The class worked in a combination of online and face to face small group and whole-class collaborative activities and discussions to explore the affordance of immersive environments for learning.
Pre-Class Activities
The class was broken up into three groups The Designers, The Collaborators, and The Gamers. The members of these groups were then assigned a reading (each group chose one of two possible readings), which focused on their aspect (as per the group name) of a virtual immersive environment.
This activity was also created to foster previous week's lesson on Scaffolded Learning Environments (Brown & Campione, 1996). Creating groups, using Fostering Learning Communities principles, that developed expertise in certian topics was an important pre-activity.
The Designers
- Clarke, J., Dedi, C., Ketelhut, D.J., & Nelson, B. (2006) A Design-based Research Strategy to Promote Scalability for Educational Innovations. pdf version
- Benford, S., Snowden, D., Colebourne, A., O'Brian, J., & Rodden, T. (1997). Informing the Design of Collaborative Virtual Environments. pdf version
The Collaborators
- Schroeder, R., Huxor, A., & Smith, A. (2001). Activeworlds: Geography and Social Interaction in Virtual Reality. pdf version
- Roussos, M., Johnson, A., Moher, T., Leigh, J., Vasilakis, C., & Barnes, C. (n.d.). Learning and Building Together in an Immersive World. pdf version
The Gamers
- Corbit, M. (2005). Game Worlds for Learning. pdf version
- Dedi, C. (n.d.). The Evolution of Constructivist Learning Environments: Immersion in Distributive, Virtual Worlds. pdf version
In-Class Activities
Part One: Inter-Group discussion
The class was broken up into their respective groups (see above), and were asked to brainstorm and discuss their articles in a group, and to come up with a set of criteria that they deemed essential to a successful immersive virtual learning environment.
Each member of these groups became an expert in their area, which would follow into Part Two
Time: 20 mins
Transition Game
Each member of the group was given place card at the beginning of the class with either a term, a definition, or an example or a key aspect of the lesson; each group member then moved around the class to match up their place cards with the the members from other groups who had the corresponding other pieces.
e.g. One member from expert group 1 recieves a card "Avatar"; Member from another expert group recieves a card "a surrogate persona in the virtual world"; Final member from another expert group receives a card with an illustration of an avatar.
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All who became a match formed another collaborative group sharing their own collective knowledge from Designer, Collaborator, or Gamer group.
This was meant to be a fun way to get the groups mixed, and to provide an added bit of collaborative learning.
Time: 5 mins
Design Project Planning
Students were given time to develop their own understanding of technologies that created knowledge building communities. This time was important for the students because they were able to establish some parameters about the overall course objectives.
Time: 30 mins
Guest Speaker: Knowledge Building Communities
Jim Hewitt was a guest speaker for the class (instructor substitute). His (5-10 minute) was on Knowledge Building Communities. It was quite interesting as he was able to provide us with some deeper academic insight. His talk focused on the similarities and differences between Knowledge Building Communities and Fostering Community of Learning[^Communities.ppt]
Time: 25 minutes
Revisiting Ideas
The class after both collaborative group activities came together as a large group to talk about the concepts and final conclusions. It was hoped that the class would go back to the wiki and add final comments - which would eventually contribute to the final design project of this course.
Time: 15 minutes
Outcomes
To see each group's in-class answers to the discussion questions click here
For most people in the class, this was their first exposure to the possibilities of an Immersive Learning Environment. The possible extensions for the lesson would have been playing with the software itself. There was a demo to observe with live video, however it was limited and not interactive. Most of the immersive software is not usable yet in a learning context. The software and hardware limitations experienced by trying to showcase this emerging technology was frustrating but students were still thrilled by the technology and the new educational frontiers that could be discovered.
The presentation was interactive and was flexible to allow for students to engage in the activities. This multiple group sharing (and movement) was beneficial as the class was in their early stages of development into a knowledge building community.
Evaluation
There are many obstacles and advantages, in presenting first. There was a nervous feeling in the air because the class had been together only two weeks, and everyone in the class was curious about the type of learning format the instructor was carving out. Knowledge about the class, their experiences and their strengths were not available. Some advantages of presenting first, was the increased motivation students had for learning and the willingness to try anything.
We had a few minor problems during the Pre-Class work, as several of the students we had grouped together were no longer in the class, and one or two students who were in the class were not yet on the class list (this was mostly due to the fact that it was early in the term and there was some student turnover).
Once these problems got solved, the rest of the activities went very well. The groups were all eager to discuss their articles amongst themselves, and came up with a variety of excellent ideas and opinions. The members of the groups seemed to have a good grasp of the central ideas and established them as experts in their fields for the next part of the lesson.
Again the class was very lively and enthusiastic when they broke up into the smaller groups and seemed to enjoy the little games we set up for them to do. Our only main concern with both of these sections was time management: we wanted the groups to collaborate as much as possible and to let the ideas flow, but parts of the activities ran long, and this ended up rushing latter parts of the class.
