Skypechatting was really interesting last night. Fast, fun and a little unstructured it felt like being in a classroom, where everyone finally gets a chance to talk and being listened to and answered immediately. By skyping the perceived isolation and asynchronous communication and interaction was finally broken and it felt like a community.

As a teaching tool I would see it as an opportunity to let people vent their ideas, emotions and opinions in a collaborative environment with immediate response. It could also serve as a channel to collect ideas, make provocative statements and brainstorm on them. If we compare it to a real classroom, it is more like a moment of liberation, where everyone has a voice that is heard and reacted to in real time.

The risk is that at the end there is no real listening and it is a little hard to follow the flow and the understanding of each other. On the other hand coming up with many different ideas concurrently it is an excellent stepping stone for further discussion and thought.

After our Second Life Session I found myself comparing my perceptions of what had happened in that hour with the interaction during our Twitter and Skypechat tutorial. While the basic text-based exchange is common to all three the addition of visual information, such as seeing a person type on the keyboard, has had a regulatory effect on the communication flow. Our exchanges were more structured and there was a certain flow in the development of the discussion, which allowed to express and elaborate on a thought while it still was on the radar of all.

The impression of having an embodied entity in a dedicated environment contributed to my perception of a more ‘personal’ interaction between the various members of the course. It was interesting to see that the real life behaviours, such not more than two people sitting on a bench or keeping a certain distance to each other was the same in this virtual environment.

One aspect that distinguished us from other users seems to be that the main attractiveness for SL, its anonymity and freedom of behaviour and role choice, is not our main goal. We still seem to struggle with the anonymity of our bodily selves.

From a learning and teaching perspective I can see and think of a number of potential uses for SL, if the participants will buy into the technology part of it. I am still disoriented by the level of complexity of SL and if I were to use it, I would need more confidence and experience to support my learners in this environment. For me SL is not intuitive enough for a quick spin in and out of it.

Experiential learning by means of playing games either in real life with other participants or virtually in an online gaming environment according to Gee (1) draws on the experience, beliefs and moral values of the player’s real world identity. In turn the player gains knowledge by experimenting safely in a learning environment, knowledge which then blends into and transforms his real identity that as a result promotes change to a new identity. The centre of learning therefore is based on own subjective experience and it is experience that guides what the person learns and when it is learned according to David Kolb (2). The desired outcome is a transfer of emotions, notions, capabilities that derive from a safe learning experience where the learner has had an active part in the evolution of the learning environment and the events that have lead to the learning experience.  Thiagi (3) and many other use games regularly as a means to destructure and restructure learning.

Unlike Boellsdorf virtual identities in SL Gee’s players enter a set framework given by the game design with a choice of “unique backgrounds” and features. The creation of the virtual identity is framed by design and not as in SL a free choice and construction of the person. Consequently a game seems to be a more structured way of learning than an identity in a SL environment. Throughout the game the decisions made and the development of the game add to and develop the gamer’s virtual identity as foreseen by the game design, whereas in SL the rules and rewards are defined by the social conventions created and implemented by each individual group (assuming that we don’t enter a preset domain but that we meet on ‘neutral’ grounds’). The choices made according to Gee are filtered by a projected identity that acts an intermediary between the real and the virtual identity. While in both cases the environment provides anonymity the mandatory gap between the virtual and the real world Boellsdorf stressed as being foundational in Gee’s version seems to be bridged by the projected identity that serves as a ‘transmitter’ or ‘synapsis’ between both worlds.  In my previous post I pointed out that in my view even in SL there is a reciprocal ‘contamination’ between the experiences in the real and the virtual world. Gee’s view on using games to transfer and enhance learning seems to confirm this impression. The express purpose for playing online in Gee is to learn. So why and how can playing be an effective learning tool?

Experiential learning expert David Kolb proposes a model of learning cycle with four learning styles: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active, experimentation, which all engage the learner at some stage of the game. Kolb suggests that a learner enters the game with his own personal style and moves along the cycle during the game experiencing and interacting with all four styles. By playing the game the person is actively involved in the choices and decisions, thinks before and after about the alternative choices and their consequences, is able to take the experience out of context and to a meta level of understanding where it will enhance what the person already knows and will support with ‘tangible’ activities that promote learning-by-doing.

http://holyroodpark.net/danielag/files/-1/1091/diagramm0004.jpg

Learning cycle

Source: http://weatherhead.case.edu/executive-education/programs/subjects/e

To have a successful learning transfer Gee sees three basic requirements that need to be fulfilled:

1-     The learner must be enticed to try (…)

2-     The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if he or she begins with little motivation to do so

3-     The learner must achieve some meaningful success (…)

How can that be achieved? Gee admits that video games are good for some type of learners, so that would confirm Kolb’s different learning styles and different approaches to learning. How can games be used effectively in education, higher, professional or any other education to provide an interesting entry point for all learners?

Based on my experience as an experiential outdoor facilitator games have first to be designed carefully and then briefed and de-briefed well. The briefing serves to set down the framework, similar to a game design in an online environment with its basic rules, choices, characters and roles. The de-briefing serves to transfer the findings of the game (the virtual world and the identity the learner assumed there) into the real world, they need to answer to the question of “how can I apply this in my daily life/work?” and serve as a bridge between both worlds and both identities.

Briefing and debriefing should aim at enticing the learner to try, to offer a safe environment to learn detached from his real life and the identity he or she is required to have in a specific semiotic domain. A feeling of safety is important as well as willingness to commit which might be achieved by showing first that there are no repercussions in real life and second ‘what is in for me/him/her’ or expressed differently “what will I get out of it?, what will my success look like?” And it must be clear that success is closely related to how much effort is put in the task. It should be clear to the learner that the responsibility for success and reward are in his own hands.

Is that enough to motivate people to risk doing something which might make them look stupid, inept or clumsy? Indeed, this is a major obstacle in the real experiential world which requires a lot of ‘pedagogical care’ (Barnett, 2007) or as Gee phrases it, to learn actively and critically. Personally I quite like the idea of identities as an ongoing development program where knowledge is used as a catalyst for developing a new identity and to form bridges from the one’s old identity to the new one. The virtual world has the advantage of offering anonymity which provides a feeling of safety that in turn reduces risk and increases the risk readiness for the learner to allow himself to get involved in the game. How can we ensure that the real world identity will profit from the virtual world identity?

 (1)   James Paul Gee, (2004) “Learning and Identity: what does it mean to be a half-elf?” from What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy”, pp51-71, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

(2)   David Kolb, Learning from Experience, http://www.learningfromexperience.com/ accessed on 17^th October 2010

(3) http://www.thiagi.com/