGIN with a lot of things to do (IE: content). I once heard a colleague say “I created a forum and a shared space in the CMS, the community is created”.

2. Blizzard encourages people to form groups to complete some quests. Depending on the difficulty of the quest, it might require characters with diverse skillsets to be successful. Most successful online communities get a lot of value out of diverse audiences, adding new and vastly different perspectives on topics. Whether it’s avatars or people, providing challenges or insights that encourage diversity is important.

3. Provide infrastructure and get out of the way. Blizzard provides forums, fansite kits and an open API for the community to build interface additions that jive with varying playstyles. With online communities, often the originators or builders reach a point where they can decrease the amount of content they contribute, and allow the community to grow legs and spread from a single forum or hub into other areas, like Facebook and Twitter.

Building online communities is a tough nut to crack, but online games have been doing this since the mid 1990s. If tasked to create an online community of users, look for examples in other areas for ideas on how to successfully pull this off.