Presentation

For reasons of length, the text from our powerpoint presentation is posted at this blog under another category (Slides, Presentations). Look under that category, or follow this link.

 

List of participants

Andrew Burn, London Knowledge Lab, IoE.
Anna Peachey, Open University.
Caroline Pelletier, London Knowledge Lab, IOE.
Catherine Geeroms, Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE).
Celine Llewellyn-Jones, University of East London.
Corrado Morgana, Chelsea College of Art and Design.
Daniel Livingstone, University of Paisley.
David White, TALL, University of Oxford.
Diane Carr, London Knowledge Lab, IOE.
Ed Barker, Eduserv Foundation.
Fiona Littleton, University of Edinburgh.
Genaro Rebolledo Mendez, Serious Games Institute.
Gwyneth Hughes, IOE.
Jim Ang, City University.
Ken Kahn, University of Oxford.
Leonie Ramondt, Anglia Ruskin University.
Maggi Savin-Baden, Coventry University.
Marsha Bradfield, Chelsea College of Art and Design.
Martin Oliver, London Knowledge Lab, IOE.
Patrice Chazerand, Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE).
Siobhan Thomas, University of East London.
Shri Footring, Open University.
Yishay Mor, London Knowledge Lab, IOE.

 

Summary of discussion

Summary of discussion 7.2.2008 ‘Researching Second Life’ seminar, London Knowledge Lab
Participants listed above
Summary based on Martin’s notes

Defining Second Life
Topic: How should Second Life be defined? What are the disciplinary, conceptual and methodological ramifications of this definition?
As a tool/stage/toolset
Related to but different from games, which has ramifications for policy (see PC and CG’s position statement)
Dominance of cognition
Different theoretical frameworks construct 2L differently (and the tensions this creates)
A tool, a text or a site of embodiment?
Controlling (experimenting with) identity
Internet, moos, muve…
As researchers from different disciplines we’re each pointing a ‘narrow torch’ on something that can be defined in different ways
Not just the Linden Lab environment but the user-created tools (‘meta-tools’)
Economic or political expression, ownership (comparisons with Facebook)
Regulatory framework
Maybe it looks like a social network, but it is actually not (instead, it has social channels)

Defining Learning
Topic: How do we know learning when we see it? Does learning only count when we can measure it? Is there life beyond ‘assessment-based’ models of learning?
Defining learning
– Formative feedback
– Assessment
– Jonassen’s web of constructivism
– Smooth curricula and disregarded knowledge (see M.S-B’s position statement at the blog)
– Special considerations with minors
– More formal than games
– Situated learning, constructivism & social negotiation of meaning, belonging & identity
– Mix of fantasy & reality
We might all agree that it is a given that learning is taking place, but we also might need to have a way to argue this across interest groups/policy makers, etc.
Holism (learning as an affective, social, cognitive, abstract, concrete, etc.)
Tacit, etc – and the problems that this might raise in terms of assessment or claiming credit
Specialist languages (as per Gee) and role (educational drama and role play)
Learning happens here, but so what? It’s more important to ask what can be done with it and what it means (the question of transference).
It might be easier to demonstrate learning happens with a few concrete examples
There’s a lot of social learning, etc, but there are questions about whether these things change what happens in other settings (situative)
Interest in the boundaries and transitions, but missing a set of tools that enable you to spot new things
Reflection as an important mechanism here?
Failure valued as development
What specific things are you learning?

Literature reviewing
Topic: Is the attention directed at Second Life resulting in the emergence of a compelling body of research? What previous research/fields do researchers ignore at their peril?
Dangers of talking past each other
Diversity of positions vs. coherence
Reinventing the wheel
Does it matter?
Learning by design; Computer Supported Collaborative Work; organisational theory (from Business)
Is this similar to the problem that led to the emergence of Game Studies?
Is it all just tools for particular jobs? (if it’s all bounded, why is this a problem?)
Relationship across related disciplinary ‘zones’ (e.g. art & design, architecture, engineering…
The “glass bead game”
A provocative immaturity, but with times walls and boundaries will emerge
Something will emerge, but it might be rubbish
Danger of terms and concepts being appropriated across fields and disciplines without appreciation of their meaning / baggage / discipline / etc
Declaring a term as a neologism when its actually been around for a decade.
Is there a need for a central location or focus where this stuff can start to be drawn together?
Balancing the breadth of claims (this world, all immersive virtual worlds?) with the risk of fragmentation / loss of coherence (is Second Life “special”?)
What are the research questions that happen to invoke Second Life? (Should we abandon looking at the categories and look instead at problems?)
This isn’t necessarily a continuum – sometimes it’s time to split
If we acknowledge such continuums, what, – if anything – could we say to policy makers or educationalists or…? Continuum at what level (genre, structure, methodology)?
Is there or will there be a SL ‘canon’ – is there one in game studies? (votes 1 yes, 2 no)

Research ethics or ‘ethics’ ethics?
Topic: Ethics in relation to privacy, teaching, research practice and priorities, documentation, observation, methodology, culture, policy – and Second Life
Risk aversion can arise because people don’t understand what people are proposing to do (and some people don’t care and consider it trivial so aren’t willing to spend time on this)
No-one says we shouldn’t do ethical research, but it’s a case of who gets to make certain things conventional (cultural constructions of ethics)
What’s the relationship between things generated for teaching and things that get turned into data?
Are there differences between real life data and data collected from Second Life?
Even if this process is hard or unreasonable, at least it might make you think about things more
How should we distinguish between private and public virtual spaces?
When we become aware of issues, does it become our duty to make this a wider issue (e.g. raise it with others)?
To make sense of the issues there is a need to distinguish between legal ethics (what institutions focus on), moral ethics (our integrity) and what we can get away with (!!).
McFarlane’s ‘being a virtuous researcher’
Motivations and vested interests (from who funded the research through to personal reputations)
Cultural specificity v universality
Privacy (expectations of)
End user licences, derivative works, service agreements – what’s prohibited? (e.g. Linden Labs used to demand that you get written permission from them to do research)
Is there a need for the development of basic etiquette guides for people preparing to teach (and research?) in Second Life – some are already online, but they are not specific to our needs.
The recent JISC project will generate user guides.
Is there a need to disaggregate into (say) intellectual property, morality, etc.
Negotiating ownership (of places, buildings, or images)
Seeking consent is not the same as assuming subjects are hostile to research.
Lots of people are happy to contribute to research (as interviewees etc.)
Ethics in relation to agency – the subject-as-participant (various methodological precedents for this).
Internet research guidelines (Bruckman, Ess and the AOIR) as a resource/relevance to SL

 

Postscript

The project team would like to thank everyone who came to today’s event, and contributed to a discussion that was lively, entertaining and informative. We will have notes from the slides from our presentation up here soon, plus a summary of the er…summaries that we compiled during the afternoon. Meanwhile, you are welcome to add comments etc here. Thanks once again!

 

Researching Second Life

This event is now booked out 

Researching Second Life
Thursday 7th February 2007
London Knowledge Lab
Noon – 4:15 pm
Convened by the project team (Learning from Online Worlds; Teaching in Second Life).
This event is supported by the Eduserv Foundation

Researching Second Life is a half-day seminar RL discussion on topics relating to the researching of ‘learning, teaching and culture’ in Second Life. To allow for discussion, participant numbers will be limited. The event begins with an update of our Eduserv funded project, ‘Learning from Online Worlds; Teaching in Second Life’. The rest of the afternoon will be for discussion.

In order to generate discussion, some participants have kindly contributed short ‘position statements’ in response to any one of the day’s key themes, and these are available to read here.

The four key themes are:

- Defining Second Life: How should SL be defined? What are the disciplinary, conceptual and methodological ramifications of this definition?

- Defining learning in the context of SL research. How do we know learning when we see it? Does learning only count when we can measure it? Is there life beyond ‘assessment-based’ models of learning?

- Second Life Literature reviewing: Is the attention directed at SL resulting in the emergence of a compelling body of research literature? What previous research/fields do SL researchers ignore at their peril?

- Research ethics or ‘ethics’ ethics? Ethics in relation to: privacy, teaching, research practice and priorities, documentation, observation, methodology, culture, policy – and Second Life.

Timetable:
Presentation 12.00
Lunch 1.00
Theme 1. 1:45 – 2:15
Theme 2. 2:15 – 2:45
Coffee 2:45 – 3:00
Theme 3. 3:00 – 3:30
Theme 4. 3:30 – 4:00
Conclusion 4:00 – 4:15

 

Position statement

Martin Oliver, Project team member
London Knowledge Lab, IOE

I promised I’d send a position statement, so…

- Defining Second Life

I can’t even try and answer this question without the image of the blind men and the elephant springing to mind. There are various aspects of Second Life that are of interest, and each research tool will allow us to engage with some small section of these; the overall definition remains mysterious. So, we have the base code, which might be studied as a text or using formal methods from computer science; we have the version of second life that people have created (e.g. all the prims and so on constructed using the code), but we’ll never have a complete description of that let alone a total understanding; there’s what people do using those (all the social features of second life, amenable to social research methods but obviously wide open in terms of current analysis); and then wider still be have social constructions of second life, such as accounts in discussion fora, the press, amongst the public, and so on. I’d be hesitant to claim that any of these on its own “is” second life.

- Defining learning in the context of SL research

This, again, opens up an area that’s not amenable to easy answers. Second life can be used as an environment in which learning, in a conventional curriculum sense, can be tested and measured. But it’s long been recognised that such forms of assessment miss out huge amounts of what’s learnt even in formal education. (All the discussions around the ‘hidden curriculum’ are good examples of this.) They’re obviously going to miss out the majority of what’s happening in this informal setting.

So, instead, I think that it all comes down to picking a position on learning and seeing what (small things) this illuminates. Personally,
I’m interested in the kinds of identity claims that people make on the basis of their participation, and how others react to these. The
development of these (both in terms of what is claimed, and the credibility of these claims) is what I’d point to as an example of learning.

- Second Life Literature reviewing

My impression is that a body of work is developing, but it’s fragmented and disconnected. Work needs to be done synthesising this and identifying gaps so that the topic can be explored in a more coherent manner.

In the meantime, I think it’d be foolish to abandon existing approaches to research from fields such as education, sociology and psychology. Of course, new research approaches might emerge, but until we get a better sense of what it is that the other approaches are failing to reveal to us, any attempt to develop new tools to study that thing are bound to be problematic.

- Research ethics or ‘ethics’ ethics?

These worlds raise all sorts of interesting ethical questions. The TV documentary (last week?) about relationships in virtual worlds makes
a good example – is a relationship enacted virtually using avatars an affair, or not?

Nonetheless, as researchers, we’re not just interested observers of all this. By taking up an unconventional position (enquiry, rather than just casual interest or use) we complicate our relationship with the people and things we’re studying. This has to introduce additional ethical questions. One of the most basic, though, is what it is we think we’re studying – people? Texts? A system? Our positions on this (deliberately plural – see above!) will have implications for how we generate and discuss data, from the technical level of whether or not it’s ok to record or chatlog things we happen
to see, right through to the kinds of claims we make about people, the system and its use. And that’s leaving aside the fundamental issue of what it is we choose to study in the first place, which surely has to be an ethical question.

 

SL research event

Position statement
Diane Carr, project team member, Knowledge Lab, IOE

The day’s 4 themes grew out of discussions that the project team (me, Martin Oliver,  Andrew Burn) have had since the project commenced in June 07. Lots of notes and commentary is available here at the blog, under ‘project updates’ as well as on various pages.

Defining Second Life: How should SL be defined? What are the disciplinary, conceptual and methodological ramifications of this definition?

There seems to be a need for more reflection on the ways in which our disciplinary perspective shapes our analysis in the case of Second Life…I’ll be talking about this during our presentation tomorrow.

Second Life Literature reviewing: Is the attention directed at SL resulting in the emergence of a compelling body of research literature? What previous research/fields do SL researchers ignore at their peril?

From the paper I’m working on at the moment…”At the 2007 Association of Internet Researcher’s conference a day-long workshop was dedicated to Second Life and a number of active mailing lists and wikis indicate that there is research underway. Researchers are using sociological, ethnographic and psychological methods to examine questions of online identity. Educators are examining the use of Second Life as ‘classroom’ or considering Second Life as a site for simulations designed to address specific curricula (biology or geology, for example), as a tool that enables the honing of particular skills (such as programming) or as a stage for collaborative practices (drama, art-working, building). It is possible to locate reports, blogs, wikis and reflections on practice, but difficult to find examples of work that share a disciplinary perspective, where the application or suitability of specific theory or methodologies is discussed in depth. This means that the Second Life researcher faces a bafflingly broad range of material that is peppered with significant ‘gaps’.”

Research ethics or ‘ethics’ ethics? Ethics in relation to: privacy, teaching, research practice and priorities, documentation, observation, methodology, culture, policy – and Second Life.

This theme was prompted by some of the discussions that have gone on at Terranova or on the SL Researcher’s mailing list (often generated by Ren Reynolds) on matters of ethics, the difference between bad ethics and bad manners, and the role/influence of US university internal review boards (for example, in relation to the potential emergence of conventions relating to good practice).

 

SL discussion, position statement

Beyond outcomes: Liquid Learning and Liminal Spaces in Second Life

Maggi Savin-Baden
Learning Innovation Research Group
Coventry University

Learning in immersive virtual worlds (simulations and virtual worlds such as Second Life) has become a central learning approach in many curricula, but the socio political impact of virtual world learning on higher education remains under-researched. Much of the recent research into learning in immersive virtual worlds centres around games and gaming and is largely underpinned by cognitive learning theories that focus on linearity, problem-solving and the importance of attaining the ‘right answer’ or game plan. Most research to date has been undertaken into students’ experiences of virtual learning environments, discussion forums and perspectives about what and how online learning has been implemented. To date there is a lack of pedagogical underpinning relating to the use of virtual worlds in higher education, an overemphasis on cognitive approaches to learning and there that needs to be a reconsideration of what ‘learning’ means in such spaces.

What is perhaps needed are ‘smooth curricula spaces’ (Savin-Baden, 2007, following Deleuze and Guattari, 1988 and Bayne, 2004) which are open, flexible and contested; spaces in which both learning and learners are always on the move. Movement in such curricula is not towards a given trajectory. Instead, there is a sense of displacement of notions of time and place, so that curricula are delineated with and through the staff and students, they are defined by the creators of the space(s). These kinds of curricula are likely to be seen as risky since they prompt consideration of what counts as legitimate knowledge. In these kinds of curricula students will be encouraged to examine the underlying structures and belief systems implicit within what is being learned, in order to not only understand the disciplinary area but also its credence. What will be important in the creation of these kinds of curricula is the position of disregarded knowledge (1) as a central space, in which uncertainty and gaps are recognised along with the realisation of the relative importance of gaps between different knowledges and different knowledge hierarchies.

Curricula need to be seen not just as content for meddling with, but as diverse spaces of opportunity. It is in such spaces that we can explore the possibilities for creating curricula for living with chronic uncertainty, liminality and spaces of unknowability. Curricula then will become a series of open-ended spaces rather than a series of permissions to proceed that focus on compliance and rule-based models. Such open-ended curricula will be provisional, unstable and uncertain, and will reflect the translocational state of the university of the future.

Notes
1. Disregarded knowledge (Savin-Baden, 2007) encompasses knowledge often equated with emotional intelligence, such as when and how to use self promotion, when to keep silent and when to intervene, but also with Haraway’s (1991) concept of responsible knowledge – the need to take responsibility for the position from which we speak.

 

SL discussion statement

Defining learning in the context of SL research.
Leonie Ramondt, Inspire – Anglia Ruskin University

What type of learning befitting the 21st Century? In a world where peak oil and global warming are increasingly influencing our daily experience; it is no longer possible to ignore that conventional, passive, instructivist modes of delivery are useful only for learning rote information. Many people today are engaging in activities at levels of complexity unknown even a decade ago due to digital technologies. With so many colourful diversions, the task of challenging young people to be skilful and discerning in traditional disciplines such as Science, Maths and English will be significantly easier if the learning is embedded in dynamic and relevant contexts. Webquests (1997) and action inquiry provide participative methodologies that are already well advanced. They can only encourage learners to be more creative and effective.

1. So how do we know learning when we see it?
What is the learning we are valuing? Times past, learning was assessed by examination and most of those exams were not designed to test higher order thinking. Thankfully, learning is increasingly becoming project based with learning evaluated against a matrix of specific outcomes-linked criteria.

Jonassen’s web of constructivism is a useful tool for considering participative learning.

Jonassen, D. 1994, the Web of Constructivism

2. Does learning only count when we can measure it?
Most educators have evolved beyond only valuing enumerative answers. Blooms taxonomy ensured that they knew that learning extends beyond Knowledge, to Comprehension, Application and the higher skills required by Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. The task of designing begins at synthesis, suggesting that designing something in SL is a higher skills task. Methods for evaluating this learning are becoming more sophisticated as staff become more experienced.

Potentially, MUVE’s will provide teachers more transparency onto their colleagues’ practices, allowing them to gain confidence with incorporating the higher-level participative tasks afforded by MUVE’s into their lessons. These include;
Designing
Programming
Role play, scenarios, dramatisation,
Performance
Simulation and data visualisation
Researching
Problem solving
Cultural Immersion and Cultural Exchange
Building learning community

3. Is there life beyond ‘assessment-based’ models of learning?
Assessment remains the tail that wags the dog. Students are smart enough to focus on what will get them through the exams. They know that the 2:1 is used as a filter by employers. If you don’t have one, you’re out the door.

Although the Burgess report (2007) recommends a more comprehensive approach to assessment that documents evidence of higher order learning, it stops short at suggesting the adoption of portfolios. This is a pity because portfolios can be very useful for motivating learners to evidence collaboration, communication, enterprise and innovation alongside the more traditional skills.

Assessment is of itself another word for feedback, which should after all be at the heart of learning. It is only problematical when it is one-dimensional and entirely summative. Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1992). is experienced when a person is challenged by a task slightly above their skill level, receiving feedback as they go. Hopefully we’ll become better at embedding mechanisms for feedback and self-evaluation within learning environments, thereby also extending the richness of our assessment.

Bloom, B.S (1984) Taxonomy of educational objectives, Pearson Education, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA.
Burgess, (2007) The Burgess report available at http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/downloads/Burgess_final.pdf
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1992). Flow: The psychology of happiness. London: Rider.
Dodge, B., (1997) Building blocks of a webquest available at http://www.internet4classrooms.com/buildingblocks.htm
Jonassen, D. (1994) Thinking technology: towards a constructivist design model, Educational Technology, 34(4), 34-37.

 

SL discussion statement

Researching Second Life

A position statement from:

Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE):
Patrice Chazerand – Secretary General
Catherine Geeroms – Games and Education

Response to discussion theme: Defining Second Life: what are the disciplinary, conceptual and methodological ramifications of this definition?

Is it right to see Second Life as an online video game?
Neither Linden Lab or the Interactive Software industry reckon Second Life as an online game. Nevertheless, this position statement is intended to emphasize that the virtual worlds concerned do confront common problematic.

1. Definitions
Linden Lab defines Second life like a “3D digital world imagined and created by its Residents” .
ISFE, within his PEGI Online tools, defined Online Gaming as “digital game that needs a live network connection in order to be played (including not only games played on the Internet, but also those played online through consoles, across mobile phones or via peer-to-peer networks)” .

2. Analyze
We can see in those definitions that the concept and aims of SL and online games are different. To go further, we think it should be interesting to analyze them under the six thematic of Media Literacy (L. Masterman, BFI). The table presented below tries, on a non exhaustive way of course, to show how SL and online games are different, but also similar thanks to this classification.

First, SL and online games use the same languages by means of multimedia technologies. However, online games are using more different technology supports. SL and online games are, by this way, confronted to the same problematic of online contents and behaviors addressed to minors and sensitive persons and they have to propose tools to all stakeholders in charge of education and new technologies. ISFE have set up PEGI Online: we think that SL’s Teens Island could pass muster for a PO license although it is not for us to apply or decide.

Secondly, if SL is the product of one operator, this virtual world touch a lot of people who are different regarding their age, social and professional conditions, country, and aspirations to evaluate inside SL . Quite the reverse, a lot of publishers and developers are working to build and create online games, but their major public is firmly gamers who want first have fun and play (1). Another difference is that residents own everything they create on SL.

Finally, in terms of representations and typologies, SL is more seen by users like a virtual world/social network than a game . Residents are freer to create their avatar (and their virtual identity), to organize meetings, events and lectures or educative training. Learning is there more formal than in online games. Online Games stay video games, with its more informal way of learning and characteristics.

3. Conclusion
In light of this analysis, we are convinced that Second Life and online games have a lot of common characteristics, but that users have vastly different roles respectively. The industry’s response should be to give parental control tools, but also educative tools. Those tools will aim to propose issues to users about how to be more responsible and aware of what they can share, learn or teach with other participants of their game/virtual society.

Appendix: Analyze of Second Life and Video Games through Media Literacy thematic:

1. SECOND LIFE

Languages
Multimedia tools, Interactivity and Interaction

Technologies
Web, online technologies, computer, Web 3.D

Editors
Unique (Linden Lab)

Publics
Residents. Divide in two categories of age (adults and minors), great diversity (gamers, housewives, artists, students, business owners, etc.)

Representations
Social network, virtual life with activities similar to real life, avatars, ownership. Creativity, innovation, Community, events, formal learning time, Need to protect minors

Typologies
Social network, Digital world

2. GAMES

Languages
Multimedia tools, Interactivity and Interaction

Technologies
Web, computer, consoles, CD/DVD support, P2P networks, mobile phones, Java, flash, web 2.0

Editors
Multiple (editors, retailers, developers, etc…)

Publics
Gamers. Different manner of age classification.

Representations
Game, pleasure, fun, competitiveness, informal learning, guilds, Heroic Fantasy world, young people, MMORPG, tool for minors protection (PEGI Online).

Typologies
Video games

Notes
1. “Video Games, research to improve understanding of what players enjoy about video games and to explain their preferences for particular games” – BBFC report

 

SL statements

Thanks to those participants who have forwarded responses – they’ll be posted up here later today. If you want to send a statement there is still time. We can just add them as they arrive.

 

Comments on SL discussion

David White, TALL at University of Oxford

SL seems good for situated learning, constructivism and the social negotiation of meaning etc. This then involves ideas of community and participation leading to the themes of belonging and identity (themes native to SL). I’m currently working with the notion that motivation to learn is driven by the desire to belong and the need to construct identity. The question is how does this fit with educational processes especially in relation to HE.

 

Comments on SL discussion

From Jim Ang at City University:

My interests on virtual worlds lie in the fantasy representation and 3D visualisation of such environments, which potentially make sociability different from conventional text-based online communities. Virtual worlds such as Second Life are made up of virtual locations that either resemble real life places or represents a fictional simulation of a fantasy world. Even for virtual worlds that attempt to simulate real life (e.g. real world physics, economics, etc), the user experiences in such worlds are often a mix of reality and fantasy. Therefore, it is of great interest to examine how people behave in such 3D fantasy reality through interacting with other people. Through detail analyses, we are able to examine sociability at two levels:

• The pattern and the social trend of the whole community network
• Individual interaction embedded in a whole social network

Apart from this, it will be interesting to compare virtual community on 3D and 2D settings.

In respect to learning and teaching, understanding patterns of interaction might help us design courses in virtual worlds that would cater for all types of learners with different interaction styles (thus learning styles)