I haven’t posted in some time. Teaching a course takes a lot of time and effort.

As I indicated in a previous post, I experimented with some additional technology this year (I only teach one quarter each year). While the course is scheduled as a face-to-face course, it is technologically mediated and the f2f contact is limited, focusing on instructions and tutorial interaction.

The course uses an action learning approach and all learning is driven by a set of challenges designed to both engage and create a need to know to drive students into the content. They access content through a serious of video podcasts (downloadable from iTunes or accessible through the blog), through content provided in the blog, and through a best practices library consisting primarily of links to external resources and original content. The course blog provides a continuing integration for the course. Along with the podcasts, it replaces any “lecture.” Directions for activities are also in the blog. Finally, by incorporating student posting, it replaces the traditional classroom discussion. All this, and we built parallel access to the course in our Second Life Campus.

Student response has been generally positive. There was some adjustment, of course, when I indicated that I was not going to be their source for wisdom. The students are sophomore non-business majors, but they have already been trained to be passive receptacles. As they became involved in interacting with the challenges, many became more enthusiastic. Some, of course, still find the approach to be too much work and require too much time on their part.

The quality of the deliverables on the challenges has generally been reasonable for their level of development, with some being outstanding and reflecting both a considerable amount of research effort and creativity in presentation. I will have a better picture of performance quality by the end of the quarter.

One somewhat surprising discovery. When I asked at the beginning of the quarter how many of them were in Second Life, out of 90 students the answer was zero. Five of the 90 had heard of Second Life. I did not expect a large number to be second lifers, but had expected some. Why none? I don’t know the answer. Perhaps we who are involved, get excited and assume that everyone knows and is involved. Perhaps we over estimate the present usability of Second Life as a learning delivery vehicle. Perhaps OU students are just behind the times. I don’t really have an answer at this time. BTW, since the beginning of the quarter, several have come into Second Life.

More Later

John Stinson

Posted by John Stinson at 4:03 PM | Permalink

Here is a link to a video that we created to promote our Second Life Campus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFuNFRie8wA

Notice that we used machinima to create the video. Machinima is exciting in and of itself. It's obviously effective for the promotion of games and virtual environments but even beyond this, it has become a serious media for producing films and other rich artistic pieces. Just think of what we could do by adding machinima elements to our simulations that are delivered in flash. Just one more way to engage learners.

Posted by Christopher Keesey at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am always a bit baffled that I don’t hear more learning designers, specifically learning designers from major research institutions, practicing proven interaction design tactics in the design of their technology mediated learning. Interaction design is generally informed by user research with an emphasis on behavior, form, and evaluation of usability and emotional factors. Research is not a foreign concept in our world, in fact, it defines a large part of the mission of most large universities. Why is user research not a greater part of the design culture in higher education?

Simply employing better testing of our interfaces throughout our design and development process can greatly enhance the experience and engagement of learners utilizing our courses, simulations, games or other applications for learning. Testing can begin as early as the wireframe stage of development and doesn’t necessarily need to be a costly procedure.

I am a firm believer in making the best of the resources that you are working with. If this means that you occasionally gather 5-10 people from the offices next door to work through learning application prototypes then do it! User testing does not need to be comprised of massive groups of people. In fact, even a large software application will test no more than 20 people at any given point in development. Any more is a waste of money. See this Jakob Neilson page on quantitative testing. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quantitative_testing.html

What is harder to test is learning effectiveness. This requires gathering a specific targeted group of learners that match the group to which you will deliver the learning. This isn’t always easy to gather. Still, some testing is still better than none so even a small group that might not match the targeted learner but can provide some data on the effectiveness of the learning design is better than none.

There are times I feel like the "design nut" going around campus preaching more interaction design to blank stares and comments like "not enough resources." It just seems so clear that we are far better off challenging our learners to meet all learning outcomes as opposed to wasting their time learning to use our interfaces.

Posted by Christopher Keesey at 1:49 PM | Permalink