Virtual Learning Worlds

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For those of you that play World of Warcraft, this probably won’t be very interesting.  For those that do not play WoW, hopefully this illustrates some of the complexities and intricacies of the game.

I’m still working on several projects centered around YouTube.  I intend to make YouTube *THE* instructional platform for my Fall 2009 course (more on that later) and I’ve also been using YouTube to hopefully increase the rate of progression for my Warcraft Guild.  To help put this into context, we are a raiding guild.  We spend a couple nights a week in either 10-person or 25-man person groups, tackling very complex AI-driven encounters with dragons, demons and other evil pixel creations terrorizing Azeroth.  Let me stress the word COMPLEX, because many of these encounters take a very patient, scientific approach to defeat.

Our 10-person crew recently defeated one of the more difficult encounters Blizzard added to the game a little over a month ago.  Our guild is rather large and we have guildmates that will get to the same encounter soon.  Instead of having them struggle like we did to defeat this complex encounter, I used Fraps to record the encounter, documenting our strategy for success.

In addition to the video feed (which alone does not provide a great deal of insight), I also added annotation using the YouTube annotation features, to provide time-sensitive information about the encounter as people watched it.  These encounters in Warcraft can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, from a single phase to multiple phases, which EVERYONE needs to understand because these game mechanics and how players react to them dictate sucess or failure.  Often times when someone ‘teaches’ the rest of the raid about the encounter, it is done using Ventrilo (a VoIP service) and takes 5 to 10 minutes.  Sounds a lot like a lecture, right?  For the very detailed encounters, this is information overload to the extreme!  My hope is that videos like the one below will help the rest of my guild successfully defeat the more complex encounters, by providing annotated videos including the ventrilo talk on strategy.

I was talking with Cole a few weeks back about various types of social networking services, and he said something along the lines of “I’m not getting much out of Facebook. I wish I could go back and start all over with that one.”

So the question of the day: Why not? Why not start all over with a social service if you’re not getting the maximum benefit?

I certainly understand why some people would not want to do this (keeping networks intact, not wanting to lose touch with certain people, etc), but part of the beauty of these sites is that we can re-create ourselves. Personal growth is a good thing right? As we grow older we (hopefully) get more mature, gain new wisdom, meet new people and learn. So it only makes sense that as we grow our identity (online or otherwise) grows with us.

These sites also change as well. Twitter has gone from a helpful way to share information with friends to something that is being shoved down my throat every 10 minutes on TV (Note to ESPN and commercial producers: PLEASE stop!!! We get it, you found out how to use twitter). My RSS reader has gone from something I used to visit every day to a collection of seemingly unrelated websites that have either disappeared or only receive updates on rare occasions.

Rebuilding my Facebook identity isn’t something I’m interested in right now (I like what I get out of that community), but my twitter and RSS reader need to go. With that being said, I think it is time to ditch bloglines, setup Google reader and start to create a new data stream that will help me think critically about topics I care about. It is also time to jump into Twitter and delete everyone I am following (there a batch command for this?) to build a new network for myself, one that hopefully adds more value.

On a sidenote, I just updated the site to the new Wordpress install as well as a new theme. Look for more content updates shortly and more restructuring of some of the widgets.

The dissertation was successfully defended last week and edits are underway for the submission to the graduate school for final approval. So the question that has been on my mind regarding life after the PhD:

“What to do now?”

I’m not too concerned about jobs at this time because I enjoy what I’m doing at PSU. I’m focusing more on what projects to undertake in both my personal and professional time. All the projects on my mind I plan on writing about here (and more writing will definitely be in the works for this blog over the summer). The short list:

• virtual learning worlds site redesign - needs to be done. The big decision is whether to move away from Word Press or not.
• Once a week creation - some colleagues experimented with the “once-a-day” blog post over the last year. I want to put a twist on this and create a video once a week. The video would be footage from a specific video game with narration by yours truly on potential educational value. I already have five examples mapped out for this.
• The OCHO - this is an idea we started to pursue in the Solutions Institute a couple years ago before the unit was dissolved. Most people have heard of open courseware initiatives. This is similar, but focused predominantly on faculty, instructors and teachers. At the lowest level, the OCHO is a personal CMS for a teacher trying to keep track of his or her materials (syllabi, labs, media, etc). At the highest level, it is a massive repository for sharing, mixing, connecting and rating a wide variety of educational content. The framework would look like a mix of YouTube and WoW Head. I could write several posts on this topic alone.
• Classroom experiments - ever wonder what would happen if you took 1/2 your students and used something like Facebook as the primary CMS, while the other 1/2 used the university-provided CMS? I wonder about this a lot and would like to run this experiment at the end of the summer. I’m also considering using YouTube as the primary instructional tool for my Fall 2009 course. I’m finding YouTube to be the unequivocal BEST platform for just-in-time learning; from video tutorials on software to conceptual talks from some of today’s brightest individuals. It’s foolish not to bring this into the classroom and help students realize the benefit of YouTube outside entertainment and send them into the workforce with an understanding of how to get the most out of the site.

I’ll be posting a lot more around here in the coming months around the topics above and many other things that have been floating in grey matter for the last year.

As the PhD is rapidly coming to a close (fingers crossed), I’ve been thinking a lot about my future direction. Teaching is still at the top of the priority list. Each semester I tend to change a large percent of my materials to try new things, see if they work and constantly evolve what I’m doing. This semester I stumbled onto a duality of sorts.

For example, I had all the IST 110 students create ePortfolios. On one hand, I tried to teach them the elements that make a good ePortfolio. Good writing samples, reflection on past educational experiences, professionalism, etc. In the process, the students also learned how to create and manipulate web pages. Most of my assignments had this form of duality. I spent some time talking about designing user interfaces, then had the students create their own using Photoshop (or other image editing software).

I thought it would be a good idea to start tracking some numbers, and this is the best place for me to do that.

In spring 2009 I taught two classes: IST 110 and IST 440w. Overall, I had the opportunity to interact with over 200 students ranging the entire spectrum of academic standing, from freshman to senior. Also, IST 110 was a general education section so I interacted with MANY students outside of IST. The breakdown:

• Students created 1,050 blog posts
• Students created 120 ePortfolios
• Students created 120 user interface comps
• Students created 24 Public Service Announcement videos
• Students created 11 prototypes in the context of new business ventures
• Students created 60 podcasts

Total: 1,385 artifacts created this semester. I feel pretty dam good about that. Once the summer opens up and I have more time to write, I’ll try and illustrate the reasoning behind all this creation.