Tuesday 18 March 2008

ELI SFS: Making Learning Real: Turning Sim City into "Sim Science"!

Diane Jass Ketelhut (Temple University)
Starting with a poll: When was this statement made: "If we are in earnest about universal education, we must...recognize that our education succeeds just to the extent that we make it focus upon the real activities of life?"
scroll right of this sentence for answer: Answer 1895

Not going to take copious notes as slides will be available after the event, what is most interesting as always are the side channels - fellow tweeters trying to find each other when tweet id not used, chat is full of questions about how chat works and, of course, the quality of the sound. An online session could do with a longer intro session to get past some of this stuff before the first keynote.

Demo of Chris Dede's River City - seen before, but it is interesting, and students like it "I felt like a scientist for the first time" - always wonder about maintenance and sustainability when I see it. It can look a bit like a "traditional" multimedia package designed to look like SL.

An interesting comment in the "chat" from U of Colorado: "I polled 500 university business students about using SL and the overwhelming majority did not want to use it - didn't want to learn yet another tool." What do you think about that statement?

Assessing student learning - methods of assessing change in the VE with assessment within the environment - River City - still use on online test but when compared to in situ assessment (eg letter to the mayor) no correlation between performance on each.

Now take a look at this comment in the chat: "I was at a conference last week where a private college had established a counseling center on SL- they actuall had a interactive tissue box for those encounters between counselor and client where tears flow. They are considering using the new tool in Sl that actually changes the facial expressions. This was a distance learning course for counselors in various locations in the US and globally." What do you think about it?

1 comment:

gs said...

re: poll of business students - not surprised that the majority didn't want to use it; but i am surprised that the reason was not wanting to learn another tool.

admittedly, i haven't spent any time trying to get to grips with it; but then, maybe that's because my motivation to play with it would need to be based on a convincing case for doing so. it still seems very gimmicky (yes, yes, i know i'm old...); and i can't see what 3D avatars add to the experience of interacting online (yes, yes, i know i'm still old)?

i do, however, like being able to snoop in on the chat, and comments that are going on around the edges of the session - proper fly on the wall stuff :)