Whose space are we in?

 This fall semester, Lansing Community College is being led wisely by upper administration to operate primarily online, with only a handful of classes meeting face to face. So we aren't facing the situations where many colleges jump into class as usual, even with face masks, and immediately have to shut it down when Covid-19 cases balloon.

So all of my classes are online. The college administration and faculty, since the wholesale switch to online last spring, have discovered real-time interaction in online classes. They distinguish online as being asynchronous, and online real time (ORT), as including real-time interaction. Of course, the utter ridiculousness of seeing online as only asynchronous has been something our institution and many others have swallowed, so it's a shock to them, when the idea of meeting in real time was thrust upon them. And thus it's a new experience for most faculty, and administrators.

Anyone who has followed this blog, though, recognizes that none of this is new for me. In fact, since 1996, I've been exploring synchronous interaction in online classes when I conducted text chats on Internet relay chats (IRC). Yes, asynchronous participation and work is essential as part of the makeup of an online class. Actually--it's a significant aspect for f2f classes as well, at least in college. Most work in college courses takes place outside of the real-time interaction of class sessions. Period.

What is new for me, as I mentioned in my last posting, is web conferencing. This semester, three of my classes will meet in SL, one on WebEx (and not by choice--I had a low-enrolled section of Composition II cancelled and had to pick up one where they would be using video conferencing).

So like it or not, I'll be using Hollywood Squares with one of my classes. I'll spell out more of my approach and experience later, but I do want to point out one thing (beyond what I mentioned last post) that I'm not sure many have thought of that I find problematic with web conferencing in college classes. 

Whose space are we in?

For face-to-face classes, we're on campus where we all congregate to work and learn together.

For virtual environments like MCCALVC Island on Second Life, the same. A place where we congregate to work and learn together.

WebEx or Zoom? We're asking students to bring us into their space. To open a video window into their bedroom, living room, dining room, back yard, office. 

• Does anyone see a problem here?

I've now used WebEx a couple times with students. I give them the option of using their webcam, or not. I've heard that some professors require webcam usage. I will never do so. And consequently, they do not use theirs. So, a scad of squares with initials, and me, using webcam when I'm talking. 

Now I get why they don't. Using video can be problematic with bandwidth, slow computers, lack of camera and the like.

However, another reason could simply be that webcams are invasive. We're not meeting in a neutral place. They are being required to show us their space. For some, that's fine. But for others, showing us their living area can be for some reason intrusive or embarrassing, especially if they are living in less than optimal surroundings. Which would not be unusual for community college students.

So requiring video? Or even encouraging it? 

• Seems to me it is a way of widening the socioeconomic gap that we have in higher education.

Yes, students can use a "virtual" background to obscure their living space in WebEx and Zoom. But I've found that the use of fake-looking backgrounds that distort the video image of a person's head is more distracting than beneficial. And it gives the impression one is hiding something. That one would have to choose to obscure the space is the point. Instead, having a neutral space to come to that is not their home/living space/park bench is important. And everyone showing up with an avatar--rather than some showing their face and living room, and some not--enhances an equal access and equal footing in the learning environment.

Now, don't get me wrong. Any online education exacerbates socioeconomic gaps. Our society is wildly deficient in making sure we're all able to access broadband internet. And my use of a virtual environment has its difficulties since you have to have a relatively beefy computer (no phones or Chromebooks) and broadband.

But--at another level, it's much more of an equalizer than web conferencing. Again, it's a neutral place. We all congregate not in anyone's living room, but in a virtual class area. We all have an avatar which we choose and can modify. We don't need to show our faces, which makes many people nervous. Even in a f2f class. And even though some of us have beefier computers than others, we all have to deal with the vagaries of a virtual environment that can glitch out on any of us at any time.

Real time interaction--in f2f environments or online environments--are essential parts of a learning community. And I'm glad to see many others are "seeing the light." However, we need to give as much thought to the space we meet in with students online as we do with brick and mortar classrooms.

And web conferencing ain't it.

High Impact Practices in an online class

Inside Higher Ed published an article recently entitled "Making an Impact in Online Courses," a report on a session at the annual Association of American Colleges and Universities conference at Washington, D.C. (a professional organization who advocates for the inclusion of liberal arts in all aspects of higher education).

The focus was on the incorporation of high-impact practices, an AAC&U term that incorporates researched activities that have proven to enhance student learning, such as learning communities, writing-intensive courses or collaborative assignments and projects.

The three member panel from Mary Washington University, McDaniel College, and St. Edward's University discussed a variety of projects and practices, mostly focused on encouraging students to write, and collaborate, and interview people in their communities.

Sounds good, though--as I experienced when attending this conference a couple years ago--as someone who has taught online for decades, I found much discussed obvious--for example, one professor mentioned how much better participation in interviewing became when she first had students submit a proposal about who to interview.

So, good stuff, and if you're new to online learning, helpful to recognize some things that are helpful when teaching in that venue. However, most of it is asynchronous, even though interactive at some level, disembodied, and substantially lacking in presence among students or with the professor.

At the end of the article, one participant brought up something that was quite interesting:

Jesse Stommel, executive director of the division of teaching and learning technologies at Mary Washington, said ... that he wants to see informal, self-motivated discussions considered as a high-impact practice of sorts. In his face-to-face classes, he sometimes starts class by asking how students spent their weekends, and students sometimes approach him after class for free-flowing conversations that last 10 minutes or more. 

He thinks creating an environment where similar spontaneity can flourish would make a high impact as well.

It brought me back to a conversation I had years ago with a colleague who had tried teaching online, and did so for several semesters, but then gave it up and went back to face-to-face teaching. He told me that he missed the informal interaction with students, being able to joke around, talk about their weekend, the give and take that he saw and enjoyed in a real-time, f2f environment. This lack is exactly what Stommel seems to be decrying and suggesting is as integral to an educational experience as other high-impact practices.

My observation is that when we limit online learning to asynchronous 2D, text-based environments, we lose that spontaneity, that opportunity to create community with students where more informal, though vital, interaction can take place. Yes, we can create a simulation of informality through our emails, or assignment language, or syllabus. We can jump into discussion forums and interact with students asynchronously. We can even do some real-time text chat, or even audio, or even video conferencing that helps some. But notice that none of that real-time getting together as a learning community was mentioned in the article, and rarely is with online classes.

Our campus is no different at Lansing Community College. We've had online classes, online degrees offered since 1997 (as I've mentioned some years ago in this blog). But the push has always been asynchronous, with very little recognition of the value of synchronous interaction.

For the last eight years, I've been using Second Life with my online classes, where we meet as a whole class once a week. It operates just like f2f meetings. We talk about our weekends, movies, the weather before class. We work as a whole class, in groups, do peer review, writing exercises, visit sims related to their work (especially for the creative writing students where they are able to interact with other poets, fiction writers, storytellers in world). We are doing Stommel's high-impact practice.

Is it perfect? Of course not, any more than f2f interaction is. But with embodied avatars operating in a 3D space, students can see a representation of each other, work together in a place (rather than a computer 2D window), hear each other and participate in a learning community each week; I've seen (as have others) "an environment where similar spontaneity can flourish" as it can in a classroom on campus.

But it's difficult with little support from administration. I'm allowed to teach this way in online classes. But I'm on my own. I have no technical support, and the ability to get what I do (Is it an online class? Is it a hybrid class? Is it an online but hybrid class? What is it?) has been difficult to comprehend by overworked staff, administration, even academic advisers. And explaining it as an overworked professor! I've not had the time, or energy, to promote as I could, and even if I did, I'm not sure it would do much good. Online=asynchronous learning to many--students, staff, faculty and administration.

It's really a shame. Because with 3D environments, the experience that online students have could be so much more. Sure, they can still learn in a 2D learning management system like Blackboard and Desire2Learn, and such is integral to my class. But that spontaneous interaction--as my colleague put it, the ability to joke around--is largely missing, and there is no good reason, today, for such to be the case in online learning.

Virtual Worlds 2.0: High Fidelity and Magic Leap

This morning I watched a couple videos from the MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference that took place on June 1-2 in San Francisco. The first one was with Philip Rosedale--the founder of Second Life--talking about his new-virtual world company High Fidelity: The Quest to Put More Reality in Virtual Reality | EmTech Digital 2015 | MIT Technology Review.

This new version of a virtual world allows for the presentation of facial expressions that match actual facial expressions of the human driver: if you turn your head, smile, blink, blow out your cheeks, your avatar will do the same. It's also going to run on anyone's computer/server with an easy upload and naming of virtual world URLs, low latency (when you say or act, it takes place with no lag to speak of), and will interface with a variety of interfaces, from laptop, to Oculus Rift, to HTC Vive, to HoloLense to Magic Leap. The company is also working on making access to the virtual world beyond the keyboard and mouse. More natural, haptic, using hands to manipulate objects in world rather than coordinating a keyboard and mouse. And it will also have two similarities with Second Life: the capacity to build in world and a marketplace.

He discussed the use of the virtual world in education: "One of the areas we think virtual reality, particularly head mounted displays, is going to have some of its amazing early impact in virtual worlds is in teaching. If teachers can create learning spaces that they can invite students into and those students can look the teacher in the eye and be present and be aware and be attentive we think it's going to have a radical, accelerating impact on the online teaching that we're already doing today." He also mentioned later the idea that teaching and teaching-like experiences will be more immersive, such as having a discussion.

Of course, the sense of presence in an online class is something I've been exploring for several years in Second Life. Would the changes he mentions above add to the immersiveness of a class discussion, the sharing of writing, the participation in field trips or virtual world excursions?

I think so. Especially facial expressions--looking naturally at each other in the virtual environment--would add tremendously. Head-mounted displays would make it so that you could look at each other rather than manipulating mouse and keyboard to have your avatar move its head (which most students don't at all do!).

But that seems down the road a good number of years for most students because of the expense of head mounted displays and other haptic hardware. The biggest issue is latency and smooth, uninterrupted connection to operate the virtual environment. When students have a glitch-free experience, the interaction, social presence, immersiveness is much stronger. When they are constantly fighting lag, slow rezzing, jerky avatar movement and such, then the presence goes out the window.

In the last couple years, the stability of SL and the ability to access it with student computers has been much improved. Adding more tech-heavy stuff, like a head-mounted display, would take us back to glitch-land, at least in the beginning.

But even so, for an online class, students with a head-mounted display would have to be able to operate a keyboard, to be able to type onto a notecard in world. Last month for the first time, I tried the Oculus Rift and found that  the use of the keyboard or mouse was difficult because I couldn't look down to see it. Being able to do so would be necessary, or being able to access a virtual keyboard in world might work.

The other video session I watched from the EmTech Digital conference was about Magic Leap: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2015 - Magic Leap. The nearest I understand the product being developed is that it creates virtual images not through stereoscopic head mounted displays (think the old View-Masters) or other 3-D stereoscopic glasses used in 3D movies (in essence how Oculus Rift and other head mounted displays work), but through a light field that is projected onto your eyes, much like how we receive light in the actual world. And the idea is that it can blend imperceptibly with the light of the actual world simultaneously, creating a digital/analog augmented reality.

An augmented reality display, like Magic Leap (or Microsoft's HoloLens) might improve the problem I mentioned above, that of being able to see one's keyboard in order to write, an important necessity for courses that involve lots of writing. But would they keep the sense of presence that a virtual environment offers, blocking out the pile of laundry on the sofa, or the barking dog in the back yard (not that current iterations do a good job with the latter!) The whole idea of presence with the professor and other students in real time in a shared space is what needs to be preserved and even more so enhances with these new ventures into virtual reality, at least when it comes to online education.

Leading the masses into virtual worlds

On 5 April 2012, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Chris Robinson (Georgia Gwinnett College, SL: Grizzla Pixelmaid) at the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable for their once-a-month voice event. I originally had some concerns about being able to fill an hour talking about my work in Second Life, but apparently I'm more longwinded that I picture myself! We talked about how I came to find myself teaching in Second Life, much of which I've covered (and obviously will continue to explore) here in this blog. Lots of excellent questions from the group about virtual worlds, virtual presences, students, orientation, Open Sim vs. SL, and sex. Where else will you hear about strip clubs just blocks away from Lansing Community College?

Here's the link to the transcript, brilliantly prepared each week by Joe Essid (University of Richmond, SL: Iggy Onomatopoeia): http://www.vwer.org/2012/04/05/april-5-2012-dan-holt-on-leading-the-masses-into-virtual-worlds/.

If you're interested in finding out what's going on with educational innovation, especially regarding immersive virtual environments (both bleeding-edge and more mundane, like what I do), and want to spend some time with outstanding professors, teachers, grad students, IT guys and gals--and even administrators (you don't know how generous I'm being after just now decompressing from three days of administrator-mandated "professional development" days!!!) from all over the globe, you should stop by on Thursdays from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 a.m. SLT (Pacific Time) at the VWER amphitheatre on the BGSU Community sim: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BGSU%20Community/114/123/28. A more welcoming group of avatars you'll never find!

When does an online class start?

Over fifteen years ago, while designing the very first online composition course for Lansing Community College, I recall discussing with other faculty working on their first courses to start in Fall 1997 the question of when online classes start.

Today, it seems obvious--when the semester starts. But even so, not such a simple answer. F2f classes have clear, weekly schedules. This section meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 12-2 p.m., that section meets Thursdays from 6-10 p.m. It's labeled so in the schedule book, on an instructor's assignment page, and now on the web.

But online classes don't have a time listed in the schedule book. All they say is "Arranged." So when do they start? When the professor decides. Students have access to the Angel LMS web site from the first day, but that doesn't mean the professor starts it then. I usually have with online classes the basic pattern of posting assignments on Mondays by 5 p.m., with work for the week to be completed no later than Saturday night--no later than midnight. For all of my online classes, there are real-time meetings, as I've mentioned in earlier postings, using small group chats, and creating a schedule of 3-5 chat sessions for a week based on student schedules.

But with the use of Second Life, I've been experimenting with whole class meetings, where we do meet weekly at a specific time, like a f2f class would do. For this semester, I have creative students meeting with me on Tuesdays from 7-9 p.m. and Comp II students meet with me on Thursdays 7-9 p.m.

It's caused a problem doing so with the schedule book/web listing of the courses. They're still "Arranged" with a note stating when we're meeting. But of course, students are used to seeing day and time listed in a specific spot for f2f and hybrid courses, so when they don't see such for my classes, they don't expect to have to meet at a certain time. I've tried to have administration change this for my classes, but they've not been cooperative, telling me "it's just not done with online classes." Sigh.

Well, I solve the problem by emailing students before the semester starts, so everyone knows what they are getting into well before the semester starts, and those who cannot meet at the scheduled time can drop and go elsewhere.

Anyway, over the last few semesters, I've found a few benefits for meeting as a full class rather than in small group chats.

1. Second Life orientation goes much smoother when everyone meets at the same time.  I have students do the orientation and a scavenger hunt during week 2. It's much simpler for them to find a partner to work on completing tasks at Angel Learning Isle when they all show up between 7-9 p.m. on a particular evening than throughout the week as happens with sections who meet only in small groups. 
2. Whole class meetings are more energetic than small group chats. Now, don't get me wrong, small group chats can be quite animated with a rich conversation among well-prepared students. The song sharing I mentioned a couple posts back is an example. But sometimes they are not--especially on Friday afternoons when few are prepared! But when you have a whole class together, even if some aren't prepared, enough are that significant work and learning take place. 
3. Whole class meetings are easier on me. In the beginning of the semester, I attend every chat. So if I have a class with 5 chat meetings that last from 1-2 hours each, and I have several classes doing so, I can be in world (or online with 2D chats) for up to 24 hours. Now, I do bow out of chats later in the semester by choosing a moderator to keep things going in each group. But even so, it's much easier meeting with everyone, and saying something once rather than five times! A prime example is my creative writing class a couple weeks ago, where I do a lesson on how best to read poems aloud, showing them how to read a poem from sentence to sentence rather than line to line. We talk about nursery rhymes, songs, and literary poems, and I read to them one of their assigned poems to show how much clearer it can be when read from sentence to sentence. In past semesters, I did so three or four times, depending on the number of chat sessions. Last week, only once.

• Now, I don't tend to choose lessons or class organization based on what's easiest for me. I choose based on what works best for students. But it certainly doesn't hurt if the two coincide. Even more important that they do the older I get!

4.  Whole class meetings give students much more of a sense of community. It's true that they work with the whole class in Angel discussion forums, and in real time with a small group during chats. But meeting regularly with everyone gives students a sense of being a whole community, rather than isolated individuals or small groups. I'm not sure that such is important for everyone. A good number of students just want to get their work done and move on. But when part of the learning in a writing class is to address an audience in a community of writers, seeing that community regularly surely helps.

The other aspect of meeting regularly with a whole class is the question of whether to meet at the beginning or at the end of a week. It's an issue that arises with hybrid classes, where half or more of the work done in is done online and the other half on campus. So for a four hour class, usually two hours a week are scheduled to meet on campus.

So, I'm doing both this semester: the creative writing class meets at the beginning of their week (Tuesday); the composition II class meets closer to the end of their week (Thursday). The dynamics are different. For the beginning of the week, students are just getting introduced to the work they'll be doing; for later in the week, they're already full steam ahead.

Any benefits for one over the other? I have yet to decide. One of the benefits of having a later meeting is that  I can expect more significant preparation, kind of like chats, where I expect students to come to a session with notes on the reading or writing they're doing. Classes I start early may include later in the week small group chats. But late week meetings, small group chats don't take place.

Either way, I definitely plan to stay with whole class meetings, something that I've not found doable until virtual worlds.

Side note--I finally got shadows to work! Well, more like Linden Lab finally got the viewer to cooperate with my graphics card so I could take snapshots with shadows, ambient occlusion and even depth of field. My frame-rate drops to a crawl, but it's sufficient for pictures. Now if only the Arts & Sciences division will cooperate and grant me a computer upgrade!

Pixels or paper?

The semester has ended with most of my students improving their writing and succeeding in receiving a satisfactory grade (many with very good grades).

But there were three events from the end of the semester (and a day beyond) that I wanted to share before slipping into summer.

1. Week 14, composition students were revising for their portfolio to be submitted for external assessment. During my office hour one day, a student dropped by my office on Angel Learning Isle to ask some questions about MLA citation style on one of her works cited pages. Over the years I've had many students do so in my f2f office, and online through IM. Looking at the arcane vagaries of MLA minutiae has always been much simpler f2f--much easier to look at a page of citations over a desk than on mirror RTF files or through the small text windows of IM or chat.

But on SL with a media share screen, the student could throw the citations onto a Google Doc, we could both see it in the same space, and we could both highlight or edit till she understood how the citations should be presented. A colleague walked into my office watching us both work on the document. And she said, "This is no different than working with a student in my office!"

Many see the use of virtual worlds in education as an opportunity to do things you cannot do in the real world, and they are certainly valuable for such.  But I would suggest they are equally valuable for equipping faculty and students to do things that are difficult to do with online classes using only 2D tools, things that are easy to do f2f. Many more faculty who teach online will see the value of VWs using a Google Doc than an elaborate simulation.

2. Every semester I spend countless hours reading essays, stories and poems on paper presented in construction-paper pocket folders. Stacks of them. This semester I read my comp and creative writing students' portfolios on my iPad. After saving as PDF, I uploaded to dropbox.com opened on my iPad and read away, taking notes on a paper yellow pad.

The main concern I've had with reading portfolios electronically is eye fatigue, and I know such a concern to be held by many faculty in my department. I currently read and respond to my students' essays/stories/poems on my laptop using Word, marginal comments, and track changes. Then I send my response as a PDF file.

Even so, the idea of reading dozens (over a hundred each semester) of portfolios on a computer seemed wearisome. But I found that doing so on an iPad was not a problem. With its high resolution, I found it no less comfortable than reading paper. And the utter lack of pounds of folders to lug around was a great boon.

My next test would be to see how well it would work on an e-ink reader.

3. Finally, I went to (and presented at) the Computers & Writing conference in Ann Arbor the day after my last day at LCC. Besides attending a myriad of sessions on eportfolios, gamification and the nature of digital humanities, I also brought along my iPad and no paper books, for the first time--usually, I bring at least a couple books to read on the plane or bus ride, and in the evening before going to sleep. This time I instead read Bleak House from the iBook reader.

When I got home, I planned to return to the paper copy, so the next evening, in bed, I pulled down my Oxford Illustrated edition and began to read. After a couple minutes, I put it back on my head board shelf, and picked up the iPad, and finished the novel reading the free ebook from Project Gutenberg.

Why? Because I found the iPad more readable than the paper book while reading before bed. With the illumination turned down, and a sepia tone page, I could read comfortably without bothering my sleeping wife. All I needed was a single night light as backlight and the room was restfully dark, yet with plenty of light to read away.

During the C&W conference, Amazon announced that they are selling more ebooks than paper books (hardback and paperback). I'm beginning to understand why.

Does that mean I plan to abandon paper books? Absolutely not. But if booksellers want readers to buy paper books, they may want to consider including an e-copy as well.

OK, time for summer!

Media Share on a Prim

A lot has been written in the last several months about the new SL viewer, particularly nashing of teeth by old timers who detest all of the changes.

Some of the whining is understandable. There are some tasks that take more key strokes than used to be so. But as an Angel user, I'm used to the philosophy of why use one keystroke when three will do.

I've not found the new viewer to be that problematic, and instead find it to be quite useful, such as the back and forth keys that teleport you to recent sites, or the Favorites bar. And the green i icon on avatars has been

quite useful, especially when using voice--much quicker to turn someone up down or out.

But to me the game changer with the new viewer is media share on a prim, where residents can share a live web page on a screen while in world. When I saw that last February, I said to myself, "I don't care what else this viewer has, my students will be using it come fall."

And they have. I've found my newbie students seem much more comfortable with the viewer, much quicker to pick up its uses, and off and running sooner than the last couple semesters. Now, part of this likely has to do with the fact that more students have reasonably powered computers than in previous semesters, and I'm more competent in preventing/solving problems. But I do think it's also the viewer.

But I digress. The main reason I wanted to use it was because of shared media. Yes, there are slide viewers aplenty in SL; some are quite effective, very smooth, and valuable for presentations or Powerpoints.

Slide viewers, though, add a step to my preparation that I could live with, but don't really want to. I'd like to create a web page and show it to students, not take a screenshot of it and download as a texture. And if I want to change the page minutes before a class, I want to be able to. Now, with media share, I can do so.

But even more important, I want students to be able to search the web, watch video and write on a screen while in world with other classmates.

And these last two weeks, for the first time, I was able to do so.

Let me describe an assignment that I do in f2f classes. Before the first peer response session, I like to have students write about what they want, and what they don't want from class member responses to their drafts. So I have them write for five minutes each on two very simple prompts:

1. What would you like to see in a response to your draft from a class member?
2. What would you not like to see in a response to your draft from a class member?

Then I have them get into groups, read what they've read to each other (which also gets them used to reading their writing to each other), and come up with 3 tips for responding effectively, 3 warnings about what to avoid.

After they then post these into an Angel discussion forum, we as a class come back together and discuss what they've come up with.

A very simple assignment that generates quickly ways to respond, and ways not to, that students have instant buy-in toward.

In thirteen years of teaching online, I've not been able to do this assignment as expressed here. I've done a more asynchronous version, but I've never thought it was as effective.

But now, with shared media and Google docs, I can do it.

My WRIT 121 class met one Tuesday evening and did the following:

1. They started off writing, either on a notecard or in their word processor, responses to the questions just mentioned, questions I posted on the media share screen from Google docs.
2. Then they got into groups. I had them separate into groups, moving to opposite sides of the classroom area, and then teleport to a sky classroom and sky platform above Angel Learning Isle.
3. When they got there, they found three screens I set up earlier in the day: one had my instructions, that I could change live (and did). The second screen had an empty Google doc that they could write on and everyone in the group could see. And the third screen had Angel LMS that one student could log into, copy/paste from the middle Google doc and paste into the discussion forum.
4. When done, we met back at the classroom area and discussed their tips/warnings as a whole.

While the students were in their groups, I stayed in the classroom area, and fielded the occasional IM, especially to determine when to switch from one prompt to the next in their discussion.

It went without a hitch. As long as the Google docs were set to public, anyone can edit, students could all see the page they added tips to, I could see what they were doing from Google docs, and I could change prompts from one to another when everyone was ready to move on.

Many faculty that I've talked with over the years, especially those who have taught online and gave it up, bemoaned the real-time interaction that they have in a f2f class. Yes, chat or web conferencing can counter some of the asynchronicity of most online classes. But to work with students in real time in a real spatial environment, using tools and techniques that work well in f2f settings, is a game changer with online classes. It's not flashy, it's not something that can only be done in a VW. But it is something that can enhance online classes, and make more faculty feel like teaching online does not mean giving something up.

The power of placeness

I was invited to submit a guest blog post at the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable website, which was published today. Some of what I discuss will already be familiar to those reading this blog, but clearly not all.

Just click on the screen shot to read.

New Semester in Second Life

Spring 2010 is well underway. As you know, last semester, I taught one WRIT 121 hybrid course using Second Life. This semester, I'm teaching two WRIT 121 courses (combined as one in Angel LMS) fully online and with Second Life. I'm also teaching a WRIT 260: Creative Writing I course online and inworld.

So what's different this time through?

Well, first off, with fully online courses, we couldn't do an orientation all at the same time (both because there is no scheduled time when we would all meet, and there were potentially 55 students!). So instead, I gave instructions to do the orientation on their own on Virtual Ability Island, and then later in the second week, to come chat with me at Angel learning Isle.

I also put together a walk through, signing up through Virtual Ability, and then starting the orientation.

Overall, orientations/chats went well, though some students seemed to get lost on VA Island. And a good number seemed surprised that we were using SL, not realizing we were going to do so, even though it was announced in the schedule book. I had so many in their intros expressing ignorance we were going to use SL, I asked our lead instructional support, Brett, to check to make sure the notice was presented online when students registered (it was). Consequently, there were a good number who didn't have sufficient computers to deal with SL effectively.

But for those who jumped in and did the orientation, and met with me that first time on Angel Learning Isle, they seemed to enjoy themselves.

Week 3 in the WRIT 121 class, we had a chat, and then an SL field trip. Their first essay is about a particular toy, and its value to children (or adults, if they choose to explore) so they brought to the chat notes about three of their favorite toys as children. After the chat, they would search about their toys, and then decide to go to one sim that deals with the toy in some way.

Last semester, the student searches were hit or miss. Some sessions the students couldn't really find anything of value, so I realized I needed to have some possibilities in my back pocket in case that happened.

Come to find out, it didn't need them. Students had no problem finding interesting places to visit, in a very short amount of time, from bike trails to mechanical toy factories to baby dolls and furniture. It seems that Linden Labs has improved their search engine quite a bit, and/or more intriguing content is being built in SL.

Also, I had an experience that really surprised me during one of the WRIT 121 chats. After the chat, we went to Kool-Stop Country where we picked up some free bikes to explore the island.

One student found a dance ball to practice a little tai chi.

After the field trip, I went back to Angel to change out a notecard in the in the notecard dispenser. One of my students was on the office roof (where I have an oriental rug). She mentioned how pretty the sunset was.

So I jumped up to the roof, and she was lounging, enjoying the view. I sat, and we just started to talk. She told me about her husband and his family overseas, asked me about why we were using SL, and whether I'd done much traveling. In other words, we were just relaxing on the roof, and talking. After about a half hour, she said she had to go to work early the next morning, so needed to go, but thanked me and said, "This was nice." She then left, I finished my work, and left as well.

Now--I've done small talk with students f2f, and with online students, in chat. But the sense of presence, the connection, that took place in this online class, was very different than anything I've experienced before, and it solidifies the value I see in working in a MUVE.

Very simple, but I find very profound the spontaneous exchange we had during a sunset on a roof at Angel Learning Isle. If this doesn't exemplify the fact that SL is a place, I don't know what does.

In fact, I'm beginning to think that the power of SL with online education is that when students don't have f2f interaction with you, such as with a hybrid class, they rely more on avatar interaction, and hence it becomes much richer in creating a sense of presence.

Last semester we had SL field trips; I had students take snapshots; they posted them in Writer's Cafe. Same this semester. But this semester, students not only took pictures--they wanted to take a picture of the chat group posing. And not just one group suggested such. Again, not something that was ever suggested in the hybrid class. Could it be that when students never meet f2f, they make a much stronger connection with their avatar classmates and professor than takes place with a hybrid class? The hybrid class need not rely on SL avatars to have a connection with the prof and class members. They can enjoy the experience, but it's secondary. But with online classes, the 3D avatar interaction, possibly, becomes the primary connection, with the 2D interaction in the learning management system becoming secondary.

Of course, this is all tentative, and preliminary, but certainly promising.

Whole class meeting in SL

A couple weeks ago, I met with my WRIT 121 class in Second Life as a whole. In other words, instead of meeting f2f on a Tuesday evening, we all met at Angel Learning Isle.

As you know, up to this point, I had met with students only in small groups on the balcony of my office.

Now we would meet in the classroom area.

The purpose of the class was for students to read/review the virtual lecture on thesis statements and then to get into three groups, where they would discuss their thesis statements, using some specific prompts to help them make sure they were working with a position that brought insight to the issue.

The lecture link was available on a sign with a screen shot of the first page of the lecture (behind me in this picture).

The prompts were available on a notecard in the blue box in the middle of the seating circle.

In a f2f class, I would have them get into groups, spread throughout the classroom, and they would take turns sharing/discussing.

In regular online classes, I would have them discuss in text chat sessions at different times.

Here on Angel Learning Isle, I had them spatially get up, move to three corners of the classroom area, and stand next to teleportation globes. Once I saw that the groups were evenly divided, I had them teleport to three sky class areas (one a gallion, or pirate ship), where they discussed their thesis statements. Doing so made it possible for them to discuss in small groups without hearing (if using voice) or seeing (if using text chat) the other group's discussion.

Once I got everyone situated--I had to lead a group from my balcony over to the classroom area--the explanation of what we were going to do, the reviewing of the lecture, the receipt of the note card prompts, and the movement to the sky discussion areas went smoothly.

While they met in groups, I stayed in the classroom area, in case late students showed up, and in case students had questions. When students had questions, they would IM me, which can be done anywhere in SL; one need not be close by.

What is interesting is that one student, instead of IMing, teleported back to the classroom, asked his question, and then returned to his group. It seemed like he did so deliberately, almost like he wanted the movement. That sense of movement, of going from one place to another, seems to add to engagement, much like having students move around in a classroom to break up a long class session. Online students participating in a text or voice chat never have a sense of movement within a landscape of any sort while working with each other.

I didn't have them return to the classroom area. Like I did with my online class that uses only the Angel LMS for chat, I had them write a note to send to me through the Angel drop box, summarizing what group said.

What I often do f2f is have groups report to class and share what they discovered from the group interaction. I didn't even think to have this class do so in SL, but of course, I could have, and might try that next time.

I don't know if I'll have any more whole class meetings this semester. But I do know that when I mentioned returning to f2f the next week, some students expressed disappointment, especially those who discussed their thesis statements in the hull of a pirate ship!

Back to school

First week back at Lansing Community College. Along with the other three classes I'm teaching, I've been working on the WRIT 121: Composition I class that will be using SL for the first time.

As I've been thinking through this class, and what I want to accomplish, I came up with some

principles I want to operate from.

1. Simplicity: I want to make sure that my approach is simple both for students and for other faculty.

• For students, because I know that for many of them, I'm going to be throwing quite a bit of new web applications at them--discussion forums, drop boxes, word processing beyond simple texting, Twitter, social bookmarking, IMing. Add to all of this Second Life, with the need to create an avatar, orient into the virtual world, and then real time chats, text and voice, along with group expeditions exploring the world.
• For faculty, because I expect to show instructors at LCC what I'm doing, all with the purpose of getting them interested in possibly including SL in their online course. If it looks too "cool" with lots of gee-whiz stuff, many will become dismayed that the virtual world is beyond their ability, or beyond the time investment they see themselves needing in order to overcome the steep learning curve.

Therefore, I made a simple circle of pillows to sit on for class,

a simple sign at my office on Angel Learning Island,

a simple URL dispenser for the course syllabus (and calendar).

I want to keep the tools I use in world recognizable and useful for students and perceived, quickly, as such by faculty. We'll see how well I can do so.

2. Second Life is a place: I've heard over the last few months a number of people describing SL as a tool, even as an educational tool. However, I consider the designation of SL or any MUVE as a tool to misperceive its potential in education, especially in online classes. Angel is an aggregation of tools--drop boxes, discussion forums, chat logs, URLs and so forth. Podcasts are tools. Most Web 2.0 apps are tools. But Second Life is a place where you can use tools to accomplish work (or learning, or play) that you want to accomplish.

A chat client is a tool.

Angel Learning Island is a place in Second Life where chatting can take place.

3. Writing class, not SL class: The biggest struggle that I've had with SL concerning writing classes has been that most comp courses I've seen (and some very good ones by Intellagirl Tully, Ignatius Onomatopoeia, and AJ Brooks) have had students write about SL. Which is great. But in order to make SL really viable as a place to conduct online classes, the focus has to be on something else, in most cases. In other words, when I first started online classes, I did not have students write about being online. They wrote about popular culture or controversial issues, or with creative writing, stories and poems that had nothing whatsoever to do with being online. I've never had a student write about Angel!

• However, if I see SL as a place, which isn't the case with learning management systems like Angel or Blackboard, then it makes more sense to consider having students write about that place, bringing readers insight about what a virtual world is like.
• So I keep going back and forth. Write about SL, write about other things, and use SL as a place to do some of the work. At first I planned to have the class write the first two essays about their experiences in SL, but I'm thinking the first essay on SL makes no sense, since they'll be just getting used to the MUVE.

So stay tuned as my thoughts about how this all works evolves!

A quickie on Twitter

A couple of observations:

1. Students helping each other after a chat. I have students chat in Angel (or AIM if the LMS goes down) in small groups, usually once a week. I'm beginning to find students extending the chat into Twitter, giving further suggestions about issues and sources a day or two later.

2. By essay 3, students are really beginning to interact, asking questions, giving advice, commiserating, celebrating--particularly right before spring break.

3. From Twitter: hrheingold--using with students for the first time this semester: a handful hate it and don't get it. I've found much the same. However, I'm also seeing some who were resistant beginning to become more comfortable with its use. I think, though, next semester, I might want to find ways to encourage students to use gadgets, widgets or a standalone viewer so that they see Twitter more often. I wonder if there's a widget for Angel?

Twitter and Diigo and AIM, oh my!

A month into the new semester. In my comp II classes, I introduced the use of Twitter and Diigo. I started with Twitter in the very first week, as a very simple assignment. Sign up, log in, and tweet to me, "@danholt, [student name] in WRIT 132 is all set to use Twitter." Here's a link to the assignment. Among the 50+ students I had, only one had been using Twitter previously, so for most all of them, it was a new experience.

I got a range of reactions, from "Wow, this is cool we're using Twitter" to "Why in the world are we using Twitter?" And several had difficulty with tweeting as I requested, so that class members would be able to search easily for class members to follow. Finally, a good number simply didn't do it.

Not unusual. Usually students who have some online experience, especially with online classes, have no problem with jumping in and exploring a new app. However, with students who have never taken an online class before, or may have but are overextended--6 classes, 40 hour a week job, part time job, rearing children on his or her own (and if you think I'm exaggerating, think again!!!)--being able to take the time to follow instructions carefully often hinders the student.

Of course, the problem with instructions and certain populations of students has been a challenge in teaching online classes since I started in 1997. Granted, early attempts left lots of holes since I was unfamiliar with how to translate the give and take of guiding students through an assignment in an online world. But now, especially from students who've taken a number of online classes, I receive positive comments, relieved they can follow and implement the tasks I lay out before them.

But I'm noticing with this semester, as I require students to do Angel discussion forums, chat, AIM, audio essay submissions, Diigo, Twitter, that I'm pushing many to the edge, very like what we had with students first trying online education in the late 90s. 

Add to that the fact that Angel has been buggy--students unable to log in at one point a couple weeks into the semester because of problems with communication between Angel and Banner. I know of at least three students who threw up their hands and dropped because of the log in problems. Furthermore, the discussion forums have been squirrelly, working with one browser, but not another, problems with uploading files, even emails sent through the discussion forum appearing as a single word: null.

Even so, my goal of offering a rich environment for a writing community, seems to be working for many--Twitter still has naysayers ("still can't see the value in doing this!") but some interesting reactions. A couple students have mentioned that they really like using Twitter because it helps them to stay on track by seeing what class members are doing.

And Diigo, though rather clunky with library online databases, has been a hit with most students. 

But even so, I had to drop a scad of students because of non-participation. So, should I make classes rich in applications to benefit those who have some experience with online classes and who devote appropriate amounts of time to the work, or should I make it easy and spare, so students who have little experience with online classes and/or have little time to devote to the class can succeed? 

I guess it's simply not in my nature to do much capitulation toward the latter.

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!

This will be my last posting for my sabbatical, though not my last posting. One of the values, I see, in sabbaticals is the opportunity to start activities that can then be incorporated into one's professional life. So my goal is to continue this blog next semester.

But before that happens, I thought it would be good to do some summary and reflection on the work I did this last semester. First off, here is a list of applications that I played with this semester that I hadn't really used until going on sabbatical:

• Blogger
• Diigo
• delicious
• Google docs
• Pageflakes
• Second Life
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Twitter
• Twittervision
• Twistory
• Flickrvision
• Google Reader
• Google Calendar
• Google Chrome
• Ping.fm

There are a few others that I looked at and briefly dabbled with, such as ning, pbwiki, wetpaint, Google Lively and so on. But those listed above are ones I spent significant time with, and will most likely continue to use at some level. And I've used flickr for some time, though only for personal use.

Furthermore, here is a list of conferences, seminars, and discussion groups that I attended in SL the last 45 days:

• ISTE discussion group
• UCLA Mellon seminar in Digital Humanities
• East Carolina University conference "Virtual Worlds in Education"
• Educause Annual Conference
• MacArthur Foundation "Real World Impacts from the Virtual World"
• Community Colleges in Second Life discussion group
• Epic Institute "Where Are We Going with Virtual Reality?--and Who Will We Be When We Get There?" discussion group
• Second Life Educators Roundtable
• Virtual Worlds Research Group
• Metanomics
• Science Friday
  
• Science Fiction and Fantasy Portal at InfoIsland
• West of Ireland reading
• Program for the Future conference
• University of Louisiana's Invitational Conference on Virtual Worlds

So what did I learn? Besides the fact that I've only scratched the surface of the metaverse, here are some thoughts based on a review of my blog postings from the last three months (parenthetic dates note previous blog entries of issues):

One of the first assertions I made in the beginning of this project--in the proposal--was the desire to see if we were at a place where we could expand 2d online education to make it more immersive. I've come to the conclusion that we are on the cusp of launching online education into a 3D immersive environment, where students will not simply communicate through screen windows of text, but will find their online classes situated within a place, where up, down, left, right become essential elements in understanding where they are just as they do in real life (RL) classrooms. Where students see each other and the instructor within an environment rather than just text on a page:





Virtual worlds like Second Life make concrete learning through social interaction and will likely lead to higher engagement/retention (9/9). However, we need to keep in mind, that SL and other virtual worlds are bleeding edge (9/5), and very much like the frontiers of browsing in the mid-nineties. It's not quite "ready for prime time" in the sense of being able to use to its full capacity with multiple sections of fully online classes across an institution. But it will be soon, where seamless interaction with 2D applications within a multi-user virtual environment will make fully online education as socially present as a face to face class.

The concept of e-mmediacy--feeling connected with students and instructor in online classes (11/14)--takes place today with learning management software, like Angel or Blackboard. But it only happens with some students and faculty. I've had many students, and faculty, I've worked with express dissatisfaction with online learning because they miss the connection with others. Even though they've dealt with fully interactive online classes. Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) seem to me to be a critical development in online learning, and any institution who ignores them will soon look quaint in its approach to distance education.

Now, do note that I mention seamless interaction with 2D applications within a 3D world. MUVEs by themselves are nowhere near enough. By themselves, they become only Jung's collective unconscious, a dream world (10/9) that may be valuable for study but not necessarily a place to study and learn. Even just now (12/16, 7:15 p.m.), I attended a discussion at the SL educator's roundtable, and we discussed the need for seamless access of 2D applications in SL, such as the ability to present web pages easily and quickly to others while in world. Most agreed that if another virtual world offered such, and SL didn't, SL would lose educators. Project Wonderland is another MUVE that advertises the ability to collaborate with others on 2D applications. And Sloodle is working on such a presenter of web pages now for use in SL (as announced by a Sloodle developer at the meeting just mentioned). With these developments, I can see fully online classes using virtual worlds for an immersive space to do real work. And if SL stays at the forefront, then the axiom expressed recently by John Seattle will really be so for online education: "Second Life is real life" (11/20).

One other point: In order to use a MUVE in online education, at least for community colleges, there must be accommodation for mixed-age classes (11/25). It's true that classes could be advertised as 18 and over only, but that's not the best situation. There is no reason that under 18 students should be kept from immersive online classes as long as they have parental permission. Hopefully, Linden Labs will relent in the near future.

If not--Second Life really will be the Netscape of the 21st century as other MUVEs leap over it to accommodate higher education.

What's next? I will definitely be using Twitter, Diigo and Pageflakes next semester. I may have some SL activities that are optional, where students can participate rather than do something in the discussion forum or chat. Or as extra credit. I need to explore more fully the different orientation possibilities, to get students started. Right now, I'm leaning toward the Virtual Ability orientation. I'm hoping to build up my skills in SL so that I can require its use in the fall. I'm also going to explore the acquisition of land. Lansing Community College really needs to invest in developing immersive environments for their online classes. If we as an institution are not ready to invest in our own island, I plan to check into ed islands who offer space to other institutions.

And I plan to continue using SL for professional development. Conversation and participation with other educators has been quite enjoyable, much more than I expected when I first began this project.

So until next year, Happy Christmas, Merry Hannukah, Uproarious Kwanza, and may the Force be with you.

Second Life Is Real Life

This week, I've been working on a couple assignment ideas, one with Twitter and one with social bookmarking. A Twitter assignment for WRIT 122 students, using the microblog as a research/writing log is close to ready, and another on using delicious or Diigo is in planning stages.

I did hit a snag with using the social bookmarking. It works great for Web resources. However, we tend to encourage students to take advantage of the rich resources available through Lansing Community College Libary, such as InfoTrac OneFile. I couldn't figure out an easy or even reasonable way to bookmark such resources using Diigo. A quick email to Debby Harris, and she figured out how to do it. It's a bit on the clunky side, no fault of hers, but it should work.

In Second Life, I was able to participate in several events pretty smoothly. I'm finding that SL crashes reduced significantly when I made sure that my graphics settings weren't set too high for my computer. Next computer needs a more powerful graphics/video card.

Three events, in particular, I wanted to bring up. One was a mini-conference celebrating the opening of the MacArthur Foundation's land in SL, "Real World Impacts from the Virtual World." I attended the session "Dropping Knowledge: How Virtual World Educators Are Changing Lives" sponsored by RezEd. Basically it was an opportunity to hear from a librarian, a teacher working with elementary kids in Dizzywood, and a representative from Arizona State University where they were experimenting with Google Lively (which just hours later was announced to be going dark next month!).



The session then broke into small groups where we discussed online education in SL.



Although the mini-conference was interesting, the main point that I wanted to make about it was how smoothly it went. I crashed once, got right back in, and I could hear and see everything that took place with little hindrance. The presenters streamed their discussion to the conference instead of using voice, and they did so, by all four (including the emcee) talking on Skype, and then streaming Skype into the conference. And though the breakout session was only mildly interesting--there really wasn't a moderator that kept things going, and it seemed there wasn't really anyone there with much experience in teaching online classes in SL--it took place without a hitch. It seems that the use of the virtual world for real events--beyond novelty or recreation--is evolving exponentially. Of course, it also helps that I'm getting used to moving around effectively in the 3D world.

The next two events, though, had more intriguing content/ideas tossed about, at least for me, and for the purposes of this blog entry. The first was a weekly discussion put on by Epic Institute entitled "Where Are We Going with Virtual Reality?-- and Who Will We Be When We Get There?" led by a social psychologist and a sociologist. This particular session, we visited Cedar Island, a community of artists and educators, and an island that is designed to be like the Pacific Northwest.



The tour guide and designer, John Seattle, pointed out that Second Life is social constructivism made visible. In other words, the making of meaning and knowledge as a social construction is constructed literally in the virtual world where community and environment are built by groups of people. He also mentioned something that rang a bell, that constraints and boundaries are necessary for people to accept a virtual world and to be able to operate effectively--that if anything goes, users become lost, frustrated, disorientated. What is created needs to be rooted in real life enough to make relatable. (Very similar to something John Lasseter of Pixar said about 3D animation.)

In fact, John Seattle mentioned something that I think is a hurdle we will need to jump over in working with students: "Second Life is real life." In other words, real work, real thought, real education, real community is created in the virtual world. It's not a game, but a 3D virtual environment. Students who are used to MMORPGs, PC games or console games will think it's just a pastime, not a place where real education takes place. Even my son--a 3D animation major at Ringling School of Art and Design, who, you would think, would see the world of 3D worlds as a place where serious work takes place, since he works night and day--sees SL as a game--"I haven't played it in a long time." And he was amazed to find out real colleges have virtual campuses in SL.

So the value of play is certainly a part of SL, a big part, and I would think should be a significant part of using it in higher education. But it should be serious play, one that leads to learning, community, the extension of knowledge, and so on.

I mentioned a third event. I'll talk about that in the next entry.

Back up plans in the metaverse

Another simulcast meeting, this time through UCLA--part of the Mellon seminar in
Digital Humanities series. The focus was on scientific visualization and the humanities, a project to bring both together, using science-oriented grants with humanities content. The focus was on a 3D iteration of the Roman Colleseum. However, I didn't get much out of it because of a series of problems.

When I first arrived, there was no sound. After a few minutes, the sound issue was resolved, so that the 25+ avatars in SL could hear presenters in LA. However, there was also video being broadcast on a screen in front of us. For a few minutes, we could see the presenters, then they froze, then the screen turned into John McCain's favorite background, a sickly green. So while the presenters were showing the RL participants the Colleseum, we listened on and wondered when McCain would show up. Then SL booted me out only to find upon returning that a three-way crash blasted everyone away. Along with sound--nothing for about ten minutes, then at a volume way below comprehension. Then it swooshed in at a distortingly painful volume and finally settled down. One avatar proclaimed that SL was obviously "not ready for prime time" and teleported away. Finally, video appeared, and we could see both presenters and the Colleseum. But by then, past an hour, it was question and answer time.

So, someone in SL asked a question, in text rather than voice. Which is fine. Except that the questioner typed at about 3 words a minute. So we waited for five minutes as the question dribbled into the bubble over the head of the avatar.

Well, I soon recognized that though I've enjoyed the hour watching the chaos surrounding us, and did get to partake in quips about McCain and knock knock jokes, I was getting absolutely nothing from the session, so I teleported out to a session on narrative though found out it would take place two hours later, which I didn't make, deciding instead to spend time eating dinner with my daughters.

Which brings me to a comment Marcy Bauman made to me in Facebook: "Sounds like you're spending your sabbatical learning what you already know about technology, Dan - it's great when it works, but have a backup plan! :)"

With online classes, I've found that having redundant systems to be essential to keep chaos from swallowing up a learning environment. For example, I don't ever put all course materials and applications in one learning management system like Blackboard or Angel. I have assignments hosted on a school server that can be accessed through Angel or directly with a URL so that if Angel goes down--make that when Angel goes down--students can still access assignments and keep moving along. Furthermore, the assignments are stored not only on my hard drive and on the LCC web server, but also on another server where I archive stuff.

Or when I have chat sessions taking place through Angel, I always have a back up through AOL Instant Messenger, and require all students to have an account set up and open when chatting.

With Web 2.0, the need for back up is as important, if not more so, especially when dealing with cutting edge or newish applications. And we as educators need to work really hard to anticipate problems and have back ups that are immediately accessible. Certainly the problems I've chronicled the last couple blog entries have a certain level of back up--in-world chroniclers, transcripts, streamed audio and video available sometime after the session. However, we really need back up systems available in real time, so that the participants have a valuable experience right then, even if things go wrong. An example I've seen in SL is at Science Friday sessions. The volunteers on Science Friday Island let avatars know that if the stream of the broadcast doesn't work, to listen on a 2d stream. In fact an audio tips notecard is available by clicking on a tile in front of Ira Flatow's chair,



and on a bulletin board at an outdoor info area next to the auditorium:



As I begin to brainstorm and play with possible assignments this month (my goal as spelled out in my agenda), I need to keep in mind the anticipation of back up plans so that I can keep the level of frustration students may encounter as manageable as possible.

Off topic: since it's my daughter's 25th birthday, I present her a picture of her father's avatar pounding away on Ringo's drum set in the Cavern (though I was supplied with no drum sticks--go figure!)