Supporting Learning in Virtual Worlds

Draft of tomorrow’s presentation for the iED European Summit, Madrid 28-29, 2011:

Further explorations on Supporting Learning in Virtual Worlds

This brief presentation provides an overview of the outcomes and experiences from the four pilots.

The Innovative Research in Virtual Worlds conference took place earlier this month in Coventry (more here).

Michael, Kerri and Julio from Ulster prepared a presentation on the resources which they created to support the use of VLE with VW for teaching and learning. These are aimed to help tutors get quickly up to speed with virtual worlds and with the various SLOODLE tools (with a focus on the use of the Tracker). You can download the presentation from here (ppt):

Using virtual learning environments to support learners in virtual worlds K McCusker M Callaghan-Coventry-Nov11

I recently attended ALT-C, where I gave a demonstration on some of the ways in which VLEs can be used to support teaching and learning with Virtual Worlds. I also produced an ePoster for the conference – which is available both as a PDF and as a Moodle course! The Moodle course version allows discussion within the ePoster and is a response to my uncertainly of what an ePoster should be: should it simply be a static version of a traditional poster, or something more interactive. Either way, you can see the poster for yourself here. (This is on sloodle.org – you can login as guest if you don’t have an account.)

As well as the videos linked to in the previous post, the SGVW team at Ulster also produced a set of workshop materials, which they have agreed to share here. The first few presentations focus on Second Life itself – an introduction to the platform and building and scripting in Second Life. Further presentations introduce Moodle, SLOODLE and the Tracker.

Originally in PowerPoint format, the slides have been converted to PDF because the smaller filesize is required to allow me to share the files here. The series of slides provides a practical introduction to Second Life, Moodle, SLOODLE & the SLOODLE Tracker – and can be viewed alongside the videos from the previous post. A basic knowledge of Second Life, OpenSim and Moodle is recommended before viewing.

Session 1 Introduction to Second Life

Session 2 Advanced building

Session 3 Advanced scripting

Session 4 Second Life exchange,blogs and mailing lists

Session 5 Introduction to Moodle and Moodle installation

Session 6 Introduction to SLOODLE

Session 7 Introduction to SLOODLE Tracker
Supplementary videos for Session 7 (wmv format): SLOODLE Tracker video 1, SLOODLE Tracker video 2, SLOODLE Tracker video 3

Session 8 SLOODLE Tracker development and integration

The Serious Games and Virtual Worlds team at the University of Ulster produced the following series of video tutorials to provide a practical introduction to Second Life, Moodle, SLOODLE & the SLOODLE Tracker. A basic knowledge of Second Life, OpenSim and Moodle is recommended before starting. The videos themselves were posted to YouTube a little while ago, but this guide should be helpful in navigating them. The full set can be found at the SLOODLE channel on YouTube.

Video 1: Introduction to SLOODLE and the SLOODLE Tracker (8.35 Minutes)
This video gives an overview of SLOODLE and its core functionality. It then introduces the SLOODLE Tracker and demonstrates its proximity and tracker sensor functionality and integration into SLOODLE.

Video 2: Installing SLOODLE and the SLOODLE Tracker (12.41 Minutes)
The video shows you how to install and configure SLOODLE and the SLOODLE Tracker. It demonstrates how to setup the proximity and tracker sensor functionality and to link it into SLOODLE. It then demonstrates how to create a simple series of tasks for users to complete inside the virtual world which are recorded back into SLOODLE

Video 3: Creating structured task based activities using the SLOODLE Tracker (10.39 Minutes)
This video shows you how the SLOODLE Tracker functionality can be used to create task driven and structured user activities inside the virtual world which can be recorded back into SLOODLE for subsequent review and assessment.

Video 4: Creating more complex task based activities (9 Minutes)
This video shows you how the SLOODLE Tracker functionality can be used to create more complex task driven and structured user activities inside a virtual world. An overview of the Fetch, Decode and Execute simulation is shown.

Video 5: Creating collaborative task based activities (11.54 Minutes)
This video shows you how the SLOODLE Tracker functionality can be extended to create collaborative and structured team user activities inside a virtual world. An overview of the Trechubet physics simulation is shown.

Video 6: Extending the SLOODLE Tracker (5.47 Minutes)
This video shows you how the SLOODLE Tracker functionality is flexible and can be extended to create collaborative and structured team based user activities for different domain areas. An overview of the Circuit Warz simulation is shown which is used to teach users the fundamentals of oscillator circuit theory using a competitive game based approach.

Bonus Video: Deploying a Copy of the CPU Simulator (6.44 Minutes)

This video shows you how to set up your own copy of the Ulster CPU simulator for use in Second Life. The set can be obtained in SL from here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ulster%20Magee%203%20/101/234/22/

Phew… a bit of a struggle, but the VW-VLE Final Report is now online. There is an additional set of annexes, one from each institution. It is in the annexes where all the detail is to be found, and I’ll post these online over the next few days. But in the meantime, the report is now online for your reading enjoyment.

Some of the more exploratory work at Ulster focussed on considering different ways in which students could engage in simulations in Opensim, using a VLE to control access to, and monitor progress in, the virtual world. The result of this is Mayfly. Mayfly does this by creating a new Opensim instance for each student starting an exercise when they click on the relevant link in Moodle. A pre-prepared simulation world will be loaded, and each student will see their own copy of the same simulation. Practical limits do mean that only a few students are supported at any one time (due to the hardware requirements), but this could have potential for asynchronous use of Opensim based simulation exercises.

This was very exploratory, and is not a fully developed tool (developing tools was not the focus of the project!). But the code is available for anyone who wishes to try this out and perhaps explore some more. More details on the SLOODLE blog here.

From SLOODLE.org:

From Miriam Laidlaw, down under:

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of giving a short online talk as part of the Transforming Assessment series of talks supported by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council and led by Geoffrey Crisp at the University of Adelaide.

The recording of “Assessment in Virtual Worlds with SLOODLE” held on
30 November is now online.

Download and view in a number of formats via
http://www.transformingassessment.com/events_past.php