Self-Diagnostic Exercise

My dear Friend,

I know you are not working in education and that you want to understand how people learn from each other in various contexts and how this could be richer than formal classroom training. I also get your sceptisism and think should give you some insights on informal learning experiences in a virtual context.

First I think that you should reflect about how education and learning are perceived as such and I believe that in today's society people will mainly consider the achievement of certain degrees and the efficiency of one methodoloy versus another one, what is more cost-efficient F2F classroom or virtual teaching?

However this is not the only perspective you should be looking at. We should consider how our cultural perception of the telos of education in the past slowly moved to the sphere of cultural awareness. Well, I guess it could simply be that learning is natural and guarantees our survival, we need to grow, we need to evolve and therefore will to learn, unlearn, re-learn and eventually know, but always question ourselves in order to learn futher. This will keep us going, we advance, we improve, we transfer, we keep knowledge. It seems to be an inherent concept for the human being.

What would that mean if you look at those different contexts? Virtual versus F2F? Well, I believe that virtual training opens new perspectives and thus gives you a broader view on topics.

Try to look back when you were a child! Look at the picture!

What do you see here? Two Walnuts? Yes! However they look different! So how do you know then? Well I guess at one point you tried to open one and looked at the insight and you discovered how it looks. From then on you knew!
What happened in terms of learning? You looked at the same thing from a new perspective and that helped you learn! Right! You were able to interact with the properties of the object according to your own needs.
This simple example might illustrate how it important it is to add new perspectives to learning, to give learners the opportunity to explore, try and understand. We have to be open to new things and learn in as many contexts as possible in order to be able to transfer knowledge and develop generic concepts.

In formal classroom you rarely have the occasion to explore and try, you would rather listen and eventually need some extra time to understand and apply what you have seen in classroom. In a virtual context you have not only the alternative to directly practice what you have seen, but you could also interact with other participants, each bringing in a new and challeging perspective.

People with whom you interact in a virtual environment bring various cultural and educational backgrounds and that gives you a unique opportunity to look at the same content but under different aspects! Remember, the walnut, it's the different perspective that allowed you to understand and acquire knowledge, as well as the interaction with the object.
Now you want me talk about one of my own experiences? Well for me it is the richness of cultural perspectives and thus the unique chance to raise your own cultural awareness and understanding. People tend to consider their own perspective as a kind of absolute reference and different opinions as a deviation from the norm.

Working together in virtual teams with people from all across the world constantly brings you to reconsider your own perspectives and take into account other people's view. For me this a unique chance to better understand other perspectives, question myself and keep on learning.

But that might not be the only way to look at it Aristotle considered education "a" good, but not "the" good. In this sense you consider education and learning as a tool to achieve an ultimate goal.

We all explore new technologies, some grab our attention more than others, some seem revolutionary, others simply bore us. Tell us about that new tool, or set of tools, you have just discovered that really excites you, talk about the potential it has to change your work. What do you want to do with it?

Currently we explore the idea on how social networking could possibly have a positive impact on learning. Each year about 7000 participants from 40 different countries come to our campus for a one week program. In each program you have about 35 participants and in general the people from one program stay together for the entire week without necessarily interacting with participants across programs.

As we consider interaction the motor of learning and learning from peers as a big potential to further enrich the learning experience we think it is important to foster peer-to-peer learning and encourage people to mingle across programs.

We therefore implemented a graphic networking tool that is available on all cybercafé on campus and people could explore who else is currently on campus. Depending on the search criteria they enter they will see their personal networking map. If they want to get in touch with anybody they could simply send them a message that will be delivered to the other person while they are on campus.

We encourage participants to use the tool if they are working on specific projects to use the tool for getting insights and feedback from other participants. As participants highly appreciate this tool we think of further extending it to a web-based application and eventually relate to some online collaboration project.

Do you see yourself as a pioneer? Do you think you are more innovative than others in your organisation? Do you think your organisation is lagging behind? Tell us how you feel about this?

According to Wikipedia a pioneer is "..is a person or an organisation who is one of the first to do something and often opens up a new area for others and achieves an innovation".

Following this definition a pioneer would be an organization that in terms of introduction of new technologies is almost close to the creation of this technology. Innovation also means identifying links where there has been no link before
I think like in many other organizations we have to find the right balance between innovation and feasibility. By that I mean we have to consider how ready our customers are for innovation and how this could be integrated and realized within the organization.

I feel that in our organization we try to make sure to find the right balance between those two aspects. Sometimes this means that we will invest some more time to investigate on new ideas in order to make sure that our customers will adopt the new technology and take full advantage. In this sense we might not always be at the edge of technology but make sure that when we introduce a new technology that it really creates impact.

In order to make sure that we always learn from this process we do research on how different technologies and methodologies impact the learning process in order to create the perfect mix for our participants. And in this sense I believe we are rather innovate, close to the creation of new ideas. However if I think about how innovative we are in terms of creation of new technogy I think give the structure and objective of the organization I would consider ourselves as "fast followers". Nevertheless based on our own research we try to find innovative ways to introduce these new technologies and implement them for teaching and learning.

As for the question if we are more innovative than other parts of the organization? Even so I am working in the LearningLab, that is supposed to come up with new and creative ideas for learning and teaching I don't believe that we are more innovate than the rest of the organization.

To be creative and make innovation happen the whole organization has to be ready. It is s process that has to be supported by the organization.

This is almost a strategic question and I think if I look at the question under this angle I believe that we have the support from the organization as long as we make sure to find that balance between innnovation and applicability for the client.

Of course sometimes I have new ideas and would like to apply them immediately and see how this could possibly impact the learning process. But as soon as you work for an organization that has to deliver high-quality teaching you may not want to take a big risk. So in this sense you also need to constantly evaluate the risk you are taking by introducting a new technology.

The way we approach new ideas is, that we will always try them first in a safe environment before pushing them any further. If they prove to be effecient we will introduce them to participants.

I am convinced that you could always be more "innovative" but this might also have a price and this price could be taking a higher risk on how useful this innovation really is. I might be a true success as it could be a complete failure. Knowing this we have to evaluate in which context we are in and how much risk we are willing and able to take. For myself I might be taking a bigger risk whereas for my organization I might be following the overall strategy.

Generally speaking I will quote one of our principles that is "Good can be done better" and I think you could always improve and be more innovative.
And I think you should never be satisfied with the result, because that is the moment you will be stagnating and there won't be any space for innovation.

So I hope that I am never satisfied and keep on questionning what I am doing and how I could further improve and come up with new ideas.

Micro-Learning Activity

Building an introductory learning module in SL would be determined by two main factors which are what are the most relevant skills for participation and interaction in SL and second what might be some specific needs for a pre-defined target group.

Reading through some of the micro-learning activities that have already been introduced there seems to be a common pattern for introducing people to the personalization of their avatar.
It looks like the personalization of the avatar identity is a skill that almost any newbie might need. Depending on your target group you might want to introduce different outfits and send them to different places for the collection of new items.

The way I would build this session would be the following

• Start with a brief introductory video that shows some of the personalization possiblities
• Show how to save the current outfit
• Check that everybody saved the current outfit
• Pass on a folder of new outfits to each participant
• Explain how to change clothes

Based on the same principle it would be possible ot introduce further micro-session on how to change hairstyle, shape and shoes.

Once people master those it would be possible ot have a module on how to create your own outfit.

But other than the personalization aspect I would also consider a very basic introduction on interaction. This would include content on how to

• communicate
• exchange objects
• add contacts

In this micro-learning activity I would introduce people to

- the use of the chat
- VoiP communication
- how to pass on notecards
- how to add contacts

SL being a virtual world which might be there perfect environment for interaction it might be really useful to introduce people first to the means of communication with other members.
I guess which one you choose very much depends on the main purpose/interest of people joining the virtual world.

Coming to Land

Having visited the orienation spaces a few weeks after my first experience in SL is kind of an interesting experience. I will have to consider how it was to come to land 5 weeks ago and which kind of help would have been useful.

My first impression on orientation island was positive as the information arrived just in time and in little chunks that made it easy to follow and to integrate the knowledge step by step. The amount of information was not overwhelming and let enough space for the learner to get slowly used to the virtual world.

I think in these first hours in-world that's what probably most new citizens would request, an easy introduction, that teaches you the basic steps. After that first experience I immediately got acquainted to the Muvenation environement and went only after a few weeks to some other orienation island.

One I particulary liked was NMC orientation island due to it's very explorative learning approach. The orientation environment is very well defined and represented through a series of little houses, which creates an inviting learning scenario.

The learner could go according to his own pace and curiosity to the different rooms and explore the content.

The amount of information is very well presented and organized and small modules.

Depending on the content the learner gets additional material either in form of notecards or links to external websites.

The whole environment is very creative and even the support is rather innovative. Here is an example of a video they show to explain how to use the camera control. How to use the camera control by NMC

Another orientation island that got my attention was "Virtual Ability".

Beside that fact that I went for the first time on a virtual swing I enjoyed this environment that is rather explorative.

Another positive point in this environment was the organization in different sections, one for beginners and one for "already advanced" users.

In general I think orientation island should be as explorative as possible and as guiding as necessary. By that I mean the learner should be able to learn following his own pace but also receive some guidance in terms of complexity of the learning modules in order ot avoid some cognitive overload and thus discouragement.

Professional Avatar

A professional Avatar?I think this brings us back to the whole question about identity. Should our SL avatar be somehow close to our RL person or should we rather select a radically different shape and look?This all depends on your approach to SL.
Will your SL be an extension of your RL or do you rather see it as an opportunity to experiment with a different identity?Looking at the question from this angle it would be entirely up to you to select the look of your avatar.But then remains the question, if there are already any norms established on SL that are different from RL or if we tend to reproduce a social framework that is closed what we are used in RL.So if these norms are close to RL then we could be thinking, yes there should be "professionally dressed" avatars in suits and ties for business meetings.If those norms are different, what are these norms. Are we allowed to dress differently, meaning we could wear jeans and t-shirt instead of a suit and a tie? Would we have to keep a human shape?What if we have a business meeting on SL? What do the other participants expect and what might be implicit rules?These questions are difficult to answer and only the experience with a certain target group might show some tangible results. I think the cautious way would be to start with an hypothesis about the target group and see how the "look" might actually impact the whole session.
My hypothesis would be that in general you have more freedom to select the look of your avatar than you would have in RL. But it might that in certain contexts you would still need to be compliant with a set of implicit norms. Eventually I would not call it a "professional avatar" but rather introduce some norms for the look in case you believe that is needed.

Second Steps - But with new shoes

What a nice surprise! Coming back to further explore the island, getting more and more confortable to move around I came across all kind of free stuff.

Notices, Links, Teleports AND AN ENTIRE BOX OF SHOES, CLOTHES AND HAIRSTYLES.

Absolutely Amazing! Never thought this would be possible. You take them, you try them and you adopt them! Really cool!

But without kidding, what could that possibly mean for a learning environment?

Human beings learn through interaction and adding different perspectives to the learning process help them develop schemes and adapt them to broader contexts.

It might be that with SL new and relatively unexplored perspectives could enrich the learning process and help analyze situations from a new angle.

And what seemed so far impossible will then appear as a new path for exploring and learning.

This was kind of nice discovery

From phia to PHIA

The arrival of "phia" on SL

Right after my first arrival in SL I felt that this character is not me (Girl from next door, who is that , everybody talks about her, but nobody actually knows her).
So before going any further I needed to adapt that look to something more suitable. Isn't that funny how you could immediately identify with this avatar? Seems that your avatar is probably more than the virtual representation of your look and the "want-to-have-look".
I guess going through the program I might get more answers to this hypothesis and understand For the time being I will concentrate on the actual introduction of those two avatars "Before" and "After".

So my first worries were already to adapt slighty the look of my avatar and that's how I finally managed to do my first steps on SL

phia becomes PHIA

A few days after my first experience with SL I had my first meeting in SL . Talking to my "RL" friends I got the advice to adapt my look in SL. So here you go! I did some free shopping and found great stuff.

During the actual meeting I realized that the size of my character was probably something like 1.20m in RL and I also had to adapt it.

So that's when phia became PHIA

My first meeting in SL

Only few days after my arrival I had my first meeting in SL about how to use and create holodecks in a virtual environment.

This was an absolutely amazing experience. I joined the session at 10 pm, kind of stressed on how it would be and if I would possibly be able to follow and interact with other people.

Then I saw all the people arriving for the session and funny enough you already feel like being part of community. And that is truly interesting, because giving the participants this feeling of "belonging" will help foster the learning process.

The time of the meeting almost flew and I can tell that sometimes even in a f2f context 2 hours might be a real long time....

Now talking about the content of the session I am actually still impressed about what I saw, with a fingertip you change the context, layout of your environment, you move from the Southpole to a Japanese Tea house in less than second. How could you possibly do that in a real environment.

I think in the future this will open many opportunities for creating learning environments that are perfectly adapted to the target audience and the content.

For me this was a great start and a truly inspiring experience and I am looking forward to more...