PROJECT TITLE

TEAM MEMBERS

Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education

TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS

SecondLife (SL) is an immersive virtual world environment that can be used for enactive role playing. It is developed by Linden Lab, USA. Students and the research team accessed SL on the Internet via a 10Mbps private line paid for monthly by the college.

The virtual world environment in SL was customised to the requirements of the research project at relatively low cost and its high-level tools as opposed to developing a computer application to design a virtual world from scratch. In order to have a virtual world that was accessible only to students of Innova JC (and not to all registered SL users), a virtual “private island” was acquired and the monthly maintenance paid for by Learning Sciences Lab (LSL).  

The name of the island, “YOUtopia”, conveyed to students that, as residents of the island, they could create their own perfect or ideal society. The social state of the island depended on them; what happened in this world essentially rested on their power to enact how they wanted things to be and their ability to negotiate issues from their perspective.

In 5 scenes in Term 1, students from 2 JC2 General Paper classes were assigned specific personas as avatars in SL. They worked in groups of 4 or 5 and discussed current issues such as dieting and weight-consciousness among teenagers. They subsequently role-played the same group of characters as they reached adulthood and grappled with thorny issues related to euthanasia.

Students were provided information on the learning outcomes, setting/situation, props, list of characters and role cards relevant to each scene. In every scene, there was a problem, complication, tension or conflict regarding which all stakeholders had legitimate concerns or conflicting interests. The decision taken or solution offered by students required them to simultaneously address the concerns of the various stakeholders.

Students, having been taught the argumentation pattern advocated by Toulmin (1984), then used the discussion board on the college portal in Term 1, the second core technology which allowed them to engage more effectively in critical thinking and concretise their arguments for the topic under discussion, which was tied to issues they addressed in SL. In Term 2, we introduced an alternative second core technology which drew on what LSL was developing in a separate ongoing Argumentation research project for students to engage in argumentation. The “Voices of Reason” served the same function as the original discussion board but provided more scaffolding.

THE AFFORDANCES OF ICT IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

Creating a Progressive Learning Environment

We would like to determine whether, in SecondLife, we are able to create what John Dewey calls a progressive learning environment where young people learn by doing. They encounter obstacles that are relevant to what they are trying to do and figure out how to overcome these obstacles. (Dewey in Shaffer, 2007)

Shaffer (2007) observes that active engagement through the process of learning by doing is most visible amongst younger children because they are thinking about observable properties according to Piaget’s stage of concrete operations. He notes that it is more difficult to represent abstract ideas of Piaget’s more advanced, formal operational stage of thinking, that is, hypothetico-deductive reasoning, scientific-inductive reasoning and reflective abstraction. However, even though complex social concepts are more difficult to build into traditional media, Shaffer (2007) argues that they are “quite easy to build into the simulated world”.

The following are dimensions of engaged learning (ETD, MOE, 2005) that we hope to see manifested in the course of the research project:

“Real World” Learning

• A “simulated world expands the range of what [students] can realistically do– and thus the worlds they can inhabit and obstacles they can overcome” (Shaffer, 2007) It enables them to experience, in an embodied way, roles that they have difficulty relating to because of their limited life experiences.
• Having been assigned a particular affinity group identity within a given semiotic domain, which is “a lived and historically changing set of [social] practices where ‘content’ is generated, debated and transformed through distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting, writing and reading” (Gee, 2003), the students’ experience of enacting this identity in the virtual world enables them to appropriate the given epistemic frames (Shaffer, 2006) associated with that affinity group and domain which include “methods for justification and explanation, and forms of representation, but orchestrated with strategies for identifying questions, gathering information, and evaluating results, as well as self-identification as a person who engages in such forms of thinking and ways of acting” (Shaffer, 2006). In short, by being in character, they identify more strongly with the character and learn to think, speak, and act on issues from the perspective of that unique persona in the given semiotic domain.
• Furthermore, it is also likely that having been producers of such social practices through their enactions, they potentially understand this social practice better and this facilitates subsequent entry into this or related semiotic domains in the real world (Gee, 2003).

Collaboration with Others & Meaning-making with Scaffolds

• The virtual environment presents students with the opportunity to collaborate for the purposes of co-constructing knowledge ( Gunawardena & Anderson, 1997). Each scene has a distinct creative tension which is played out in the virtual world among the 4 or 5 personas in each group in Term 1 and during inter-group negotiations in Term 2; the underlying premise being that ‘active learning takes place in moments of conflict and disjuncture’ (Lewis, 2005). Students are to, through a process of negotiation, analyse each dispute or complication in terms of the legitimate conflicting interests of these personas or groups and focus on understanding the needs of the relevant parties affected by the specific problem. They seek to reconcile various conflicting interests in as equitable a manner as possible, given the constraints of each context, and to be aware of how proposed decisions impact their interests (Shaffer 2006). In doing so, they learn to appreciate complex issues from multiple points of view.
• The discussion board enables students to re-evaluate their own position in the broader context of counterarguments, rebuttals and alternative assessments of evidence as they appropriate multiple points of view. The design of the structured discussion board (DB) in Term 2 included sentence openers for the different components of an argument, that are intended as a means to scaffold students’ thinking and argumentation process based on the argumentation pattern advocated by Toulmin (1984).

• An added feature of the “Voices of Reason” is its enhanced monitoring feature that provides students the opportunity to monitor and offer qualitative feedback to each other on the arguments posted.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. How do students learn GP process skills and knowledge skills by engaging in the learning activities of enactive role play, structured argumentation, and reflection?
2. What are the learning interactions between enactive role play, structured argumentation, and reflection?
3. To what extent does enactive role play engage students in semiotic social spaces that effectively promote collaborative peer learning and the development of role identity?
4. What is the role of the teacher in facilitating enaction, argumentation, and reflection?
5. What are the contextual factors that facilitate or impede the success of the classroom learning intervention for GP?

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Jamaludin A., Ho M.L.C. & Chee Y.S. (2005). The impact of structured argumentation and enactive role play on students’ argumentative writing skills. In Proceedings of the ASCILITE 2007 Conference, Singapore, December 2007. Retrieved on January 19, 2008 from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/jamaludin.pdf

LEARNING POINTS

Cost

• S$1500 monthly subscription for the 10mbps line
• US$980 one time payment for the island (educational institutions)
• US$150 monthly subscription for the island
• US$150 for 25 user accounts
• US$9.95 monthly subscription for the island owner

Required Bandwidth

Frequent Software Updates

Technology Assistants (TAs) provided critical support because of the frequent patches that needed to be downloaded and installed in the students’ laptop. Because of the MOE network security policy, only Technology Assistants are given administrator rights required to install patches automatically downloaded by SecondLife. Such patches need to be installed into the students’ laptops before they are able to access the programme. The Senior Technology Assistant logged into SecondLife every evening to check whether there was a new patch. If there was, the teachers would then inform the classes to leave their laptops in the classroom for the TAs to install the patches during the students’ tea break or lunch hour.

Cyber Security

SecondLife provides a more limited range of functions for those under-18 accessing the virtual environment. This shields them from licentious activities in the site available to adults. Schools may also wish to purchase an island that would restrict access by other SL users. However, schools would require the services of a 3D graphic designer to help them build the sets on the island.

Proximity of Group Sets on the Island

Sets designed for each group should not be placed to close to one another because the conversations between members of a particular group may become cross lined with that of another group.

Orientation in a Virtual World

As with all 3D environments, a map of the island helps users orientate themselves. Even though it is not possible to view the names of structures on the map, there is a search function that enables one to search for the relevant structure. The island owner can use the ‘Landmark’ feature to record the three-dimensional position of a place in the island. These Landmarks can then be set to ‘Show on Map’ and be shared with other residents of the island. The residents will then be able to search for these Landmarks which users can then directly teleport to. As the environment develops further, it is best to fully utilise this function.

Ground Rules for Students

Teachers need to put in place ground rules that help students to stay on task.

• Stay on the topic and focus on constructing a meaningful conversation.

• Use relevant gestures to reinforce what you understand about your character and what you think he or she would portray.
  These rules ensure that students are able to fully immerse themselves in their assigned role and focus on negotiating with other personas.

• Limit changes in the characters' appearance.
  While some may argue that allowing students to alter the avatars’ appearance is part of the role immersion process, students tend to be too caught up with changing the appearance of their avatar and valuable time for negotiation is lost. LSL created avatar templates for each character in Term 1 so that these avatars would already have an appearance that is fairly consistent with their personality.

• Do not use the “Shout” function.
  
This should only be used if the message is intended for everyone on the island

• Use Standard English and do not use expletives or other unacceptable language.
  
With this rule, students will avoid using the kind of language that is typically associated with chat rooms. Students should be made to understand there is a distinction between the language that they themselves use on Internet-based platforms and a simulated world where the use of Standard English gives them greater credibility in the negotiation process.

“Real World” Learning

• During the first intervention cycle, students were using the CHAT function, but were not relying on physical gestures to get their message across. This is inconsistent with what happens in the real world. Apparently, such gestures do not come as naturally to students when they have to assume a persona which they are not too familiar with. We realised that students should be made conscious of the underlying messages that were being communicated by means of these gestures. LSL has, therefore, adapted a model for negotiation (Stark, 2000, 2003) for the virtual world that served as a guide for students in Term 2. The teachers also demonstrated to students how they could incorporate the gestures during the negotiation process.

• In Term 1, students received their role cards 5 minutes before they entered the virtual world for each of the 5 scenes. The reason for this was to ensure that they did not share the information that was unique to each persona in the different role cards prior to the lesson. However, the result was that they had insufficient time to think through how their persona would respond to the issue at hand and what sort of gestures would appropriately communicate and reinforce this response. In Term 2, the students received their role cards at the start of the second intervention cycle.

• The sets designed for the interest groups in Term 2 conveyed to the students their differing status, power and resources. For example, the Waga Waga Peasants’ League had a simple, bare shack and the Multi National Corporation, Glow International, was housed in a concrete building that was fully furnished.

• Barton & Maharg (2007) correctly point out that reality is never truly reflected in a virtual world as, in the process of designing that world, we extract aspects of the real world that are most significant to our learning objectives and tasks. It is, therefore, important that we ask ourselves the following questions when deciding which aspects of the real world to include in the virtual world:

  1. What are the students simulating?
  2. What concepts are they learning through the process that they can apply in the real world?
  3. What procedures do they need to go through that would deepen their conceptual understanding?
  4. How can they receive feedback on their performance?

  When designing the landscape, we need to consider the impact of the “depth of the simulation field” in terms of what needs to be “foregrounded, structured and overt, and what can be left as background, incidental, implicit” (Barton & Maharg, 2007). For example, in creating the cold, sterile office building for the Multi National Corporation, Glow International and a humble and homily hut for the Waga Waga Peasants’ League, did we inevitably foreground inequalities and perpetuate stereotypes that work in the peasants’ favour?

• We could have brought such differences to the forefront by fully maximising the design of the sets to enhance the experience of being a member of a particular affinity group. For example, the Waga Waga Peasants’ League shack could have included tools that the farmers use and when a student clicks on one such tool, it would have produced information on how much a farmer is able to harvest with this tool, how much he needs to feed his family, what is left for him to sell and how much he earns in a year. Students who take the time to explore such an environment would receive information that they can use to bolster their arguments in their resolution. Gee (2003) notes that such lateral movement, as opposed to mere linear progression, is itself a new cultural model of learning, one in which students learn to appreciate the importance of fully exploring and interacting with the environment to help them make better decisions and come up with better solutions.

• Having compared the identities that the students assumed in Term 1 and Term 2, the group identity in Term 2 was preferable to the unique individual identity in Term 1 as affinity group identities are more closely tied to specific semiotic domains whereas individual identities usually reflect a melange of social practices that one has acquired from several different affinity groups in a range of semiotic domains (Gee, 2003). This holds true provided that the goal is to enable students to better understand the ways of thinking, feeling, acting and valuing of affinity groups in a specific semiotic domain so that they are better able to transfer what they have learnt to related affinity groups in similar semiotic domains.

• The ability to transfer learning to new but related contexts is one measure of how well students acquire the epistemic frames of a given affinity group in a semiotic domain. During both intervention cycles in Terms 1 and 2, students were asked to analyse case studies that were related to the issues that they had discussed on SecondLife, but which had new variables or perspectives thrown in that had to do with priority concerns, problems of cost/benefit analysis and economics. In the process of doing so, we sought to determine if they had developed an epistemic frame could be applied to other contexts, thus taking them one step closer towards building an island of expertise (Shaffer, 2003) that replicates the development of skills associated with real world contexts.

Collaboration with Others & Meaning-Making with Scaffolds

• To facilitate collaborative meaning-making, students must work in small groups to ensure that each student has an instrumental role to play. In any given affinity group, some form of mentoring is needed as newcomers are initiated into group practices. Therefore, it would have been better if we had provided such scaffolding to help students engage in the negotiation process. What form could this have assumed? Gee (2003) points out that those new to a game have the option of undergoing training modules in a sub domain, conducted by a computer-programmed avatar, before heading out to the full domain. He cites, for example, how Lara Croft learns from her mentor, Professor Werner Von Croy, how to manoeuvre in the 3D environment. For an open platform like SecondLife, such individualised support is not feasible. However, because participants in any given affinity group vary in knowledge and experience, it is possible for those who are less accustomed to negotiation to pick up skills from observing their peers as they would when playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). We could have paired students, instead of sending them out individually to conduct negotiations with representatives of the other groups. Additional scaffolding could also have been provided where the teacher performs the role of a mediator whom the parties could turn to when they reach a deadlock. The teachers could then model to their students how negotiations could be carried out effectively such that, according to Gee (2003), they “would be able to give information in context and to couch it in ways that make sense in the context of embodied action” thus striking a balance between overt information and guidance and immersion in practice.

• As humans are “powerful pattern recognisers” who “think best when they reason on the basis of patterns they have picked up through their actual experiences in the world that over time can become generalised but are still rooted in specific areas of experience” (Gee, 2003), the learning task needed to be designed such that students could enact and engage in activities in the virtual world that replicated a real world context to which they could relate. Meaning-making is enhanced when students are able to link the new identity that they have assumed in SecondLife with their existing identities. The scenes in Term 1, therefore, started off with roles and issues which students could identify with and these were developed along a trajectory to extend their experience from one semiotic domain to another related domain with them first having to deal with the issue of euthanizing a pet before progressing to a debate over euthanizing one’s spouse.

• The virtual world tasks for students need to be designed such that negotiation and consensus become the central focus. Negotiation involves participants trading options across the issues in dispute, trying to offer a set of options that will meet the needs of all the relevant participants for the specific contexts in focus. To achieve this, students need to be presented with an incentive to persuade other personas to accept their point of view and, at the same time, as they listen to a range of perspectives, they have to re-evaluate their own views and consider how they can come to an agreement on an issue. This pushes the discussion from mere exchange of ideas to negotiation and, finally, consensus and applying newly constructed meaning ( Gunawardena & Anderson, 1997). In Term 2, this took the form of students having to negotiate with other interest groups with the aim of forming a large enough alliance to get their resolution for setting the parameters for embracing globalisation passed.

• While the discussion board on the college portal facilitated critical thinking among the students, “the Voices of Reason” with its sentence openers enabled them to better internalise the Toulmin model of argumentation.

• Even though students did have to reflect on the content and nature of their online interaction, there was sometimes a mismatch between their perceptions of the depth and complexity of the ideas discussed during their online conversations as captured in the reflections they penned down after their experience in the virtual world and what we discovered in the logged text. Even those assigned as student observers in Term 1 could not fully appreciate the range of views represented in the online interactions. It might have been a simple problem of recall. It would probably have been better if we had churned out the logged texts of their online conversations and gotten them to analyse their own conversations. This would have facilitated their understanding of what they were discussing at a meta textual level and supported evaluation of their own performance.

REFERENCES

Barton, Karen, & Maharg, Paul. (2007). E-simulations in the wild: Interdisciplinary research, design and implementation. In David Gibson, Clark Aldrich & Marc Prensky (Eds.), Games and simulations in online learning: Research and development frameworks (pp. 115-148). PA: Idea Group Inc.

Educational Technology Division, Ministry of Education. (2005). About Engaged Learning. Retrieved on March 18, 2007, from
http://www.moe.gov.sg/edumall/tl/it_integration/engaging_it_practices/about.htm

Gee, James Paul. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.

Gunawardena, C. N. & Anderson, T. (1997). Analysis of a Global Online Debate and the Development of an Interaction Analysis Model for Examining Social Construction of Knowledge in Computer Conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17(4), 395-429.

Ho, M.L. C. (2007). Globalization in the language classroom: The case of the Waga Waga Islands. Modern English Teacher (UK), 16 (3), 29-35.

Ho, M.L. C. (in press). (2008). Dealing with life and death issues: Engaging students through scenario-driven pedagogy. Journal of the Imagination in English Language Teaching (US), 9.

In Identity, Agency and Power: Reframing sociocultural research on literacy at National Institute of Education on 9 January, 2006, Professor Cynthia Lewis describing active learning (Cynthia Lewis, CRPP Seminar Series, 9 January, 2006), Lewis, C. (2005).

Shaffer, David Williamson. (2006). Epistemic frames for epistemic games. Computers & Education, 46, 223-224.

Shaffer, David Williamson. (2007). How Computer Games Help Children Learn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd

Stark, P. B. (2000). Nonverbal Negotiation Skills. Retrieved on March 7, 2007, from http://www.everyonenegotiates.com

Stark, P. B. & Flaherty, J. S. (2003). The Only Negotiating Guide You Ever Need. New York: First Broadway Books Edition

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