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The University of Idaho virtual campus in Second Life® was funded by a NorthWest Academic Computing Consortium (NWACC) Proof of Concept Program Grant
and an Idaho State Board of Education, Idaho Technology Incentive Grant (ITIG).
The goal of NWACC's Proof of Concept Program is to stimulate new curricular uses of leading edge information technologies. This program objective is to enhance learning environments at institutions of higher education through the development of models that can be used to guide full implementation of new technologies into the curricula of NWACC member institutions and their peers.
The intent of the ITIG program is to demonstrate innovative approaches for integrating technology into teaching and learning while focusing on clearly defined learning outcomes and a well-developed assessment plan. The program seeks bold new ideas that are sustainable and can provide educational access beyond the institution.
Project Proposal
3-D Avatar-Based, Virtual World Learning in a Second Life® Educational Metaverse
Gregory Möller, Food Science and Toxicology, University of Idaho
Introduction.
The overall
goal of this project is to
advance 3-D interactive,
avatar-based, collaborative
learning environments to
increase student access and
learning. We propose to develop
a unique educational metaverse
(a synthetic online universe) in
Second Life®
for students in two upper
division toxicology courses as a
proof of concept. This island
metaverse, named "Idahonia,"
will allow 3-D
collaborative-interactive
learning for registered
students, significantly beyond
the potential and capability of
learning management systems
(LMS) such as Blackboard®.
Second Life®
(www.secondlife.com) is an
interactive virtual world that
currently has over three million
subscribers world-wide. The
academic applications of the 3-D
environments of Second Life® are
just starting to be explored.
The First Second Life®
Education Workshop was held in
August 2006. Early analysis of
this approach suggests that this
new tool may provide additional
social warmth and class
interactivity that has been
missing in most current
approaches to online and
web-assisted education.
Interactive learning
environments are correlated to
higher learning outcome
assessments. The proposed
project will offer a highly
integrated learning environment
that will merge the lectures and
open courseware resources of two
successful video webcast/podcast
courses, Principles of
Environmental Toxicology-Etox (www.agls.uidaho.edu/etox)
and Food Toxicology-FoodTox (www.agls.uidaho.edu/foodtox)
into this interactive
environment. ETox has been a
live-webcast lecture course
since 1999 and has had enrolled
students from twelve US states
and eight countries joining our
on-campus students. FoodTox is a
joint course offering of the
University of Idaho and
Washington State University. The
ETox open courseware has been
formally used by over a dozen
universities and government
agencies across the globe. We
plan that "Idahonia" will be the
start of a future Second Life®
metaverse for the University of
Idaho.
(1) Justification of need.
Our students
face a future that will be
increasingly dominated by global
digital communication and
support systems, and thus they
should be skilled at learning,
interacting, and problem solving
in both the digital and
real-time environments. Without
abandoning the critical warmth
and inspiration of real-time
group process and social
interaction, our students will
be also required to develop
highly functional partnerships
and collaborations with people
they will never or rarely meet,
except across the bits and bytes
of the Web. The possibilities
are profound. The recent and
future development of social
networking and Web 2.0/3.0
approaches testify that students
of today and tomorrow will need
an educational support system
that adapts to these new
possibilities and anticipates
the future.
Throughout
educational history, technology
developments - from stone
tablets to the silicon microchip
- have had a positive impact on
increasing educational access
and learning. Today’s university
students, comprised mainly of
the Gen-Next, X and Y
generations, and the future
Millennials, have witnessed a
fantastic growth in computer
capability. Some futurists, such
as Raymond Kurzweil, predict
this growth will accelerate a
21st Century singularity of
extreme and non-predictable
technological and social
progress. The question for
educators is how do we adapt and
advance our teaching to increase
access and learning as
technological progress and
social change accelerate beyond
the point of prediction? One way
is to observe the students and
their responses to recent
changes. Although experience
does not necessarily predict the
future in the shadow of
singularity, we may be better
able to reliably predict, the
incremental near-term changes in
learning modalities that will
yield increases in student
access and learning.
The premise of
this prediction is that students
will adapt and evolve as
educators increasingly challenge
students and augment access. We
find some support for this
premise in the oft-cited “thumb
tribe” study (Plant 2002) that
demonstrated a dominant digit
shift from the index finger to
the thumb among intense video
game players. The “London taxi
driver” study (Maguire et al.
2000) that demonstrated a
concomitant increase in brain
hypothalamus size with visual
mapping and memory challenge
yields additional evidence of
adaptation. These and other
behavioral and physiological
studies give credence to the
notion that human adaptation and
evolution to accommodate change
in the short term is
demonstrable and observable. Our
students are changing, and thus
as teachers, we must adapt and
anticipate.
How students access
higher education is
evolving. We have witnessed
that accessibility can
challenge learning
opportunities at the
university level. In an era
where lifelong learning is a
recognized requirement for
personal and professional
growth, decreasing
accessibility due to rising
educational costs, dual
work-learn tracks, personal
responsibilities, and
place-bound students can
result in lowered goals and
diminished achievement. Thus
opening up the digital gates
of higher education through
Web-accessible courses and
degrees while enhancing the
learning opportunities for
traditional residential
students is a challenge we
must try to address.
(2) Project audience.
This project targets on-campus and off-campus students
interested in environmental science, food science and toxicology, at the upper
division and graduate levels. The project will also direct focused, peer-to-peer
familiarization and training to interested faculty members. Additional peer
academic communication and validation of project outcomes in the area of
scholarship of teaching and learning will be accomplished by publication of a
journal paper. UI units such as the Library, Art, and Architecture will be
active cooperators. We will communicate with the International Society for
Technology in Education (ISTE) on our project and outcomes. We will present
project updates to our toxicology education contacts and collaborators at the US
National Library of Medicine and the Society of Toxicology. We will coordinate
our learning space development with the New Media Consortium.
(3) Project and methods.
Objective a) Development of "Idahonia"
The PI of this
project will design, develop,
and deliver 2 courses with a
Second Life®
metaverse adjunct in Fall
semester of the 2007-2008
academic year. A technical
assistant will be hired to
assist in the design and
development of the virtual
world. The existing digital
resources of the courses (course
web site and lecture podcasts)
will be linked into the new
course interface. Existing
course web site resources will
have SLurls (direct teleport
links to locations in Second
Life®)
developed for rapid courseware
and metaverse interactive
learning. Skype will be used for
free, professor-students, real
time voice conversations over
the internet during regular
student assemblies in Second
Life®.
The resources currently
available on the ETox/FoodTox
course web sites will be
creatively laid out on the
Idahonia metaverse as a digital
Aristotelian peripatetic
(walk-about). In one possible
approach the instructor can
actively lead the class down a
“path” discussing pre-positioned
course “discovery” materials (SL
notecards and HeadsUpDisplay
information) along the way. The
students will also have the
ability to self-navigate the
resources. The courses (which
currently have almost 3 GB of
digitally available resources)
are:
> EnvS/FST
409/509 Principles of
Environmental Toxicology, 3 cr.
An existing course, with live
on-campus classroom lectures
that are video webcast/podcast.
> FST 464/564 Food
Toxicology, 3 cr. An
existing, webcast/podcast
course cooperatively offered
with Washington State
University as FSHN 464/564
Objective b) Student interactive activity
Each webcast/podcast video lecture module in the ETox and FoodTox course has
1-3 discussion questions. Student assemblies will be organized in SL to discuss
the current set of questions. The time of these assemblies, typically 7pm PT,
will be adjusted to maximize student access. Since students will be members of
the ETox/FoodTox Course Group in SL, they will all be able to view course IMs
and the presence of other students as “friends” when ever they are logged into
SL. Asynchronousity for some students, often working professionals with travel
demands and some international students in particularly inconvenient time zones,
will be managed with a blog from Second Life®
“SL-Pod-Blog” tool interfaced with the student course discussion blog at
Elggspaces.com. Since the subject matter and workload of these courses are
regarded as difficult by most students, we will use SL primarily for students as
a social-learning adjunct to the courses. This will help preserve the academic
integrity of the courses during this proof of concept exploration.
Objective c) Peer-to-peer training of faculty
As many as five faculty will be recruited to participate in active
demonstrations of the related technologies in this courseware development. This
group will focus on courseware and digital presentation techniques. We will
specifically target College of Education faculty that work with K-12 educational
technology approaches.
Objective d) Assessment
Project assessment will use formal student course evaluations, anonymous
student surveys, and peer faculty analysis. The PI will tabulate and analyze
results in a formal project report. We will submit project methodology,
significant observations, and project conclusions in a manuscript to an
appropriate journal. Learning outcomes will be assessed using surveys and an
analysis of exam performance compared with previous year’s students. As an
assessment adjunct, students enrolled in the Principles of Environmental
Toxicology and Food Toxicology courses, will be anonymously surveyed by a third
party using a Blackboard®
questionnaire.
(4) Anticipated outcomes/results.
This project will yield initial deployment of two University
of Idaho courses into a Second Life®
learning environment in the Fall 2007 semester. The project assessment will
assist in validating 3-D active learning environments as an approach to
enhance student access and learning. This phase of the project will focus on
support for student interaction and access of course materials. Thus we will
create a minimal but functional virtual learning space that has visual appeal
and attention to human factors. In our assessments, we will specifically
analyze the ability of avatar-based learning environments to address gender,
cultural, and racial stereotypes in the classroom. This multi-platform
audio-visual approach will have the disabled student limitations and
advantages typical of computer-based instruction. Student specific adaptation
is possible within the spirit of enhancing access and learning. This Second
Life®
initiative has the ability to assist a University-wide, and
multi-institutional courseware delivery interface.
Funding Sources:
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