Hi Kay,
I think what Tom meant (and definitely what I meant) is that adapting and
changing objects on the fly in real time by more than one person is not needed.
What I referred to as collaborative content creation - two or more
people/students creating things that did not exist previously in world.
Updating resources such as a textbook in Unity and rebuilding the environment
is a quick and painless process. I rebuild my simulations on a regular basis to
change a character or access a different AI data set. I just create a new URL
for the new sim.
I completely agree that students don't have time to fuss with virtual world
simulations that are not relevant to their courses. Nor do they have time to
spend on orientation activities needed just to learn the interface. Anything
that makes the experience easier and more relevant is desirable.
It seems like your environment is working well for you and your students so
there is no need to switch. That is probably true for most folks on this list.
Doug
On Jul 20, 2014, at 10:24 AM, Kay McLennan mclennan@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Tom tom.will...@bessacarr.com wrote:
...For many educational uses adapting and changing objects is not needed...
While it is true that some types of educational simulations are well suited
for static simulations (like a virtual tour of the inner workings of a human
body part or a historic recreation of a city), static (Unity platform-like)
builds are completely ill-suited for the types of online economics and
business studies college courses I teach.
Even the online courses that utilize extensive instructor- or
institution-created materials always simultaneously utilize a textbook (to
insure the transmission of the relevant portion of the course-specific common
body of knowledge). In turn, the textbooks I utilize in all of my courses
change each year. Sometimes the textbook changes simply involve a
[maddening] re-sort of the chapters (to enable the publisher to change the
edition and sell more new copies of the text). Still (and more importantly),
it is often the case that the material in the textbook changes (and these
changes need to be reflected in the course materials and activities). For
example, social media marketing is now one of the most important components
in the field of marketing but was barely mentioned in textbooks even as
recently as a few years ago. Similarly, the cases in business ethics
textbooks continue to change at an almost exponential rate owing to the
abundance of new real work examples of unethical behavior (think GMC, BP, the
financial meltdown, GMOs, fracking, and more!).
Further, college students (including traditional and non traditional aged
students) are pressed for time and require course-specific learning
simulations only. That is, students do not have the time to explore virtual
world simulations that are only tangentially related to the course learning
objectives. Rather, the virtual world learning simulations have to be graded
activities that are worth their time (in the sense of being detailed and
expansive enough to contribute specifically to their understanding of the
course material). Again, in the same way high quality college textbooks and
online course sites require continual updates and upgrades, high quality
virtual world simulations need to be updated and upgraded -- to contribute
specifically to students' understanding of the course material.
Also (and this is a BIG item), I am constantly thinking up (and testing) new
types of virtual world learning simulations. In other words, my view is that
it would be too limiting to be only be able to create a simulation once. In
contrast, right now, I currently have about 40 or more different types of
virtual world learning simulations in play [read: that I collect student
feedback data on (based on student -- Likert scale-based -- views on the
interactivity, engagement, and contribution to learning outcomes for each
simulation -- see some of the early data collected at:
https://sites.google.com/site/fvwc12mclennan/student-survey-data-2)]. Note:
Over the years, students have provided excellent and surprising feedback.
For example, in the basic economics course I teach, I thought students would
be keenly interested in the Free Trade Game I built (with each student the
president/king/queen/dictator of their own island nation). However, the
in-world PP slides (from my lecture notes that are also uploaded into my
course site) and the in-world vocabulary flash cards were rated markedly
higher than the Free Trade Game in every category.
Note: My college-level students almost universally [first] say they need
asynchronous virtual world learning activities ONLY (in keeping with how all
of my online courses are asynchronous). However, after the students get some
experience with the
