David (Big Ups!) leads a class attended by (l to r) Lauren, Kaylea, 1BlackBelt, myself, and TehMike
This evening (9pm EST / 5pm PST) David Johnson taught a class on Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds and its implications for virtual-world education. I’ll leave the official writeup to the official SoPA blog, but from a participant’s and instructional designer’s perspective, this was an exciting instructive session.
Despite not having done the assigned reading (shame on me!) I felt fully engaged and immersed in the 60-minute class. Of course, as a class participant I’ve always been a heavy-duty gunner and never let ignorance stop me from plunging into a course discussion! For this class my mic was disabled (the SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum is pretty overrated!) so I was participating entirely by text chat. That made it more confusing as to whether I was “talking” or “messaging,” since everyone else (I think) had voice activated. David felt that the profuse chatting from my quarter was non-obtrusive, but I could imagine a class of 20 me’s being overwhelming.
Overall, the experience was informative and fun, and I think David did a great job leading the session. I do think the real test is how much the participants besides Lauren and myself appreciated and learned from it.
In terms of takeaways, if the 3D virtual lecture turns out to be pretty similar to RL lectures, then it seems to me that the same educational design principles would also apply. For example, after considerable experimentation with using WebEx, we found in Legal Aid University that we could do RL activities such as fishbowls, brainstorming, and taking the group’s “temperature” through creative use of that platform’s tools. Since There was originally designed as (and is still touted on their official site as) a 3D chat space, it has built-in support for avatar gestures and the like that could be used in a similar fashion.
So: Much respect to David for pioneering this course. I look forward to continued experimentation with virtual teaching!
Suggested resource: Telling Ain’t Training. Required reading for our Training of Trainers course. We refer to this sourcebook regularly for ideas on how to spice up our lecture-format classes.
