Virtual Summer School in Second Life: Supporting Creative Communities

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Virtual Summer School in Second Life:

The 9th International Conference onCognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age (CELDA)

October, 19 2012Madrid, Spain

Mikhail Fominykh, Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland and Monica DivitiniNorwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Supporting Creative Communities

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Trondheim, Norway

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Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU

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Motivation: Supporting Learning Communities

o Learning communities– developing new skills and insight– Innovation– university education and international projects

o Community of Interest (CoIs)– “Communities of communities” across domains– Symmetry of ignorance– Social creativity

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Proposal: Learning communities in 3D Virtual Worlds

o Proposal– 3D VWs can benefit creating and supporting learning

communities

o 3D VWs support– User-generated content– Sense of presence– Interactive features and simulations– Boundary objects and shared artifacts as catalysts of

collaboration– => Communities of Interest and social creativity

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Supporting creative communities:Virtual Summer Schools

o TARGETo CoCreato Virtual Summer School as an

innovative education form supporting creative communities– 3D visualizations– Role-plays– Virtual events

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Activity Design: Phases of Collaborative Creative Process*

o Collect (searching for material and visualizing it)

o Relate (consulting with peers) o Create (trying out solutions, creating

associations, composing artifacts) o Donate (disseminating results)

* Schneiderman, 2002

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Technology: 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs)

o Collect in 3D VWs (collaborative exploration of virtual places)

o Relate in 3D VWs (rich synchronous interaction with sense of presence)

o Create in 3D VWs (safe prototyping, 3D visualizations)

o Donate in 3D VWs (sharing user-generated content)

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Place: Virtual Campus of NTNU

o Facilities– Reconstructions of campus buildings– 3D educational visualizations (student projects)– Virtual Science Fair– Meeting and working places

o Activities– Virtual tours– Cooperation technology course projects/role plays– Research project presentations– International seminars

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Activities: Structured by Collaborative Creativity Phases

Phase Course activities

– Collect – brainstorming the topic to be visualized– describing the design in group blogs

– Relate – participating in virtual events– exploring other constructions

– Create – collaborative construction– accessing building resources

– Donate– role-play presentations– preserving constructions in the Virtual

Gallery

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Activities: Virtual Events

o Virtual Seminar– Formal learning settings– Five presentations of related EU projects– Q&A session

o Virtual Guided tour– Informal learning settings– Experience teaching and cooperation techniques,

Hawaiian culture, and virtual places– Feedback session– Reflection in individual blogs

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Cooperation seminar in the virtual campus of NTNU

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Guided tour to the virtual campus of COE UHM

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Activities: 3D Educational Visualizations and Role playing

o Constructionism– learning more effective through the design of

personally meaningful artifacts

o Social Constructivism– learners co-construct their environment and

understanding together with their peers

o Role playing– active behavior in accordance with a specific role

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Role-playing presentation of a student project

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Role-playing presentation of a student project

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Study: Exploratory Case Study

o Participants– 37 students in small groups (3–4 students)

o Data– direct observation– virtual artifacts (chat log and 3D constructions)– group and individual blogs

o Data analysis– constant comparison method– coding

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Target group

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Results: Four Phases

Course activity Observation

Collected data

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Results: Collect Phase

Course activity

– brainstorming the topics– discussing the design in

group blogs

Collected data– creative idea generation

process (4)– creativity not affected by

the technology (3)– blogging pro(17)vs. con(5)

Observation– creativity in process– tools used– synchronous and

asynchronous modes

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Results: Relate Phase

Course activity– participating in virtual

events– exploring other

constructions

Collected data+ geo. independence (15)+ novelty (5)+ comfort of use (8)– technical problems (15)– attention distractions (6)

Observation– feedbacks to the seminar,

including positive and negative aspects

– inspiration from exploring other constructions (5)

– how creativity affected by other constructions (1)

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Results: Create Phase

Course activity

– collaborative construction– accessing building

resources

Collected data

‒ 3D space benefit creativity (5), hinder (3)

‒ res. affect creativity (0), ease constructing (3)

Observation– does 3D space benefit or

hinder creativity– how resources affect

creativity– categorization of

constructionso role-playing stages (3)o facilities (5)o museums (4)

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Results: Donate Phase

Course activity

– role-play presentations– preserving constructions

in the Virtual Gallery

Collected data+ efficiency and safety (4)+ contact with audience (3)+ offering experience (5)‒ not enough realistic (5)‒ effort required (2)

Observation– role-playing as a learning

activity– inspiration and motivation

by sharing constructions– how suitable 3D VWs are

for supporting communitieso intern-l collaborationo virtual visitso knowledge sharingo in the long term

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Discussion: Four Phases

Course activity Observed effect

Virtual SS facility

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Discussion: Collect Phase

Course activity Effect

– brainstorming the topics– discussing the design in

group blogs

– establishing an initial domain, engaging issues, insights, and practices for learning communities

Facility Effect

– set of resources– joint feedbacks sessions– feedbacks to the blogs

– provided initial motivation and facilitation for collaboration and brainstorming

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Discussion: Relate Phase

Course activity Effect– participating in virtual

events– exploring other

constructions

– establishing new connections and multi-membership in learning communities involved

Facility Effect– boundary objects

(exhibition booths and slides from projects)

– formal and informal meeting and workplaces

– enable dialog and collaboration between learners from diverse backgrounds and disciplines

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Discussion: Create Phase

Course activity Effect– collaborative construction– accessing building

resources

– unleashing social creativity in the participating communities

– establishing a joint practice and trying out different solutions

Facility– possibility of accessing

building resources, both student constructions from earlier generations and various building tools and facilities

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Discussion: Donate Phase

Course activity Effect– role-play presentations– preserving constructions

in the Virtual Gallery

– involved the reflective dialog in the communities with innovative expression forms

– visualized results are available 24/7 in Second Life as a part of the Virtual Gallery, thus constituting a shared repository of community knowledge

Facility– seminars on role-playing

in a workplace context – storage and retrieval

facilities for 3D content

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Implications: Learning Communities in a Virtual Summer School

o 3D visualizations – community building– dissemination of educational content– exchange of ideas in a virtual workplace– creativity across boundaries of different CoIs

o Suggestion – explore alternative and innovative ways of visualizing,

storing, and managing community knowledge

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Implications: Learning Communities in a Virtual Summer School

o 3D visualizations – alternative possibilities for teaching – presenting innovative concepts and research results

in an easy-to-understand way

o Suggestion – these possibilities should be further explored

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Implications: Learning Communities in a Virtual Summer School

o Virtual events– integral part of the educational process and of the

Summer School– different types of events and corresponding modes of

learning

o Suggestion– provide both social and educational spaces for

community building– provide collaborative creative activities

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Implications: Learning Communities in a Virtual Summer School

o Role-playing – a powerful disseminating tool– an integral part of the collaborative creative process– can also serve as workplace training for students (as

identified by their feedback)

o Suggestion– further exploration of the potentials of role-playing

and serious games for supporting learning at the workplace

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Implications: Learning Communities in a Virtual Summer School

o All the mentioned elements are interconnected and supplementary to each other when supporting creative communities– without the role-plays, the results of 3D visualizations,

were not fully obvious– 3D visualizations served as boundary objects and were

necessary for joint understanding between CoIs– Virtual events created opportunities for generation and

exchange of new ideas as well as new ties between communities

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Conclusions

o Proposal– 3D VWs can benefit creating and supporting learning

communities

o Virtual Summer School in Second Life– Framework for community building, collaborative

creativity, and idea dissemination– Implications for future use– Challenges

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Thank you!

Mikhail [email protected]

Ekaterina Prasolova-Fø[email protected]

Monica [email protected]