Virtual Learning Worlds

I posted earlier this year about FlOw, a flash game that was the basis for J. Chen’s thesis. It wasn’t quite as relevant then as it is now, since I’ve picked up a lot on Flow Theory for my own dissertation. In its simplest form, flow refers to the psychological state one enters when they are ‘in the zone’, totally engaged in the task at hand, seemlessly completing complex tasks without conscious thought, experiencing a sense of time distortion, and blocking out any external stimuli to the activity they are currently engaged in. (see the wikipedia link above for the longer description). I’m attempting to look out how variations in flow relate to variations in performance within an online simulation. My initial thoughts are that if a person experiences an intense state of flow when interacting with online learning environments, their performance within that environment will be higher. Some studies claim this is the case, some studies observe no relationship between flow and performance.

Anyway, the writer of this Wall Street Journal article expresses Chen’s thoughts on game design and flow wonderfully:

Mr. Chen has elaborate theories on getting players into the “flow,” but it mostly boils down to impulsive, easy-to-understand gameplay that eliminates disruptions. Nothing comes between the gamer and the experience — no menus, no tutorials, no prompts or instructions; most of all, no dying. In flOw, depleted vitality sends the avatar back to shallower waters to find food. The only “game over” moment is when the player closes the browser.

Once again, the elearning professionals out there could take a page from the gaming world, and try to adopt some of these elements into our online learning environments. A lot of elearning courses are peppered with different environments, such as blogs, CMSs, page-turning courseware, PDF files, external links, videos…you name it. Tying all these elements together in a seamless environment is HARD work, but it can (and should) be done. Great games out there do all of these things well…you don’t have to read the instructions, you don’t have to complete a tutorial (as the tutorial is built right into the flow of the game), the only time you deal with a menu is when you complete a large chunk of content or you want to save/quit…the game seamlessly moves you through the environment with clarity and precision.

Designing engaging elearning environments is more of an art than a science.

No, this isn’t another metaverse post or pointer, but a Multiverse heads-up. At the 40,000 foot view, Multiverse appears to be a pre-packaged MMOG solution for small developers, or even the old garage-style game developer. It provides architecture, tools, and assets to build your own MMOG, and it also comes with a full-scale example game that can be modified and explored. This was on my radar a year or two ago (I even bookmarked the page when I found it then!), but I totally lost track of the project. From the site:

Multiverse’s unique technology platform will change the economics of virtual world development by empowering independent game developers to create high-quality, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and non-game virtual worlds for less money and in less time than ever before. Multiverse solves the prohibitive challenges of game creation by providing developers with a comprehensive, pre-coded client-server infrastructure and tools, a wide range of free content–including a complete game for modification–and a built-in market of consumers. The Multiverse Network will give video game players a single program–the Multiverse Client–that lets them play all of the MMOGs and visit all of the non-game virtual worlds built on the Multiverse platform.

I had a consistent stream of posts here through the summer, but my dissertation has really been taking up almost all my time these days, so I’ve dropped the ball here. But a few things of interest I recently came across:

CNN recently ran a Second Life article, boasting that ~60 educators are expirementing with classes in the environment. We experimented with this about 3 or 4 years ago, and our faculty looked at us with strange faces when we tried to promote SL and get it into the class experiences. Now some of those same faculty are asking us about SL, and how they can leverage it for teaching and learning. We’re looking at a few interesting projects (which I’ll try and post some brainstorming here at some point).

Second Life building firm Electric Sheep and advertising firm Edelman are teaming up in Second Life and holding a Business Plan competition. It appears that the winning business plan will receive Second Life land, and help from both companies in creating their digital identity, and promoting the new venture within the world (and probably outside of SL as well).

Back to dissertating…