ED 257A Week 9: Discovery/project-based learning; learning in virtual environments; game-based learning

Learning in Virtual Reality

This week's reading is based off of:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gonzalez-Gonzalez & Blanco-Izquierdo (2012) "Designing social videogames for educational uses" - Caitlin McDowell & Sahar Sajadieh

Vander Ark (2014) "Eight principles of productive gamification" - Caitlin McDowell & Sahar Sajadieh
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Week 9 class was conducted a little differently than usual. Instead of meeting in-person in the Education building, we all participated in a Zoom video conference to talk about the gamification in the classroom. In the Zoom interface, there is a gallery of participants, all of who can participate in the video and audio. Whenever someone speaks, their video screen is highlighted in green in gallery mode or becomes the largest screen in speaker mode. While I thought the Zoom interface and session itself went well, I still prefer the face-to-face in-class discussion we have on a regular basis. Often times, it was difficult to focus on the speaker because so much else was also happening on the screen. In contrast, I often physically turn towards whoever is speaking at the moment and very little enters my periphery. There was also an electronic chat that was happening simultaneously. Although it is a great way for people to contribute to the discussion (who may normally be reluctant to speak, like myself), I had to constantly switch between the video and the chat, which made the discussion more mentally taxing. I can see the value in Zoom being useful for at least establishing face-to-face time for teams where that is difficult (e.g., international collaboration, across large geographical distances). At the end of that day, I still find in-class time to be more valuable and organic. However, I'm glad we went through this experience with video conferencing. It was very informative, and I think I may use it in (not future classroom sessions but rather) future collaborations in my research.

 

Source: http://zoom.us/subscribe (top), https://maroonloon.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/zoom-presence.png (bottom)

We also discussed how gamification would fit into our education curriculum. The tutorial on Edorble given by founder Gabe Baker was particularly interesting. Edorble is a web platform to hold virtual classrooms. It is similar to Second Life in that you interact with a virtual world through a customizable avatar. Edorble is more specific to the classroom setting. There is a lecture space in which a video screen is shared among users and also additional space (e.g., to use for break-out discussions).

Source: http://www.edorble.com/

I found it interesting that both Zoom and Edorble aim to recreate human interaction, but do so differently. Zoom does so using a collection of video screens and audio. Unlike Zoom, each participant in Edorble has an avatar that can interact with other avatars and the environment. Yet both aim to facilitate face-to-face discussion and collaboration. Zoom trades off the idea of a discussion space for more direct dialogue between participants while Edorble trades off that direct dialogue to be mediated among avatars. It would be interesting to see and reflect how differently people (including myself) would act in each of these scenarios, and how that compares to the traditional face-to-face dialogue. I'm curious to see how Edorble will implement other features into their virtual classroom, and whether they plan on including the ability to write on virtual blackboards and whatnot.

Some final thoughts I have on virtual reality is more on the aspect of gamification. There are certainly many benefits that gamification can achieve if designed well. As enumerated by Vander Ark, gamification allows for productive failure, boosts persistence and intrinsic motivation, can lead to deeper learning but needs conceptual challenges and careful calibration. I tend to think more about learning in higher education, so a hesitation I have using gamification in the classroom is that it may detract from the core content of the lecture. Another is that the material that would be used in such lectures would need to be self-generated, since it is currently not common to use gamification to teach STEM subjects. Perhaps gamification can help make STEM subjects more accessible and less textbook dry or maybe could be a more subtle incorporation into the course. The classic is a game of Jeopardy or Bingo, but I would be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on the subject.