'Exploring student learning spaces in second life'

I have not posted in a while - so thought that this time I would share our
Higher Education Research Seminar, delivered at London Met, 7th June 2011. Here are the contributors and the gist of our presentation - followed by links to the slides and other related blogs. I've also included a very positive response that we got...

Contributors:
Alan Hudson, SL, Faculty of Computing, Sandra Sinfield, SL Learning Development & Debbie Holley, PL, Faculty of Education, Anglia Ruskin University

'Exploring student learning spaces in second life'
“More and more, people expect to be able to work, learn, study, and connect with their social networks wherever and whenever they want to.” (New Horizons report 2010:5)

The increasing use of 3D and other ‘Virtual Worlds’ for educational and business use is a highly contested area. Although there are a number of refereed papers on the theoretical constructs and underpinnings of Second Life (www.secondlife.com/), there is little formal research reported as yet into the learning experiences of student and lecturer interactions within these worlds (Herold, 2010)). By 2011 it is estimated that about 80% of active Internet users will have an “avatar” and/or a “second life” in some form of virtual world environment (Chang et al 2009).

This HER seminar will offer colleagues an overview of second life, and then demonstrate projects the team have been working on to engage students in this novel 3D world. First year students have been exploring study skills in the ‘On the beach’ project; Masters students have been creating learning environments and tools, and the team have recently been working on a ‘Toxic Warehouse’ project with a partner from industry, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

Materials have been developed that will enable colleagues to get started in exploring Second Life – and will be available below.

WHY Second Life:
This work intersects with and extends our earlier critique of the government's Harnessing Technology document (viz. 'A journey into silence: students, stakeholders and the impact of a strategic governmental policy document in the UK' in Social Responsibility journal, Vol 5 No 4, 2009, I've also attached an old ppt FYI).

Harnessing Technology laid out the goals of Technology Enhanced Learning for society as a whole and HE in particular. Our discourse analysis of this policy text revealed a reductive vision of ICT with isolated, atomised students dislocated from their peers, their culture and their class (and ultimately thus from themselves) as they are plugged into remedial ICT packages and programmes designed to 'fix' them.

We wanted to transcend a Foucauldian medical model of technology for learning - and explore how we could harness its potential for collaborative embodied aspects of learning – and also how we can use the technology to empower rather than limit or control the students’ ability.

Further - there are hints for future research in re Bourdieu's notion of habitus and cultural capital (the concept of being constrained by one's culture and class): does the option of choosing and constructing an avatar not only allow one to become virtually embodied, but also facilitate a transcendence of boundaries?

Resources - from Alan Hudson:
The slides are loaded up to slideshare -

People may also like to look at and the 3D Warehouse blog at and we'll be circulating the On the Beach info very shortly once we've tinkered with the content.

Response from a participant:
Thank you for a really interesting presentation yesterday! For me that was the best - most graspable and enlightening - introduction to what Second Life is about and can offer in the context of higher education I've encountered so far. It is inspiring to see all of the good work you are doing, and great for me to start to feel I have an idea of what Second Life can offer students that other environments cannot. I'm especially taken with the way that the space can be used to facilitate genuine collaboration, connection, creativity and a helpful spirit of competition amongst students who might otherwise struggle to engage and feel a valuable part of some joint endeavour. Really excellent.

Update on the proposed closure of learning/writing development ...

I have written about the proposed deletion of learning and writing development at my university - and there was much concern at the news... This is to update people on 'the story so far'...

First of all I would like to thank every body who wrote to us and to the VC ... and to the Times Higher, the blogs and twitters ... your support has been wonderful and very important.

The outcome has been that whilst the overall cut has been reduced, we do still lose the Learning Development Unit and the Writing Centre on the 31st July 2011 - with a significant loss of administrative and academic staff, and the end of direct support given to students from these offices.

A new Centre is to emerge on the 1st August that combines the remaining Education,
Writing, Learning & Blended Learning Development people: The Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching (CELT).

The CELT's role and activities will be primarily staff facing and will include: support for curriculum transformation, including via the embedding of academic literacies; promotion of blended learning; professional development in learning and teaching; policy development; income generation through third stream activity; and 'co-curricular learning & writing development'. This latter can be loosely described as supporting the Faculties with supporting students.

Since this latter announcement, our VC has spoken on Channel 4 and Sky News about the need to reduce our courses (from over 400 to some 160) and consequently to significantly reduce staffing (it is rumoured by 70%). The first move in that direction has been the announcement of the expunging of the majority of our Humanities courses with the axing of philosophy, history, caribbean studies, theatre studies and performing arts. We now understand the meaning of pyrrhic victory - though I guess future generations of our students will not.

Thank you again for your concern and your support; alas, I think that the struggle for meaningful higher education in England is just beginning.

Get Ahead 2011- a VIRTUAL conference by students and for students?

Our Get Ahead 2010 conference: http://www.catsconsulting.com/getahead2010/#

There will be no money available for a physical Get Ahead conference for students this year – but we have the opportunity to run a virtual one instead.


I am hoping that enough of us can get together to work out when, where and how to run a virtual conference – about successful study , writing, volunteering, joining a club or society, moving on to successfully apply for and get that great job… Or getting students to devise and deliver a conference on any theme they may choose


In particular I think that we need:

* Events management students to organise it
* Computing, animation and multimedia students to facilitate it
* Students engaged in reflective practice to (be supported to) ‘present’ at it
* As many of our students as possible to attend it
* To award module credits as much as possible around the conference...

The way forward:

* Join us if interested in this
* If you know of other people who might be interested, tell them
* If you already have a plan of how we might make this happen (on the principle that good ideas emerge in many different people at the same time) – you especially should get in touch!
* To join in – go to:

http://getahead2011.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/hello-worldfirst-virtual-meeting/

Write, share re-write

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of the short writing tasks that we have built into our modules – including into seminar time – in order to promote ‘write to learn’ approaches at our university. Recently I asked a colleague from Plymouth to share some of the activities that she has used in her brilliant and engaging conference workshops (ALDinHE and WDHE). She has graciously shared them with me – and I am sharing them with you:

“Like a good magpie, most of the ideas are of course stolen gems, based mostly on the work of Bronwyn Davies (her book Doing Collective Biography is really practical and inspiring), and Jane Speedy's collaborative writing toolbox which she is currently developing for ESCalate.

Basically, the point is to write and share and then rewrite.

Imposing limits seems to focus the writing better, and some of the tricks are to insist that the participants write in sentences of no more than three words, or write( their life?) in no more (and no less than) 50 words.

Alternatively they can be asked to write a short piece (in a set time) around a particular theme (ie mis/recognition, fear, school, etc.) with the express aim of attempting to capture and evoke (in an embodied sense) a particular moment in time.

The emphasis in this kind of workshop is not just on the writing, but also on the audience. Therefore the listeners should be aware that they have a responsibility to critique and comment (positively) on the writing with the aim of helping the writer edit out all superfluous information. Bronwyn maintains that even if you are listening intently, your mind will begin to wander the minute the writing rings untrue or irrelevant. This is the moment when the writer needs to be made aware that they have 'lost' their audience.

I have to say, the writing I produced in her workshop was the most intense and emotionally dense I have ever done… “

Learning Development: roles and working lives

The Association of Learning Development in Higher Education is conducting an informal ethnographic study of the work of learning developers across the sector. Each month we are invited to blog what we did on the 15th day – or the nearest working day to the 15th. If you are engaged in any form of learning development role yourself, do go to the blog and add an entry (for January please go to http://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/january-2011-journal/ ). If you do not want to blog yourself, just go and read the entries – they are fascinating. I am reproducing my January blog here, fyi:
I did not work on the 15th and as I am 0.8 and I do not work on Fridays either, my nearest working days include Weds/Thurs 12th & 13th January – but also Monday 17th January – so here’s a little bit about all of those.
Some context: as you all know, we all work in increasingly pressured, work heavy and time poor environments – pushed forever to do more with less, for less and in less time. At the same time we are all deluged with increasingly peremptory and steadily mounting demands and pressures: this year we are all blended learning – get up to speed, produce new course designs & resources, develop new Teaching, Learning & Assessment practices … yesterday – or else. Ooooh, this year we are all transitions & student engagement: three-line whip to attend workshops, sit on discussion groups, produce policy documents whilst remembering that we are still ‘blended learning’ so must keep producing those resources and new course designs and activities whilst the university deletes administrative posts so that we all have to do a thousand extra admin tasks as well …
And so it goes! Thus generally we are all nose to grindstone, shoulder to wheel and forehead to door of fridge – and no matter how hard we work, how many hours or days of unpaid over time we give – we never feel we have done enough or that we are good enough…
BUT – they announced our redundancies in November… and this brings me to the 12th & 13th January:
Last week amongst the email and admin which is endless and forever… I dragged my nose, shoulder and forehead to my desk and decided to play. We learn through play. We are engaged by and in play… So I opened a twitter account and started tweeting. I resurrected my blog (http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.com/2011) and started blogging. I entered my facebook account without shame – and IM’ed an ex-colleague who now lives in Dublin. I also followed threads and links and posts … I cannot tell you how much I learned in those two days. I now feel ready and able to really DO blended learning. More so than any amount of micromanaging or bullying or hectoring could ever have accomplished.
Homily: In these increasingly harsh times, let us fight for those creative and emancipatory spaces for ourselves. Let us take the time to explore, develop, share, learn and grow – in fun and joy.
17th January: the other day nearest the 15th that I worked involved the usual email and admin – but also our SWAP symposium. The LearnHigher and Write Now CETLs at London Met funded pedagogic research projects in reading, notemaking and writing around the theme of Supporting Academic Writing Practices (SWAP). On Monday we had a symposium wherein the majority of participants were able to report back on their projects. Over 50 people attended the event – and there were fascinating presentations on: Using mobile phones for studying and notemaking; Writing in public: exploring the use of Web 2.0 in developing students’ academic writing; Using tweets for reflection during practice; Re-purposing a Reflective Practice learning object; A teaching resource to guide biological laboratory and scientific report writing; Read to succeed – a project to embed reading and the Academic Liaison Librarian to aid the transition of first year undergraduates; Writing in the disciplines E-pack; and A handbook for creating a story-telling space on virtual 3D environments(Second Life). For reports on these projects do go to: http://www.writenow.ac.uk/outcomes/resources/mini-research-projects/#SWAP
A merry lunch was eaten and a good day was had by all. Hopefully also this event did not draw a line of closure – but has sparked further ideas, including for further collaborations, between participants. Personally I am hoping that our Events management students will get together with our Computing, multimedia and animation students to run a virtual Get Ahead conference for us this year as there is definitely no money left in the pot to run a real one! (For a look at our last conference by students and for students, go to: http://www.catsconsulting.com/getahead2010/#)

Learning Development: working lives, roles and ethnographic study

The Association of Learning Development in Higher Education is conducting an informal ethnographic study of the work of learning developers across the sector. Each month we are invited to blog what we did on the 15th day – or the nearest working day to the 15th. If you are engaged in any form of learning development role yourself, do go to the blog and add an entry (for January please go to http://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/january-2011-journal/ ). If you do not want to blog yourself, just go and read the entries – they are fascinating. I am reproducing my January blog here, FYI:

I did not work on Saturday the 15th and as I am 0.8 and I do not work on Fridays either, my nearest working days therefore include Weds/Thurs 12th & 13th January – but also Monday 17th January – so here’s a little bit about all of those.

Some context: as you all know, we all work in increasingly pressured, work heavy and time poor environments – pushed forever to do more with less, for less and in less time. At the same time we are all deluged with increasingly peremptory and steadily mounting demands and pressures: this year we are all blended learning – get up to speed, produce new course designs & resources, develop new Teaching, Learning & Assessment practices … yesterday – or else. Ooooh, this year we are all transitions & student engagement: three-line whip to attend workshops, sit on discussion groups, produce policy documents whilst remembering that we are still ‘blended learning’ so must keep producing those resources and new course designs and activities whilst the university deletes administrative posts so that we all have to do a thousand extra admin tasks as well …

And so it goes! Thus generally we are all nose to grindstone, shoulder to wheel and forehead to door of fridge – and no matter how hard we work, how many hours or days of unpaid over time we give – we never feel we have done enough or that we are good enough… BUT – they announced our redundancies in November… and this brings me to the 12th & 13th January:
Last week amongst the email and admin which is endless and forever… I dragged my nose, shoulder and forehead to my desk and decided to play to learn. We learn through play. We are engaged by and in play… So I opened a twitter account and started tweeting. I resurrected my blog (http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.com/2011) and started blogging. I entered my facebook account without shame ... and I also followed threads and links and posts … I cannot tell you how much I learned in those two days. I now feel ready and able to really DO blended learning. More so than any amount of micromanaging or bullying or hectoring could ever have accomplished. Homily: In these increasingly harsh times, let us fight for those creative and emancipatory spaces for ourselves. Let us take the time to explore, develop, share, learn and grow – in fun and joy.

17th January: the other day nearest the 15th that I worked involved the usual email and admin – but also our SWAP symposium. The LearnHigher and Write Now CETLs at London Met funded pedagogic research projects in reading, notemaking and writing around the theme of Supporting Academic Writing Practices (SWAP). On Monday we had a symposium wherein the majority of participants were able to report back on their projects. Over 50 people attended the event – and there were fascinating presentations on: Using mobile phones for studying and notemaking; Writing in public: exploring the use of Web 2.0 in developing students’ academic writing; Using tweets for reflection during practice; Re-purposing a Reflective Practice learning object; A teaching resource to guide biological laboratory and scientific report writing; Read to succeed – a project to embed reading and the Academic Liaison Librarian to aid the transition of first year undergraduates; Writing in the disciplines E-pack; and A handbook for creating a story-telling space on virtual 3D environments(Second Life). For reports on these projects do go to: http://www.writenow.ac.uk/outcomes/resources/mini-research-projects/#SWAP
A merry lunch was eaten and a good day was had by all. Hopefully also this event did not draw a line of closure – but has sparked further ideas, including for further collaborations, between participants. Personally I am hoping that our Events management students will get together with our Computing, multimedia and animation students to run a virtual Get Ahead conference for us this year as there is definitely no money left in the pot to run a real one! (For a look at our last conference by students and for students, go to: http://www.catsconsulting.com/getahead2010/#)