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Eloise Pasteur

Some myths about online teaching - 1 views

  • Videocasting classroom lectures works. No, it does not.
  • osting lecture notes is pretty much good enough. Not really. There is an insane amount of details making up a course, beyond pedagogically correct notes.
  • Online teaching is mostly good for introductory or low-level courses. Actually, online learning requires a lot of maturity from the students. For this reason, it works better with advanced topics or with more mature students.
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  • Online courses are ok for learning Microsoft Word, but you cannot possibly teach real science. Think again. Actually, an online course can be much tougher than a traditional course
  • I do not have time for such nonsense as online teaching as I must focus on my research. Actually, if you have time at all for teaching, online teaching is probably more research-friendly. For one thing, there are fewer unwanted disruptions with online teaching.
  • Online courses will empty the classrooms. That is very unlikely. Universities have been offering bachelor and graduate degrees online for years, how many graduates do you know? Many, many students feel that they need 3 hours of classroom lectures per week to learn.
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    Thoughts about common myths of online learning.
Eloise Pasteur

Want to teach better in Second Life? Commit to teaching wholly in Second Life! - Elois... - 0 views

  • So, research would suggest that the more you commit to teaching using Second Life, the better you feel about it, and the better you think your student's learning experience went too. What are you waiting for - get stuck in today.
Eloise Pasteur

Research Article: A Second Life PCR lab evaluation - 1 views

  • This study examines students’ reactions to the virtual biosciences laboratory developed in Second Life® (SL) at the University of East London. Final year undergraduates and masters students studying biotechnology took part in a trial of a virtual Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) experiment in Second Life and evaluated their experience by anonymous questionnaire. Learning gains were measured at various points during the study using pre- and post-tests, and interaction with demonstrators was monitored and compared during the real life (RL) practical. Both groups showed a significant increase in learning gain over the pre- and post-tests, although no difference in gains between the two groups was detected. However, students who conducted the PCR experiment in SL required significantly less demonstrator assistance during the subsequent RL practical. The SL practical was well received by students, with 92% of participants reporting that they would like to use the system again and many requesting other experiments to be made available in this manner in the future.
  • The aim of this study was to determine whether conducting the PCR experiment in the virtual world of Second Life produced similar learning gains to those observed in the physical world laboratory and to see if working in the Virtual Lab enhanced students understanding of the experiment. The student perceptions of the Virtual Lab as a teaching mechanism and the perceived impact on their learning was examined through questionnaires.
  • The SL group completed a pre(virtual) Lab quiz and then individually registered for Second Life to create an avatar under instructor supervision. Each student completed some orientation exercises on UEL Island to become adequately skilled in using the Second Life environment (e.g. flying, putting on clothing etc.). The student avatars then met in the Virtual Lab to perform the PCR experiment. This was initially demonstrated by a member of staff before each student completed the virtual experiment themselves. Throughout this teaching session the students received face to face and virtual communication from their instructor.
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  • Participants in both groups then completed the physical world PCR practical individually in the laboratory. During the physical world practical the number of questions asked of staff and demonstrators by students in each group was recorded. After the real-world practical all participants completed the in-class quiz once again as a measure of overall learning gain.
  • Pre-, mid- and post-tests were used to examine the learning gains seen in the students at each stage of the teaching process. The learning gains of each group at the three stages of testing are illustrated in Figure 2. Using a mixed (or split-plot) ANOVA there were found to be no significant difference between the learning gains achieved by the SL and non-SL groups, with both groups achieving the same mean increase in test score between the pre and post tests. Interestingly however, there was a significant difference between the scores achieved by students in the SL and non-SL groups overall (p<0.001), with the initial average pre-test score of the SL group being significantly higher than the initial average pre-test score for the non-SL group. Quiz scores increased significantly across the study for students in both groups (p<0.001).
  • The number of questions asked by students during the physical world laboratory practical was recorded for the non-SL and SL groups. As can be seen in Figure 3, the non-SL group (Demonstration) asked significantly more questions (p<0.001) during the practical than the SL group. Furthermore, the staff supporting the practical sessions reported the SL group students to be more organised in their conduct during the class and appeared to take less time to complete the task.
  • Overall, satisfaction with the Virtual Lab was high. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they would use Second Life again and many had commented during the teaching session that they would like to see other experiments in the Virtual Lab. There were no significant differences in opinion between the sexes and between those who are re-sitting the module (11 students) and those that were not. Students who had already completed one Semester of the course joining the programme in October 2008 (21 students) found the in world instructions on how to complete the Virtual Lab experiment more useful than those (29 students) who started in Semester B, February 2009 (p<0.05).
  • A moderate negative correlation was found between age and overall satisfaction (r= -0.54, p<0.001). Younger students were generally more satisfied with Second Life than older students.
  • Those who had used Second Life before the study (16 out of 50 students) differed significantly in their expectation of in-world feedback whilst undertaking the Virtual PCR experiment from those who had no prior Second Life experience (p<0.05). Of the 16 students that had used SL before 6 students answered Q11 of the questionnaire (Table 1) with 3 or lower while only 4 students out of the 34 who had not used SL before answered Q11 in this way. Those who had used Second Life before thought that they had not received sufficient feedback during the experiment.
Eloise Pasteur

Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views

  • With very little time and a lot of content to cover, one way to accomplish this change is to use game-based metaphors that capture students’ interest. But there is no need to actually create a game to leverage the concept of game-play for class activities. After all, class activities come with goals, feedback, rewards, and recognition, and these translate well in this visual, exploratory environment. The virtual world looks like a game setting and is one in which instructors can guide, observe, and provide feedback and rewards for class activities.
  • Students worry that the class structure will be poorly defined and managed. A well-structured course includes a syllabus that defines the course objectives, learning objectives, goals, measurements, a schedule of activities and assignments, and rubrics for assessment. Virtual world courses add information on how projects will be delivered, how class discussions will be evaluated, and how students can benefit from feedback to improve the quality of their work throughout the course. Other benefits include discovering new ways to study, discuss, create, and express the course subject under the supervision and support of the instructor. In virtual worlds, the instructor’s role shifts from being the “sage on the stage” to being the domain expert—the authority who stimulates and supervises exploration while providing structure, guidance, feedback, and assessment. Demystifying complexity is not an easy task!
  • Exams or assessments of competency shift to projects and solutions to problems that are expressed in context, offering new ways to visualize, experience, and assess the solutions. This method does not replace traditional methods of evaluation, but it does offers additional ways of assessing what students know and can apply. For example, CS 382, a software design class at Colorado Technical University (CTU), created a 3D game maze and populated it with traps, sensors, flags, a scoreboard, treasures, and other game features and then played the game on the last night of class. The goal of the class was to learn to model a variety of software designs using drawings in a design specification. The students exceeded the class requirements: they designed, prototyped, and tested their designs. They discovered a minor flaw, and one student fixed the problem while the class tested it during the next run of the game. These students were so immersed in the learning experience that they did not realize they had accomplished the goals of several classes in a single term. Virtual environments are stimulating, creative landscapes. When virtual worlds are populated with the right mix of content and discovery, students remain long after class ends.
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  • Finally, as students become active participants in virtual world classes, the student who is on “cruise control” is at risk. Students shift from being passive listeners to engaging in group interaction and activities and demonstrating that they understand the course content via the completion of projects, papers, labs, and case studies. Many classes that include case studies use role-play, putting learners in roles and contexts in which they explore the content and make decisions based on the forces and constraints placed on them. One example of a class role-play is shown in Figure 2, which depicts Ramapo’s immersive literature activity in which Suffern Middle School students enact the courtroom scene from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The students’ exploration of the content benefits from this social learning environment.
  • In their “lessons learned” papers, the students noted that the virtual world classes enhanced their learning experience and their perceptions of self and gave them new skills to demonstrate their mastery of the course content. The sense of presence and the customization of their avatars were high on their list of priorities for learning and participating in virtual world classes.
  • Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences. Some people learn best by listening to the course content, others by seeing and visualizing the content in context, and the rest by using a hands-on approach to demonstrate course competencies. In virtual worlds, we can leverage a mix of content and activity to support all learners: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Virtual worlds support these different learning styles and give students opportunities to explore, discover, and express their understanding of the subject. Naturally, the tool’s capabilities do not guarantee a great learning experience. The success of a course depends on effective course design, delivery, and assessment. Course designers, instructors, and IT professionals are challenged to create stimulating content, deliver it reliably, and ensure a stable virtual world learning environment. Do the benefits outweigh the risks associated with venturing into a virtual world educational platform? For me, the virtual world is my preferred learning and teaching environment. And I am not alone. Over 400 universities and 4,500 educators participate on the Second Life Educators List (SLED).1 All of us are studying how to leverage the benefits of learning in a virtual world in order to assist our students in today’s educational frontiers.
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    Reflections from someone who has taught several courses in Second Life about the teaching experience.
Eloise Pasteur

TidalBlog: Something here happened... - 0 views

  • Some weeks back, the short course I ran with our third year students in SL drew to a close. How did it go? It went. Not nearly so well as I should have liked but lessons were learned. Like:
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    Reflections on a first teaching experience in Second Life
hometuitionpudu

Home tuition pudu : Developments in Teaching and Learning - Site Title - 0 views

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    "While maintaining academic and vocational needs, teacher should focus on various opportunities and improvement-focused vocational skills in home tuition pudu
Eloise Pasteur

Gamasutra - Analysis: Games Create 'Passion Communities' For Learning - 0 views

  • Gee sees the current U.S. educational system as inadequate to the task of addressing the problems of an increasingly complex world. He stated that “21st century learning must be about understanding complex systems,” and he believes many video games do a better job at this than the antiquated sender-receiver teaching model that dominates American classrooms.
  • “This is an alternative learning system that teaches more effectively than most schools,” Gee observed. “We need to learn how to organize a learning, passion system community. Game designers know how to do this.”
  • Passion communities encourage and enable people of all ages to do extraordinary things. Gee believes the 'amateur knowledge' that arises from this immersive involvement often surpasses 'expert knowledge,' and cited fantasy baseball as an example. The boundaries between the 'fantasy' game and the 'real' game have been blurred because fantasy players' expertise in statistical analysis has had a measurable impact on how MLB teams evaluate players.
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  • Passion communities exist, according to Gee, to “give people status and control, not always money.” He recounted the story of a young girl who began making clothes for her Sims characters. When she wanted more textures than the game provided, she taught herself to use Photoshop to create her own. Eventually, she moved to Second Life and began selling her own original designs. When asked if she planned to pursue her interest in fashion, she said no. “I want to work with computers because they give you power.”
  • Gee sees two separate educational systems operating today: one a traditional approach to learning; the other what Gee calls “passion communities.” In Gee's view, the latter produce real knowledge. Video games, virtual worlds and online social networks provide environments in which these passion communities can form and thrive
  • “Education isn't about telling people stuff, it's about giving them tools that enable them to see the world in a new and useful way.”
  • Gee sees broad implications for students in this regard. “Give students smart tools and let them use them and modify them to suit their purposes.” Such self-motivated learning moves students away from merely consuming knowledge and encourages them to produce knowledge and apply it in meaningful ways.
  • Gee clearly situates video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy with genuine power to transform students and equip them to address complex problems.
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    Video games are better learning environments than traditional classrooms (to those on the "education in SL list, "Well, D'uh!") but still worth reading and thinking about. Derived from a lecture by Prof. Gee
Eloise Pasteur

About - Virtual World Watch - 0 views

  • Virtual worlds in UK Higher and Further Education
  • Second Life is by far the most widely used virtual world in education.
  • Research underpinning the May 2008 snapshot revealed that over 80% of UK universities were developing or teaching within the Second Life virtual world.
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  • A specific comment that is frequently repeated is that these reports have provided the only authoritative, reliable or comprehensive source of information on: The extent of virtual world use in UK universities. Which academics and institutions are using virtual worlds. What, exactly, virtual worlds are being used for. The reports have also been used by academics as proof or evidence that virtual worlds should at least be investigated more thoroughly as teaching and learning technologies.
Eloise Pasteur

Using virtual worlds for educating people in the medical field » ... - 0 views

  • Role-playing doctor inside Second Life? Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London has developed a region in Second Life that aims to design game-based learning activities for delivery of virtual patients that can drive experiential, diagnostic, and role-play learning activities supporting patients’ diagnoses, investigations and treatment. One of my Twitter friends, Andrea Vascellari, thinks this is a “terrific example that demonstrates the value of virtual worlds like Second Life” and is interested in other folk’s thoughts after watching this video:
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    A somewhat negative end, but information about teaching medicine in Second Life with a hard to hear video.
Eloise Pasteur

University Affairs- Studies in Second Life - 0 views

  • “I thought, ‘Gosh, this is amazing! You can teach classes in it’,” he recalls. The first time he taught a course registered in Second Life, Professor Washburn, a.k.a. Duncan Innis, led a 15-week, one-hour lecture to 25 students in the island’s amphitheatre.
  • There is no audio, just words flashing on screen like an MSN chat session. The discussion veers from “fluff journalism” to magazine branding. Nobody raises their hand to voice an opinion; an avatar makes a typing motion in the air if it wants to comment. Professor Washburn and his students often interrupt each other, since you can type whenever you want.
  • The learning curve that comes with Second Life is a drawback mentioned by all professors, online communications personnel and students, and this is one factor that makes some universities reluctant to use the program. Jason Toal, who works at SFU as an experience designer, spearheads most of the university’s projects in Second Life. “If you’re going to use Second Life for your course, you need to spend at least the first couple of classes teaching your students how to use it,” he says. “You have to walk them through what it’s all about, how to hook it on your computer.”
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  • In an instant messaging conversation during Robert Washburn’s journalism lecture at Loyalist, Urqhart, whose real name is Tyson Jewell, reveals his frustrations with Second Life. He says the heavy computer requirements can be a hassle for students who can’t afford sophisticated video cards or a faster Internet connection. Because of this, some students have to come to school anyway to use a computer inside a lab or a library to attend their Second Life classes. There are various other technical problems, such as the glitch in the program that caused Mr. Jewell’s classmate to be locked out of his account. And, ironically, Second Life battles against the one thing that has propelled its popularity: the rapid advances in technology.
  • Finally, everyone who was interviewed for this article agrees that virtual worlds like Second Life won’t completely overtake normal classroom settings. However, they do believe that three-dimensional online classes and assignments will become a staple in Canadian education – and that’s for real.
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    Overview of Canadian HE in Second Life
Eloise Pasteur

Dusan Writer's Metaverse » Findings Published about Virtual Learning in Seco... - 0 views

  • Second Life and other virtual worlds can never fully replace in-class learning, but that virtual learning is reshaping what happens in the classroom and will be a valuable add-on learning tool in the future.
  • There are benefits in face–to–face education and in real physical presence that are difficult to achieve in other learning environments.
  • Education in Second Life is closer to face–to–face education than traditional methods in distance education that are based on asynchronous communication and two–dimensional media. Second Life provides options for multi-modality in communication (voice, chat, gestures, space) that make learning fun — always a desired outcome.
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  • the concept of interreality - the integration of physical and virtual worlds - is ‘an advantage in distance education, if it can bring distance education closer to face-to-face education.’
  • It is also worth noting that of the 30 students that participated, only a few had difficulty navigating through Second Life and most felt that it was superior to other Web-based learning environments.
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    Quick summary of a paper about teaching IRL.
Vicki Davis

Digiteen Dream Team: How To Create Landmarks In OpenSim - 0 views

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    Tutorials my students are making about how to do things in OpenSim (comparable to second life.)
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    My students on the "jing strand" of digiteen are doing a very nice job teaching others how to do things in OpenSim (works the same in Second Life) - in this tutorial, you learn how to make landmarks.
Gaby K. Slezák

Daily Trojan - School of Dentistry, Viterbi team up to create virtual dental clinic - 0 views

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    The computer-based simulation program is being used to teach doctoral dental students concepts and skills they would be unable to gain through observation in a clinic.
James OReilly

Virtual Learning Quality - Mastering ISO 9001 Quality Processes In Virtual Worlds - 0 views

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    ISO 9001 implementation for virtual learning & teaching
ciltsouthindia

CILT South India Project - International Certification Courses - 0 views

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    Earn your Qualification with the support of a Campus environment. Our accredited institutes are spread across South India. Our institutes strongly uphold the CILT global standards be it the learning environment, quality of staff or the standards of teaching.
edustudy

B. Ed Admission Institute - College for Bachelor of Education, Syllabus, Eligibility, D... - 0 views

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    "The B.Ed course is specifically caters to the students who are interested in pursuing career in teaching related fields"
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