09/05/2009 by lizit.

I’ve got just over a week now to get this report written and if anything I am getting more, rather than less, confused about what I am doing, or trying to do.  Try as I might to focus in, I am finding myself focusing out and looking at big pictures rather than little details - maybe the result of too many OU systems thinking courses.

I am hoping that putting down some of my thinking may help me to make some sense out of the muddle and to come up with something credible to discuss with my thesis committee.  Guess my main concern is not to look too foolish!

My starting point about this time last year was whether Second Life was providing any added value to learners in formal learning situations.  I had read Maggi Savin-Baden’s paper which had addressed troublesome learning and was struck by the language being used being reminiscent of the language used in counselling and therapy - the suggestion that working through a learning disjunction leading to a complete change of thought patterns (maybe I exaggerate!)

During the past months, I have done a lot of learning and thinking and become aware of lots of different ideas which can contribute to thinking about virtual worlds and education. I have also found myself re-visiting my own personal history and ideology and looking at how my own thinking has developed against a background of big ideas and socio-economic-political change over the past half century. In looking at academic papers in particular, I am increasingly aware of the narrowing of focus of so much I read which makes little attempt to engage in joined up thinking across disciplines or ideologies. At times it feels as though wheels are constantly being re-invented or origins of ideas are being ignored as knowledge is developed incrementally rather than holistically.

At the same time, in my own thinking, I am finding I am looking more at big ideas, influences and trends.  For example, when I began work in community development in the early 70’s, there was a strong awareness of the roots of community development being in the philanthropic movements of the 19th century, the university settlements of the inter-war period and post-war socialism, all tinged with the emerging rights movements (at that time women and black, but later others), and counteracting the individuality of the 60’s.  Though there was a recognition of links between community development in the UK and community action in the States, there was little attempt to look for common methodology with community development elsewhere (I can’t even remember what the terms used to describe the third world or developing nations was back then).

Community development in the UK effectively disappeared in the early 80’s - no funding - and the volunteer movement had to re-assess itself because of changes in political ideology.  It is possible to trace the language used by Margaret Thatcher in various key speeches through that period which signalled a change from community being important to the rise and fall of voluntarism to emphasis being placed on the individual with the famous words ‘there is no such thing as society’. Behind these changes seemed to be a growing awareness than community development, voluntary organisations and even volunteers cost money.  By the end of the 1980’s the notion of voluntary organisations being contracted to undertake specific tasks by public bodies was firmly rooted and much social care is provided today on this type of contractual basis.  At the same time, the lottery was born and grant giving to charitable bodies gave a new lease of life to more innovative organisations.

Other major changes during the past 4o years have been in communications and globalisation - each feeding the other.  We have become familiar with seeing news as it happens.  Film of famine in Africa no longer has quite the shocking quality it had when we saw the first pictures of the Ethiopian droughts, but perhaps we are still shocked by the effects of natural disasters in New Orleans or Italy - at least briefly. In recent months we are being reminded again of community, this time in the form of the global village as we are told that it is only through collaboration and working together that the credit crunch can be overcome.  Again in recent days, the risk of global pandemic has raised its head, and with it a realisation of what a small place the world is now that so many people are involved in travel to so many different places.

Returning to virtual worlds, my starting point was very simplistic - what does Second Life offer to education by way of added value.  Over the past months, I have become much more aware of the existence of other virtual worlds and have visited some, albeit briefly.  More importantly, I have realised that any thinking about Second Life has to recognise previous thinking about virtual worlds  - and the scope gets quite scary.  At the very least this needs to acknowledge Usenet and bulletin boards, the 2-D web, gaming, virtual reality and social networking.  In considering education and virtuality, there is a need also to be aware of changing trends in elearning and open access learning materials such as the MIT and OU repositories. Second Life was not developed as a learning environment, although parts of it have been colonised by educational institutions. There is a lot of informal learning happening in Second Life, just as there is throughout Web 2.0, and much of this reflects community initiatives of one sort and another.

My journeying over the past months has also led me into an awareness of some motivational theories, principally Flow and Self-determination theory.  SDT is of particular interest with its emphasis on autonomy and relatedness (both important themes to any community development professional).

Looking even more specifically at Second Life, apart from reading a lot of stuff about things going on in the virtual world and attending several workshops and conferences with a virtual world focus, I have been involved informal educational experiences with both OU and Sussex students. There is no doubt that the virtual world does offer an opportunity to develop learning experiences using the specific affordances of the virtual world, but I am beginning to question whether this is actually what I am interested in. However, I am still interested in Second Life as a learning environment and I am finding myself thinking again about some of the tenets of community development and self help and how they apply within the virtual world.  Linked to this is the recent government white paper with its emphasis on informal learning.

This blog is getting even more disjointed now!

Informal learning has always interested me as so much of what happens in community is experiential, informal learning involving a transfer of skills and knowledge. It fits in with various personal growth philosophies. Self-help fed the development of the WEA.  Early years education in the UK has formalised the work initiated by parents in the development of pre-school playgroups. Although APL and APEL have been around for some years, there is very little accreditation of informal learning - it is so varied, it is difficult to see how this can happen and even if it is a good thing.  Does formally recognising the informal change or restructure it?  Some would say the early years curriculum with it’s emphasis on assessment runs totally counter to the objectives of playgroups.

So where is this leading?  I am interested in the potential of Second Life as a learning community and I am interested in informal learning.  I am also interested in how people own their own learning and how they support each other through self-help and exchange of skills.  I am interested in what makes people want to learn when there is no formal recognition or validation of that learning.  I am interested in drawing connections between the developing community in Second Life and the trends which are observable in the bigger world picture. I am interested in joined up thinking rather than disconnected nuggets.

Now how do I turn any of this into anything that will make sense for my DPhil annual review meeting?!

Posted in community, concepts, research ideas, motivation, flow, ownership, questions, learning | Print | 2 Comments »

20/04/2009 by lizit.

Having spent most of the last 2 - 3 weeks involved in writing a literature review for the DELVE project, celebrating Easter, doing family things and marking, I can now take breath and spend some time doing what I am really meant to be doing, that is thinking about DPhil stuff and trying to sort out just what I am interested in.  Plan is to start doing some serious thinking during course of today, but to get me back on track decided to do some reading and started with a paper I printed (yes! printed) a week or two ago by Steven Pace “A grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web Users”.

The first part of the paper went over what is now familiar territory relating to Csikszentmihalyi (can almost spell that now without checking) and flow with reference to various other studies relating flow and computer usage.  An argument was given for the use of grounded theory as an approach and then the study and results were discussed in some detail.  Lots of interesting snippets and potential similarities to Second Life which is perhaps not too surprising.  Then towards the end of the paper, some findings were discussed where aspects of the web experiences included factors not identified in the various flow studies and in Csikszentmihalyi’s list of 8 characteristics of flow.  These included ‘curiosity’ and ‘telepresence’, both of which are very much part of the experience of virtual world users.

Curiosity can be characterised by exploratory behaviour rather than task-focused - in Second Life it is possible to go to an event because one is invited to it or as a result of a specific search or to engage in exploratory behaviour, perhaps just clicking on map and teleporting with the aim of seeing what one can find.

Telepresence relates to the sense of being there which is frequently mentioned in both VR and virtual worlds literature. Pace draws attention to the fact that the Web user (and indeed the virtual world visitor or resident) is simultaneously in two environments - the physical world of their desk and computer screen, and the virtual world of the 2-D web or the 3-D virtual world.  He suggests that if telepresence is measured by how much a person feels themself part of the virtual rather than the physical world, then focused attention must be a key determinant of telepresence.

This again raises the question of the relationship between presence, immersion and flow.

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17/03/2009 by lizit.

There is a weekly meeting in Second Life for people who are involved in research in the Virtual World.  As these meetings tend to be at 10pm or later, I rarely get to them, but yesterday evening I made a point of going to Jeremy Kemps’s presentation on how he has introduced 1100 information science students to Second Life over the past year.

The context is a distance learning course with a large number of units introducing many different electronic resources of which Second Life is one - students are also introduced to Web 2.0 technologies including social networking and blogging, to Elluminate, and a range of other resources.  The students never meet face-to-face.

A background to the course is available on these slides.

Basically students have a choice between learning about Second Life through a short video, reading some selected papers and answering a quiz, or learning about Second Life at first hand by registering an avatar, undergoing a brief induction and undertaking a quest inworld which includes pasting an image of their avatar on the university social networking site.  The majority of the students choose the second option and this is being refined for the next cohort with additional quests and more attention to orientation; instead of relying on the generic induction offered by Linden Labs, Jeremy intends to use a well-designed and staffed orientation space such as Virtual Ability.

The work on this course is supporting Jeremy’s doctoral research which is focusing on what motivates students and stimulates flow.

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17/03/2009 by lizit.

Week 9 marked the last of the formal classes with the machinima presentations.  During the days running up to the 11th March, I was very aware of increased student activity in Second Life.  Over the weekend, I found myself engaged in trying to assist students with sorting out media streams and providing other last minute advice and assistance.  Monday morning, there were heated words in one group as work had not been done which should have been, and little apparent understanding from some team members that failing to attend team meetings messed up other people’s planning and time management.

Come the day of the presentations, I was bowled over by the work the students had done and the professional quality of the machinimas.  Given that most, if not all, the students had never been near Second Life before early January, their achievements were truly remarkable. Perhaps as important was the response of the clients, one of whom is planning to use the resources developed on a course next term and another who is planning to discuss how the machinima and materials might be used with colleagues on the Newton Project.  Although the ethnography project is incomplete, it is still possible that this migh be used in some way with students next year.

Although it probably only applies to a very small percentage of students, there was a warning note sounded about the potential to become over-involved in Second Life.  Some months ago, there was discussion on the SLED list about the fears expressed by some that Second Life might be addictive.  The general view was that this was not the case.  Students did not choose to go into Second Life, but were there because we took them there and, in general, did not engage with the virtual world beyond what their courses required them to do.  Although students might spend long hours in Second Life engaged with specific projects and course requirements, this was seen as relating more to ‘flow’ rather than indicating anything more worrying.  One student in his ILE presentation did indicate that he had found himself over-involved in Second Life to a point where it was becoming addictive.  Not only had he engaged with the project, but he had become involved in the virtual world to the extent of finding a partner in the virtual environment.  Although for many students this would not have been problematic, for this young man it was.  He did acknowledge that he had ignored advice and it was only now he was aware of the problems, but nevertheless there may be something to be learned from this experience when it comes to considering the advice given to students about SL risks and the formation of working groups.

Apart from the housekeeping that will need to be done now - arranging to get builds moved to more permanent locations on the island, I have a number of tasks to address.  I need to look at the chat logs and make sure files are appropriately named and saved.  I need to speak to Pablo (and hopefully Judith) and sort out arrangements for next term.  How will students be introduced to SL? What kind of induction will be needed? Possible use of the Sussex avatars?  I also need to consider what kind of tracking can be used to monitor what use is being made of the island and the resources.  For the past term, I have been clear that my interest is in how SL supports learning experiences and in how students deal with it when they get stuck when engaged in a learning experience or task.  I need to clarify what I want from the use of the SL resources.  Something about the effectiveness of SL as a learning environment when there is not the involvement and engagement that comes from creating products within the virtual world? I need to look at the augmentationist/immersionist stuff again - althought students may not fit those types, we are asking some to use SL as a tool and asking others to be more involved by doing stuff there. A lot to think about and plan!

Posted in creativity, stuckness, flow, augmentalist | Print | No Comments »

10/02/2009 by lizit.

Still looking at the Csikszentmihalyi stuff.  There is now a summary of “Beyond boredom and anxiety” on my wiki. This book was published in 1975 and introduces the concepts of flow and microflow and describes the studies on which the development of these concepts was based.  Unlike the later books, there is not the feel of a self-help manual, but there is the implication that flow is an important concept for individuals and societies. The book as a whole provides a context, both theoretical and appropriate to the time of writing. I found some of the assumptions questionable and dated but found the description of the studies and analysis of results interesting and informative. Csikszentmihalyi recognises some of his conclusions are tentative and suggests a number of reasons why further work needs to be done on some aspects of his work, for example the microflow study is based on 20 university students, self-recording activities and self-monitoring a deprivation period.  However, even this aspect of the study is backed up with physical and psychological testing providing a quantitative basis for the conclusions drawn.

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03/02/2009 by lizit.

I am plodding on with trying to work out how seriously to take Csikszentmihalyi.  Given that he has spent over 30 years working in the area of flow and optimal experience, has written several books and papers and presented his findings widely and his ideas have been adopted and applied in many different disciplines, the implication is that something meaningful is there.  However, having just read Creativity (see summary in wiki) I remain unconvinced, especially when the final chapter appears to be a self-help handbook on how to become a more creative person. I would like to find a knowledgable critique of his work, which might help me to assess better what I am reading, how seriously to take it, and how to apply it.

Posted in creativity, flow | Print | 2 Comments »

30/01/2009 by lizit.

We are now at the end of week 3 of term - time is racing by and I find it even more incredible what was achieved last year now I am on campus and more aware of timescales and student pressures.

The project teams have been allocated and 4 of the 5 teams have met their clients; hopefully the fifth has also.  The next stage for students is to develop their specifications for comment by us and their clients.  In the meantime, I have divided up the island to set the building plots as specific zones and allocated them to the groups, learning quite a bit about how land permissions and prim counts work in the process.

After 3 weeks focusing on practical aspects and developing my own building skills, I think I can now begin to start thinking again about how the project relates to my research objectives - both short term (what I can get from ILE 09) and longer term (how ILE projects might be used with other student cohorts).

My current interest with the ILE students is how they respond to stuckness and problematic learning.   There are various places where students could get stuck.  They are working in a medium which is new to them and need to learn basic skills about being, moving and relating in the environment (perhaps not dissimilar to moving into a new real life environment).  In addition, they need to learn the specific building and scripting skills necessary to create artifacts in Second Life and make those artifacts do whatever it is they are intended to do. Although there may be some transfer of skills from other environments, the SL building and scripting interfaces are not intuitive and some students may experience a degree of stuckness in these activities.

The project requires students to develop solutions to problems presented by real life clients.  As the clients are drawn from a number of different disciplines, students need to be able to understand and interpret client needs and demonstrate this in the production of a project specification.  They then need to develop a project in Second Life, using their building and scripting skills and their knowledge of the greater world of Second Life, to meet the client requirements.

The third aspect of the project which also involves new learning is the creation of a machinima for a presentation in the 9th week of term.  Machinima making involves creating film clips in Second Life and then using appropriate software to edit the clips and create a sound track. Although some students may be familiar with these skills, it is likely others will find this also presents challenges and may lead to a degree of stuckness.

I am interested in how students respond when they get stuck.  What strategies are used to get unstuck? Does the immersive nature of Second Life have any effect on the motivation of students to find solutions?  Are there episodes of flow - and does flow experience affect response to stuckness.  I need to get back to my pencil and paper and what I want to know, what tools I need to use and how I will collect and use data.  This project is going to be iterative if nothing else.

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03/01/2009 by lizit.

This is going to be a bit simplistic, but I need to get some of what I’m thinking on paper (or on screen) rather than just in my head.

“Troublesome learning spaces are places where ‘stuckness’ or ‘disjunction’ occurs.” (Savin-Baden, 2007). She goes on to identify a number of catalysts that may be involved in moving into such a space.  The idea of troublesome learning appears to originate with Perkins (1999) - at least he articulated it - and he identifies some types of learning which can be seen as troublesome.  This is developed by Meyer and Land (2005) in their consideration of Threshold concepts.  Others have applied this thinking to specific disciplines (eg Davies, 2007).

Savin-Baden offers a model of transitional learning spaces which relates to how stuckness is dealt with. She suggests that a learner arrives at a place where disjunction is experienced: “Disjunction is not only a form of troublesome knowledge but also a ‘space’ or ‘position’ reached through the realisation that the knowledge is troublesome. Disjunction might therefore be seen as a ‘troublesome learning space’ that emerges when forms of active learning (such as problem-based learning) are used that prompt students to engage with procedural and personal knowledge. Alternatively, disjunction can be seen as the kind of place that students might reach after they have encountered a threshold concept that they have not managed to breach.” Other authors have spoken about ’stuck places’ (Lather 1998). Savin-Baden goes on to suggest that learners deal with disjunction in one of five ways: “students may opt to retreat from disjunction, to postpone dealing with it, to temporize and thus choose not to make a decision about how to manage it, to find some means to avoid it and thus create greater disjunction in the long term, or to engage with it and move to a greater or lesser sense of integration”. She suggests that: “Engaging with disjunction requires that students acknowledge its existence and attempt to deconstruct the causes of disjunction by examining the relationship with both their internal and external worlds. Through this reflexive examination process, students can engage with what has given rise to the disjunction and they are then enabled to shift towards a greater sense of integration.”

How students deal with stuckness is also examined by McCartney et al (2007) and a lengthy list of potential strategies is identified and linked to types of learners.

These studies suggest that having reached a place of disjunction of stuckness, there is a choice over how this might be approached which essentially is a choice between retreating from the uncomfortable place or rising to the challenge.  The second of these approaches would appear to link with thinking about ‘flow’, a term first suggested by Csikszentmihalyi in 1973 and since developed and applied in many different fields by Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and numerous other authors. Chen (1999) has considered flow in relation to use of the web and identifies 9 factors involved in a flow experience: “(1) clear goals; (2) immediate feedback; (3) personal kills well suited to given challenges; (4) merger of action and awareness; (5) concentration on the task at hand; (6) a sense of potential control; (7) a loss of self-consciousness; (8) an altered sense of time; and (9) experience which becomes autotelic.” An important aspect of flow appears to be a level of challenge such as is achievable, that is the challenge should not be too daunting but needs to such as can be perceived as a challenge. The question that arise for me is whether being able to deal with disjunction or stuckness is in part related to the personal challenge involved in the process.  In other words, does disjunction which leads to understanding involve a flow process?

Linking this to Second Life.  It can be anticipated that the introduction to Second Life will induce a range of different feelings within learners.  Some will be positive and some negative.  Being presented with the stress of being asked to create within Second Life presents learners with a challenge requiring a number of different learning experiences, some of which may lead to feelings of stuckness and disjunction.  How do learners deal with the difficulties they encounter in Second Life.  On reflection, how is the experience viewed? What are the factors which lead to a positive or a negative experience?  To what extent do students experience flow in meeting the challenges presented by creating projects in Second Life? Does the learner’s approach to Second Life - augmentalist or immersionist - make a difference to the way in which challenges are dealt with, or flow experienced?

Chen, H., Wigand, R. T., & Nilan, M. S. (1999). Optimal experience of Web activities. Computers in Human Behavior, 15(5), 585-608.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York,NY: Harper and Row.

Davies, P., & Mangan, J. (2007). Threshold concepts and the integration of understanding in economics. Studies in Higher Education, 32(6), 711-726.

Lather, P. (1998). Critical pedagogy and its complicities: A praxis of stuck places. Education Theory, 48(4), 487-498.

McCartney, R., Eckerdal, A., Mostrom, J. E., Sanders, K., & Zander, C. (2007). Successful students’ strategies for getting unstuck. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education.

Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49(3), 373-388.

Perkins, D. (1999). The Many Faces of Constructivism. Educational Leadership, 57(3), 6.

Savin-Baden, M. (2007). Second Life PBL: liminality, liquidity and lurking. Paper presented at the Reinventing Problem-based learning, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore.

Posted in flow, augmentalist, threshold concepts, Second Life | Print | 1 Comment »

01/01/2009 by lizit.

Did a bit of searching after yesterday’s post.  I’ve tracked down a few recent papers which include reference to SL and flow but very little around with mention of flow and threshold concepts or troublesome learning.  Will hunt around a bit more with some other search terms and read the stuff I have found.

Posted in flow, threshold concepts, Second Life | Print | 1 Comment »

31/12/2008 by lizit.

The more I read about flow, the more I find myself wondering if this is actually a serious concept or some kind of joke.  On the other hand, it is clearly taken seriously and a lot of work has been done relating the concept to VE, web usage, etc, etc.  There seems to be a general sense that it is when one is in a state of flow that there is maximum potential for learning.

I find I am questioning quite a lot of what I am reading - and some of it I am finding very difficult to take seriously - but if the basic assumption (and there does seem to be research to back it up) that learning is enhanced when in a flow state, then it is worth looking at in relation to SL and IVWs.

Thinking back to previous ideas about threshold concepts and stuckness, one of the aspects of flow is a sense of challenge (but challenge which is attainable rather than over-bearing).  Is there a connection between flow and being challenged appropriately so as to move beyond stuckness?

So using Chen (1999) as a model for considering what the attributes of flow might be in SL and Savin-Baden (2007) for what happens when stuckness occurs, how might this be related to SL and turned into something useful?

Chen, H., Wigand, R. T., & Nilan, M. S. (1999). Optimal experience of Web activities. Computers in Human Behavior, 15(5), 585-608.

Savin-Baden, M. (2007). Second Life PBL: liminality, liquidity and lurking. Paper presented at the Reinventing Problem-based learning, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore.

Posted in flow, threshold concepts, Second Life | Print | No Comments »