Course Outline for Virtual Worlds for Education

 © 2011 by Anthony W. Hursh

Creative Commons License
This course outline by Anthony W. Hursh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This is an outline of a course taught by Tony Hursh at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Spring 2009, Fall 2009, and Fall 2010. The course was designed for, and taught to, an audience primarily consisting of P-12 teachers, most of whom had little or no prior experience with programming.

I thank all of my wonderful students and my outstanding teaching assistants: Hee Young Choi, Sun Hee Lee, Yingying Crystal Feil, and Kona (Taylor) Jones.

General Course Resources


News forum
General course questions and announcements forum
Syllabus

Instructor: Anthony (Tony) Hursh (awh@acm.org)



Credit: 4.0 graduate hours

Course Description

This course will examine the history, theory, and practice of pedagogy in virtual environments such as:



Students will read research literature, participate in online discussions through the Moodle course management system, and engage in real-time activities in several types of virtual world. The project component of the course requires students to develop educational artifacts in virtual worlds and perform peer review of artifacts developed by other students. Projects will support some aspect of learning or teaching in the students’ own workplace, and will incorporate multimedia, web, and other networked resources.

Course Objectives

Students will examine and discuss the psychologies of pedagogy, cognition, identity construction, and social interaction in virtual worlds. They will read and discuss research literature related to  virtual worlds and human cognition in enhanced multimedia settings.

After completing the course, students will have a thorough understanding of the theory & pedagogy of virtual worlds for education. They will also have hands-on experience in designing and constructing significant learning artifacts in virtual worlds, including:



Course Requirements


Expected Student Background

Students should be interested in using virtual worlds for educational or training purposes, whether in K-12, university, or corporate/government settings.

No programming experience is required. Prior experience in Tony's section of EPSY 590 NET will be helpful, but is not required.

Hardware and Software Requirements


Office Hours/Lectures

Some online courses have formal weekly lectures and office hours ("synchronous instruction", in the jargon), others don't. This course is a blend of the two models. We won't hold the kind of office hours you'd expect in a face-to-face course because you can post a question to the discussion forums at any time. There's no need to wait for scheduled office hours.

However, since some of the virtual worlds really come into their own when used with a group, we will hold periodic synchronous meetings. The synchronous meetings will occur during the evening hours to maximize the number of people who can attend.

If you know that you have a conflict on a certain night of the week (for instance, you coach basketball on Wednesday nights), be sure to note that fact in the survey in the first week. We will do our best to accommodate everyone.

If you have an intensely personal issue (for example, you're unhappy with your grade, or you have some personal emergency which interferes with your course work), you're certainly free to contact us via email, but please don't do that for general questions about the class. Everyone is better served when general questions are asked and answered in a public forum (we don't have to answer the same question multiple times, and your classmates can see the answer without needing to ask).

Major Projects (50% of grade)

    In addition to the weekly activities, you will construct three significant projects in this course:
The educational film should be two to three minutes long, and may be produced using any of the graphically-oriented virtual world software we'll learn to use this semester (Second Life, Open Sim, Alice, Scratch, etc. -- note that Inform is text-based, so it will not be suitable for this project). The film should have a personally-meaningful topic, related to either your own content area or to a hobby or extracurricular activity. It must contain educational content.

By "scripted learning artifact" we mean an object or system which displays a high degree of user interaction. The artifact must behave differently (and intelligently) based on user input (just flashing or making a noise won't be enough -- the interaction must serve a pedagogic function). Any of the VW software we'll explore can be used for this, including Inform.


Examples from previous semesters
    Films:

    SLAs:
    Group projects:
Since these three projects constitute 50% of your grade, they will need to represent a substantial amount of effort (considerably more than the weekly activities we'll also be doing).

You will also be expected to provide meaningful peer review for the projects created by your classmates.

Grading Policy

Due Dates

Unless otherwise specified, all activities are due at 11:55 pm Illinois time (Central Time) on Sunday (for example, the first week's activities are due on August 29th. 11:55 pm).

Policy on Late Work

Activities which are strictly individual can be turned in up to one week late, but you will lose some points. Activities which are based on interaction with your peers (e.g., responding to someone else's writing) can't be made up, because the class will have moved on by then (it doesn't do your peer much good to get your feedback on the first stage project proposal a week later).

Final Grades

Your final grade will be based on:

Machinima film (20% of grade)
Scripted Learning Artifact (20% of grade)
Group Project (10% of grade)
All activities other than the Major Projects (50% of grade)

Some minor activities may be graded as "done" (1 point) or "not done" (0 points). More substantial activities will carry a higher value (usually 5-15 points).

The Major Projects will be assigned a point value equal to that of all the other activities combined.

Plus and minus grades will be given.

Note that A is an honors grade. If you want to get an an A you will need to do considerably more than the minimum amount of work.

Virtual Worlds for Education Bibliography (additional readings)

Free Music and Sound Effects
Face-to-face meetings (optional)

Snow Crash book club (optional)

Week 1: Foundations

Readings and Videos

Reading list for Week 1
Gee, J.P. (2007) Pleasure, learning, video games, and life. In Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). A new literacies sampler. Peter Lang Publishing.
Papert, S. (1993). Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic Books. Chapter 8: Images of the learning society.
Reiber, L.P. (2005). Multimedia learning in games, simulations, and microworlds. In Mayer, R. E. (2005). The cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. Cambridge University Press.
Pausch, R. (2007) Achieving your Childhood Dreams

Reading Discussion Forum
Some questions to consider:

Papert wrote Mindstorms in 1980 (revised in 1993). How (or do) Papert's ideas apply to the classroom environment today? Have any of his criticisms been addressed? Why or why not? What would a samba school pedagogy for your subject look like, if one existed? If that wouldn't be possible, explain why.

What do you think of Gee's "projective stance" idea? What would difficulty in assuming a projective stance imply, in terms of functioning in society? Discuss.

Gee draws a distinction between "conservative" educators (who focus on the memorization of facts) and "liberal" educators (who think it's better for students to discover facts through experience), and argues that neither model is a good fit for the type of learning that goes on in Full Spectrum Warrior. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Side issue: I'm not fond of the use of "liberal" and "conservative" in this context because those terms bring a lot of political baggage along with them. Can you think of better terms?

What would a Gee-style pedagogy look like for your content area? Again, if you don't think such a pedagogy would be feasible, explain why.

What are the salient features of games, simulations, and microworlds, according to Reiber? Do you agree with these categories? Where does the categorization fail (if it does)? What do you think of his implications for cognitive theory?

How do these three authors relate to one another? What are their points of agreement? Disagreement?

In addition, respond to the postings of at least two of your peers (concentrating on those who don't already have responses).

Activities


Activity Forum: Introduce yourself
Film Project Proposal
Your first major project for this class will involve the creation of a short educational film (2-3 minutes) using virtual world/machinima/computer animation techniques (the completed film will be due about halfway through the semester). Think about what you'd like to teach and post a proposal here. Don't worry about which  tool you'll use at this stage -- we're going to be looking at several different candidates, all of which have their strengths and weaknesses.

Week 2: Scratch

Readings

Reading list for Week 2

Getting Started with Scratch.
Guzdial, M. (2003). A media computation course for non-majors. SIGCSE Bull., 35(3), 104-108. doi: 10.1145/961290.961542.
Maloney, J. H., Kafai, Y., Resnick, M., & Rusk, N. (2008). Programming by choice: urban youth learning programming with scratch. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 40(1), 367-371.
Peppler, K., & Kafai, Y. (2005). Creative Coding: Programming for Personal Expression.

Reading Discussion Forum

Some questions to consider:

Peppler and Kafai: These authors argue that understanding media computation (to swipe Guzdial's term from the other reading) is important for full participation in the modern art world. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?

Maloney, et al: These authors present some qualitative and quantitative results from a long-term project, but those results were from an optional, after school program. Do you think they would generalize to a classroom audience? Why or why not?

Guzdial describes a "media computation" class designed for non-majors. When you were an undergraduate, were you required to take a computer science course? What was it like? What material was covered? Do you think Guzdial's course would have been more rewarding for you (or, to generalize a bit, do you think a course which focused on using computation in your specific content area would have served you better?)


Resources

The Scratch Programming Environment
Scratch Reference Materials
Sample Scratch projects from previous semesters
Synchronizing events in Scratch (optional)

Activities

REQUIRED: Synchronous meeting in Metaverse/OpenSim

Altering your appearance in the Metaverse

Scratch Activity

Your assignment for this week is to construct a simple story using Scratch. This will be somewhat different from the assignment that some of you you did in 590 NET. This time, we want you to create something that's more like a movie. It should contain the following features:


Do not use:



Post your completed animation to the discussion forum for this activity for peer and instructor review.

Activity Forum: Scratch

Post your Scratch movie here, and discuss its construction.

What was easy in Scratch? What was hard? Are there limitations in Scratch that you found frustrating? For example, one of the students in the Maloney, et al paper disliked the lack of a timeline, a limitation which has also been mentioned by students in previous semesters. For those who haven't used timeline-based software before, a timeline lets you specify the exact moment at which events occur. This is helpful for achieving certain effects.

For those who have seen Scratch before: have you used Scratch in your own classrooms? Why or why not?


Film Project Progress Report

Describe your progress on your film project.

This week, you should address:

Who will be the main characters in your animation?
Will you need to recruit others to help (to provide voice talent, or perhaps to control some of your characters if you're using a "live" machinima environment, such as Second Life or Open Sim)?
What props will you need? Are you planning to build them or get them from other sources? (for instance, if your film requires a virtual world model of ancient Rome, you're probably going to have to find one that already exists -- you won't have enough time to build something like that).

As always, respond to at least two of your peers, giving constructive feedback. Concentrate on those peers who might not already have feedback.

Also:

Would Scratch be a suitable tool for your film project? Why or why not? Would it be suitable for the Scripted Learning Artifact? Why or why not?

Remember that the scripted learning artifact and the film are two different projects! See the Major Projects description for more information.


Week 3: Text-based Virtual Worlds

Readings

Reading list for Week 3
Dibbell, J. (1999). A Rape in Cyberspace. In My tiny life: crime and passion in a virtual world. Holt Paperbacks.
Green, T.R.G. (2008) Inform 7: a model for pedagogical programming? (from the Psychology of Programming Interest Group).
Nelson, G. (1999) The Craft of the Adventure.
Schlager, M., & Fusco, J. (2004). Teacher professional development, technology, and communities of practice: Are we putting the cart before the horse? In S. Barab, R. Kling, & J. Gray (Eds.), Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Signup sheet for Nelson's The Craft of the Adventure
Sign up to read and discuss one portion of this book.

Group 1: Introduction, In The Beginning, A Bill of Players' Rights

Group 2: A Narrative

Group 3: At War With a Crossword

Group 4: Varnish and Veneer

Reading Discussion Forum

Dibbell: the people involved in the crime-and-punishment scenario took divergent stances. What's your take? Should this sort of thing be a crime? If so, how serious? Was the punishment appropriate? Were you surprised at the outcome?

Schlager & Fusco: Discuss their ideas on educational communities of practice (note that TappedIn, which we'll be visiting this week, derives from those ideas).

Nelson: Nelson (the author of Inform) is a poet and mathematician, not an educator per se. However, a growing community of education researchers sees pedagogic potential in interactive fiction. Discuss Nelson's ideas in terms of education. Example: if you read the chapter "A Bill of Players' Rights", how would that apply to an interactive fiction designed for education? How would a "Bill of Learners' Rights" be different, or would it?


Resources

TappedIn
Inform 7 Download Page
Slesinsky, B. (2006). Fun with Inform 7
Granade, S. Introducing Inform 7
Writing with Inform: The Creation of Textual Worlds
Reed, A. (2010). Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 (1st ed.). Course Technology PTR

Activities

REQUIRED: Live meeting in TappedIn
Inform Activity - due at the end of next week

Create a simple world in Inform. It should contain at least four rooms, and five people or objects (at least some of each). See the sample file. Aim for a coherent world (i.e., don't just make up things at random -- the world and the objects it contains should make sense). Post your Inform file in the discussion forum for this activity.

Note: do not use characters or scenarios from works which are currently under copyright. Mythology, Shakespeare, your own original characters -- fine! The characters from your favorite TV show -- not a good idea.



Sample Inform projects from previous semesters

School tour
Ireland
Cave
Activity Forum: TappedIn and Inform

What do you think of TappedIn? How does it compare to other environments you might have used in online courses (e.g., Elluminate)? Do you like being able to wander around the TappedIn world at your leisure, or would you prefer a more structured environment? Do you think you could use TappedIn with your own students? Note that TappedIn does allow K-12 students to join, with teacher supervision.

Post your Inform story in in progress here as well, along with any questions you may have about Inform.

Film Project Progress Report
 
For this week, you should post a (very) rough draft of the script for your film. What will happen? When? Start thinking about the timing of each segment of your script, estimating how much screen time each segment will take.

This does NOT have to be a formal screenplay or storyboard (we'll do that later :-)) just an informal narrative of how you imagine the action progressing.



Week 4: Machinima

Readings/Videos

Reading list for Week 4

McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics: the invisible art. Harper Paperbacks. Chapter 3: Blood in the gutter.
Film Grammar
Eastwood Resource
Storyboarding
Another Storyboarding Resource

Reading Discussion Forum

Some questions to consider:


McCloud and Film Grammar

Some of you may be surprised to learn that there's a great deal of overlap between the design of a good comic and that of a film (in fact, the McCloud book is a required text for one of the graduate-level film classes here at the U of I). Many filmmakers use a type of comic strip (called a storyboard) to plan out their films. You might almost think of a comic as a series of key frames from a film. Discuss other similarities and differences between comics and film.

What do you think of McCloud's categorization of the different types of transition?

Look for examples of McCloud's transitions and the terms from the film grammar resource in the Clint Eastwood video clip and post your findings.

The term "intertextuality" (from the film grammar resource) is of particular psychological interest. What do you expect when you see Clint Eastwood appear on the screen (compared to, say, Meryl Streep or Peewee Herman)? How do your expectations change if the scene is set in the Old West, a California city in the 1970s, a modern suburb?

How much of the movie experience derives from preexisting knowledge? What could you do to leverage this in your animation project?


Resources

Machinima.com
Storyboard Template

Activities

REQUIRED: Synchronous Meeting in the course Metaverse (OpenSim)

Film Project Progress Report

After reading the articles on storyboarding, download the storyboard template and sketch some shots for your movie.

Note that the drawings can be extremely rough (you don't have to hand the storyboard in), but you may find that the process is helpful. Describe your experience with the storyboard.

What kinds of transitions would be useful for your film? What types of shot will you use?

Inform Forum
 
Post your completed Inform story here. What did you like about Inform? What was difficult or frustrating? Do you think Inform could be used to create a large-scale learning environment (a unit or even an entire course)? Why or why not? English/other language teachers: what about having your own students construct Inform worlds?




Week 5: Alice I

Readings

Reading List for Week 5

Kelleher, C., Pausch, R., & Kiesler, S. (2007). Storytelling alice motivates middle school girls to learn computer programming. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1455-1464). San Jose, California, USA: ACM.

Reading Discussion Forum

Some questions to consider:

Kelleher, Pausch, and Kiesler: These authors were working with middle school girls. How do their results compare to the mixed-sex groups that the Scratch authors used? Similarities? Differences? Do you think they would have seen similar results with boys (i.e., boys more motivated by the story-telling version than the basic version)? What else did you learn from this paper?

Resources

Alice Download

Required Material

Please work through all of these and make sure you understand them before starting your Alice project. If you don't understand something, ASK.

Built-in Alice tutorials

Tony's tutorial videos:


Optional material

This material can be skimmed as needed if you're trying to do something tricky.

Richard Baldwin's Alice Tutorials
Alice tutorials from Duke University

Tony's tutorial videos:

Activities

Alice Activity -- due at the end of next week
Your assignment for this week and next is to construct a simple story using Alice.

This should be a "mini movie", including:

Your animation should also include:


The animation should be at least one minute long (not including the credits screen) but no longer than one minute thirty seconds.

The animation must also have some kind of educational content.

As before, do not use:

Post your completed animation to the discussion forum for this activity for peer and instructor review. As always, respond to the postings of at least two of your peers.

Activity Forum: Alice

Use this forum to discuss your Alice project. Since the project is not due until the end of next week, you don't have to post the final version here, but you're encouraged to post your works in progress so you can get help and suggestions from the instructors and your peers.

As usual, please respond to at least two of your classmates' postings.

REQUIRED: Office Hours in Metaverse

Film Project Progress Report Forum

Discuss the applicability (or lack of same) of Alice for your film project. What are its advantages and limitations? How do these differ from those found in Scratch? How are they the same?


Week 6: Alice II

Readings

Reading List for Week 6

Reading Discussion Forum
Mayer's cognitive theory:

Discuss this theory and its implications for your project and (more broadly) your teaching practice. Can you think of situations in your own practice that support Mayer's theory? That don't support it?

In this chapter, Mayer only considers visual and auditory input, but we have other senses as well. What kinds of things do we learn through touch? Smell? Taste?

Mayer distinguishes between "verbal" and "nonverbal" stimuli. What about iconic representations, such as the shape of a stop sign? Ignore for the moment that a stop sign has the word STOP painted on it, and consider only the shape. Is this "verbal" or "nonverbal"?

Mayer's principles of design:

Mayer's research was done on instructional material about thunderstorms (a physical phenomenon). Do you think it generalizes to abstract/symbolic topics (e.g., algebra)? His data supports the hypothesis that combining spoken language (rather than written text) with pictorial information improves retention and transfer. What are the implications for blind or deaf learners, who may not have access to one of those channels? Can you think of other ways of presenting the information?

So-called "screencasts", which combine screen recordings with (usually) audio narration, have become a very popular technique for demonstrating computer software (you'll see many of these in your ed tech career). What would Mayer think of this technique? What would he predict from the simultaneous presentation of audio narration and visual images?

Rossignol:

Rossignol raises some interesting points about "fun". The educational activities in school (or out of it) may not be "fun", in the sense of instant gratification, but can nonetheless be deeply rewarding. Learning to speak Spanish, or play the cello, or learn calculus, takes many hours of study and practice. Is that "fun"? Certainly not in the same way that eating ice cream is "fun". "No fun" has been an issue with educational games from the beginning. There have been dozens (maybe hundreds) of large-scale failures -- Arden wasn't the first, by any means. Yet some educational games do appear to have lasting value, or at least are memorable -- a startling number of our students remember the old Oregon Trail game, even though its graphics were crude and its storyline was somewhat simplistic. Why do you suppose that might be?

Discuss "fun", deep engagement, and educational value. Can we create virtual environments that encourage and reward long-term engagement, even though they might not be "fun"? What sort of things should we be doing to make that happen?

Alan Moore is an acclaimed author of graphic novels who is perhaps best known for Watchmen, which was named to Time Magazine's list of 100 Best English-Language Novels (I recommend the comic rather than the recent movie adaptation, which was sub-par in my opinion). What do you think of his theory that artists are "exporters", entering a sort of realm of the imagination and bringing stuff back?

The Half-Life mods discussed in the article have a major drawback: you have to buy Half-Life, and the company still retains its intellectual property rights. Could something similar to Dear Esther or Korsakovia be done in OpenSim? OpenSim does offer the capability to export the entire world and load it onto another server, and (since it is free software) the same issues with respect to commercial property rights don't apply. What kinds of things might be in such a world? Should there be separate "Math Worlds", "English Worlds", "Art Worlds", or would some other form of organization be better (if so, what?)

(I'm going to ask the last question again at the end of the semester, by the way, so keep it in the back of your mind).


Merchant:

Merchant's virtual world was based on real-world environments. Do you think that's the best way to proceed? Why or why not? What are the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach (hint: think about intertextuality from last week)? Barnsborough had a familiar environment with a mysterious story. Other environments might have mysterious environments, but with a relatively straightforward plot. In what situations would one or the other approach be desirable?

The Barnsborough environment allowed the researchers to "lurk" (enter the world unseen). What are the ethical implications of this?

Barnsborough was locked down pretty tight (e.g., the kids weren't allowed to fly or teleport). What's your take on that? What does that gain (and lose)?

That the children engaged in transgressive/subversive activities will come as no surprise, but according to Merchant the teachers also "misbehaved" to some degree. What does that mean?

Finally: this project was aimed toward improving literacy. Good approach? Bad approach? Waste of time?


Activities

REQUIRED: Office Hours in the course Metaverse
Activity Forum: Alice
Attach your completed Alice movie file here, and describe your experience with constructing it. As always, respond to the work of at least two of your peers.

Film Project Progress Report Forum
 
Revisit the question from last week in regard to Alice as a platform for your film.

Has your opinion changed now that you have more experience?

As always, respond to the postings of at least two of your peers.
Alice Activity Due

4 October - 10 October


Week 7: Metaverse I


Readings

Reading list for Week 7

Reading Discussion Forum
The BBC article:

Few of us would argue that someone who kills a character in a game is really a murderer. Is cheating on your spouse in a computer game really cheating? Why or why not? To expand on this a bit, how should an instructor deal with student behavior issues in virtual worlds? What are some possible problems that might arise? How are those similar to/different from classroom management issues in real life? You may want to reference material from the Dibbell reading earlier in the semester.

Ondrejka:

How is a "participatory culture" game (such as Second Life) different from typical games? What are the implications of this for education (according to Ondrejka)? What's your take?

Childress and Braswell:

These authors focused on constructing analogues of real-world structures (a classroom building) and activites (TPS/Jigsaw), using teacher-created resources. What would Ondrejka think about this model? What do you think of it?

As always, respond to the postings of at least two of your peers.

Resources

Second Life
Plopp for Second Life
SimTeach (wiki for educators using virtual worlds) -- skim
SimTeach: list of top 20 Educational Locations in Second Life
Real-world places in Second Life
Tony's tutorial videos

Optional Resources -- for those who are chafing under the restrictions of Plopp

Activities

REQUIRED: Office Hours in the course Metaverse Resource
Plopp/Metaverse/Second Life Activity
1) Construct a simple object on your land in the Metaverse using the in-world tools (see Doe's tutorials for a basic overview).
2) Construct a simple object on your land in the Metaverse using Plopp, starting with either a hand-drawn picture or a picture downloaded from a free resource (such as OpenClipArt.org). Following the Plopp tutorials, import your Plopp object into the Metaverse and "rez" (create) an example of it.

Take screenshots of your objects and attach them in the forum (so we can tell who made what without having to hunt around and click on everything to find yours smile). Since Moodle only allows you to attach one file to a post, you'll need to make two posts. Please make your second one a reply to the first one, so they're both together.

In addition to this activity, sign up for an account on the "real" Second Life (if you don't already have one) and visit one of the locations listed under "Some education-related locations in Second Life". Spend an hour or so looking around, and post a report of what you learned while you were there. You may also choose to write about another education-related location in Second Life, if you know of a good one (or find one during your travels).
Activity Forum
Discuss your experiences with Plopp and the in-world building tools here. Also, attach screenshots of your completed objects in the Metaverse.

As always, respond to the postings of at least two of your peers.
Film Project Progress Report Forum
What would be the advantages and disadvantages of Second Life/Metaverse as a platform for your film project?

Which of the tools we've used are you leaning toward? Why?

As always, respond to the postings of at least two of your peers.


Week 8: Metaverse II


Readings

Reading list for Week 8
Cobb, S., Beardon, L., Eastgate, R., Glover, T., Kerr, S., Neale, H., et al. (2002, March). Applied virtual environments to support learning of social interaction skills in users with Asperger's Syndrome. Digital Creativity, 13(1), 11.

Nelson, B. C., & Ketelhut, D. J. (2008). Exploring embedded guidance and self-efficacy in educational multi-user virtual environments. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 3, 413-427. doi: 10.1007/s11412-008-9049-1
Pick a week to discuss your chosen reading
In a future week, you will be writing a review and leading a discussion of an article from the bibliography in the Cobb and Fraser paper (or from another approved source). Pick the week for your presentation here.

Note that during your week you'll be expected to post your article summary by Wednesday so your classmates have time to respond before the Sunday deadline.

Since we'll be covering three or four articles per week (along with other activities) you should summarize the article well enough that your peers can understand it without needing to read it in detail.

You should provide a working link to the article for those who may want to read the whole thing (and also so your instructors can find the article at grading time).

During the weeks you're not presenting you should read each summary with care, and add relevant comments or questions for the author of the summary. Presenters will be expected to respond to the questions and comments of their peers.

Also, please add the bibliographic information for your article to the EPSY 590 VE bibliography page if it's not already there.
Reading Discussion Forum
Cobb & Fraser:

1) These authors have given us a survey of several education-related virtual world projects. Pick one of the projects and discuss it in detail, relating it to your own teaching practice.

2) How do the virtual worlds described in the article compare to the ones we've been exploring in this class? Similarities? Differences?

3) In the limitations section, these authors claim that guidance, feedback, and collaboration are necessities for learning to take place in virtual environments. Relate this discussion to research described in the second article (Nelson & Ketelhut).

Nelson & Ketelhut:

1) What's the take-home point from this article, in your opinion?
2) Discuss self-efficacy, providing examples from your own experiences as a teacher or learner.
3) One might expect that students who weren't doing well (or thought they weren't doing well) would seek out more help, but that's not what these authors found. What are some possible reasons for that?
4) Discuss the sex differences the authors found for using the embedded guidance.



Resources

Getting started with LSL -- definitely read this
Example Scripted Objects in the Metaverse - definitely look at these
I've put several simple scripted objects in the Metaverse. You're welcome to use these as a basis for your own script. Most of these are based on the example code from the LSL reference. You should find the objects in-world, interact with them, and examine the script code to see how it works.

For your project, note that simply copying the generic object is not enough. You should a) change the script so that it does something different (says something different, goes to a different web site, etc.) and b) put the script in an object of your own design.
Scripts from the example cube objects above

Touch To Talk script:


default
{
 touch_start(integer num_detected)
 {
 	llSay(0,"I am being touched by " + llDetectedName(0) + ".");
 }
}



Touch To Give Notecard script:

default
{
 touch_start(integer n)
 {
 	llGiveInventory(llDetectedKey(0), "Program Information");
 }
}


Touch to visit web site script:

default
{
 touch_start(integer num_detected)
 {
 	key gAvatarKey = llDetectedKey(0);
 	llLoadURL(gAvatarKey, "Courses Home Page", "http://cterport.ed.uiuc.edu");
 }
}

Touch to Dance script:

default
{
 touch_start(integer detected)
 {
 	llRequestPermissions(llDetectedKey(0), PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION);
 }
 run_time_permissions(integer perm)
 {
 	if (perm & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION)
 	{
 		llStartAnimation("dance4");
 		llOwnerSay("animation will end in 5 seconds");
 		llSetTimerEvent(5.0);
 	}
 }
 timer()
 {
 	llSetTimerEvent(0.0);
 	llStopAnimation("dance4");
 }
}


Touch to Move script:

default
{
 touch_start(integer num_detected)
 {
 	vector current_position;
 	llSay(0,"Moving 2 units in the positive X direction.");
 	current_position = llGetLocalPos();
 	current_position.x = current_position.x + 2;
 	llSetPos(current_position);
 	current_position.x = current_position.x - 2;
 	llSay(0,"Moving back");
 	llSetPos(current_position);
 	llSay(0,"Moving 2 units in the positive Y direction.");
 	current_position.y = current_position.y + 2;
 	llSetPos(current_position);
 	current_position.y = current_position.y - 2;
 	llSay(0,"Moving back");
 	llSetPos(current_position);
 	llSay(0,"Moving 2 units in the positive Z direction.");
 	current_position.z = current_position.z + 2;
 	llSetPos(current_position);
 	current_position.z = current_position.z - 2;
 	llSay(0,"Moving back");
 	llSetPos(current_position);
 }
}


LSL Wiki -- reference material, not necessary to read the whole thing.

Activities

Metaverse scripting assignment
Your assignment for this week is to construct a scripted object in the Metaverse using Linden Scripting Language (LSL). The object should do something interesting based on user interaction (e.g., when the user touches it or comes near it). Several sample scripted objects will be made available to you in-world. It's okay to copy one of these objects, but you'll need to modify the script so that it does something different from the original (for instance, it says something different, or changes to a different color, or something of that nature). It's also okay to copy a script from another source (such as one of the resources provided to you), but here again you'll need to modify the script in some way (also, if you use a script from a third-party source, be sure to give proper credit to your source).

We don't expect you to become an LSL expert -- that would take months. The object of this exercise is to make you familiar with the script creation and editing process, and get at least some idea of the LSL's inherent power.

As before, please post a screenshot of your object in the forum so that we can find it at grading time. Also include the text of your script in your forum post.

REQUIRED: Office Hours in Metaverse

Metaverse Scripting Activity Forum
Post a screenshot of your scripted object here. Also, spend some time interacting with the objects created by your peers, and provide constructive feedback. As always, please respond to the postings of at least two of your peers.

Film Project Progress Report Forum
At this stage, your film should be ready to shoot.

Post your "shooting script" here (this doesn't have to be in formal screenplay format -- a description of each shot with accompanying dialogue (if any) and approximate timing for each shot is sufficient).

Tell us what tool you're planning to use to "film" your project, and discuss why you chose that particular tool.

As always, provide feedback to at least two of your peers.


Optional Resources
    Tony's tutorial videos
Making custom clothing for Second Life or OpenSim (part 1)
Making custom clothing for Second Life or OpenSim (part 2)
Second Life clothing templates (for use with above)
Making custom animations for OpenSim or Second Life (part 1)
Making custom animations for Second Life or OpenSim (part 2)
DAZ Studio -- for use with above file
Second Life avatar models -- for use with DAZ Studio
Using a sit target in OpenSim Resource
If you've tried to sit on the things you've built in the Metaverse, you've probably noticed that it doesn't always work the way you might expect.  The situation is even worse if you've rotated your object while it was under construction.

OpenSim really doesn't have any way of knowing what the correct orientation and position for sitting on your object might be. You have to tell it in a so-called "sit script". Here's a simple one:


default
{
	state_entry()
	{
		llSitTarget(<x offset,y offset,z offset>, llEuler2Rot(<x rotation in degrees, y rotation in degrees,z rotation in degrees> * DEG_TO_RAD));

	}
}


You'd replace the x, y, and z offsets and the x, y, and z rotations with numbers that specify how much the avatar should be offset in those respective directions.

For a basic cube object, the following values worked fairly well:

default
{
	state_entry()
	{
		llSitTarget(<0.12,-0.90,-0.4>, llEuler2Rot(<90, 0,0> * DEG_TO_RAD));

	}
}

This tells OpenSim to move the sitting avatar 0.12 meters in the x direction, -0.9 meters in the y direction, and -0.4 meters in the z direction. It also specifies that the avatar should be rotated 90 degrees around the x axis.

Note that these numbers will depend on your object. You can't simply copy these numbers and expect it to work.

I recommend that you start out with everything set to zero:


default
{
	state_entry()
	{
		llSitTarget(<0,0,0>, llEuler2Rot(<0, 0,0> * DEG_TO_RAD));

	}
}

Then change one value at a time, compile the script, and observe what happens when your avatar tries to sit.



Week 9: Project Work Week - Animation

This week will be devoted to filming your project, so there aren't many readings or activities. We want you to have plenty of time to work on your film!

The resources may be helpful for filming your project. Note that some of these packages have a limited-time trial period, so do not install them until you're ready to start filming.

Readings

Film editing is a little-appreciated art form. Skilled editing can improve a film immensely, or even change the entire feel of the production. This recut trailer is a good example -- the actual film is not a feel-good family story.

The Importance of Film Editing :-)


Resources

Jing (screen recording software for Windows or Mac OS X)
Camtasia Screen Recording Software for Windows  or Mac (30 day free trial)
Snapz Pro X screen recording software for Mac (30 day free trial)
ScreenFlow (screen recording software for Mac)
Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 (free screen recording tool for Windows)

For capturing (recording) your movie,  all of these work well. Snapz Pro X and Camtasia are powerful, but expensive. You can download trial versions of Snapz and Camtasia, but they will only work for a limited time. Jing has a free version, but it has some limitations (in particular, it saves in an Adobe Flash format which is difficult to edit). The Pro version of Jing costs $14.95 per year -- much less than Camtasia ($299) and significantly less than Snapz Pro X ($69). The pro version of Jing will allow you to save in a format (MPEG) which can be used with most editing software. Unless you have a strong reason for using one of the other packages (e.g., you already own a copy), we recommend Jing Pro.

For editing your creation, either iMovie (Mac) or MovieMaker (Windows) is a good choice.
iMovie HD tutorial
iMovie '11 tutorials
Windows Movie Maker tutorial

RAD Video Tools (for Windows users)  -- converts many formats to a format compatible with Windows MovieMaker

Activities


OPTIONAL: Office Hours in the Metaverse
Film Project Discussion Forum
Use this forum for keeping us up to date on your "film shoot". You can use this forum to ask us for help or share tips with your peers. By the end of the week, attach your completed film as a Quicktime .MOV or Windows Media .WMV file. Also upload your film to YouTube and post a link in this forum. As always, provide feedback to at least two of your peers.

Film project DUE: Sunday October 24, 11:55 PM


Week 10: Building Your House in OpenSim I

Activities

OpenSim -- build your house!
By now you should all have your own parcel of land in OpenSim.

Your task for the next two weeks is to build a house (see below for what counts as a "house") and add educational content to it.

The educational content should be related to your own area of professional practice (e.g., math teachers should have math stuff), and should have authentic value (that is, the intended audience should learn something valuable from it).

There should be at least four educational items in your house, two of which are in-world (e.g., notecards, animations, in-world scripts of some kind) and two of which can be external resources (movies, scripts that link to external web sites).

Your house doesn't have to be a conventional dwelling -- it could be a zeppelin floating in the air, a boat, a geodesic dome, or a castle. However, it does to need to be:

    * Enclosed
    * Large enough to contain at least 5 avatars at one time
    * Small enough to fit on your lot


Note that if you do something off the wall (e.g., your house is floating 500 feet in the air), you should give us good directions on how to get there.

REQUIRED: Virtual Meeting in the Metaverse (OpenSim)
Reading Discussion Forum -- summaries due on WEDNESDAY
Lead the discussion of your chosen articles here.  If you signed up for this week, you should post your summary by Wednesday at 11:55 pm., so the others have time to respond before Sunday. Please include a working hyperlink to the article. Those who will be leading discussions in a different week should respond to at least two summaries with relevant questions and commentary. Responses are due at the normal time on Sunday at 11:55 pm.

House-building forum
Describe your progress on your house-building activity here, and respond to the progress reports of at least two peers.

Scripted Learning Artifact Progress Report
This week you will begin work on your second Major Project, the Scripted Learning Artifact.

This will need to be an interactive artifact with authentic educational content. It can be created using any of the world-building software packages we've studied so far -- Inform, Scratch, Alice, OpenSim.

By "scripted learning artifact" we mean an object or system which displays a high degree of user interaction. The artifact must behave differently (and intelligently) based on user input (just flashing or making a noise won't be enough -- the interaction must serve a pedagogic function).

In this report, you should include:
You should choose a different tool for this than the one you used for your film, unless you can provide a convincing argument for doing otherwise. :-)

As always, respond to the proposals of at least two of your peers, providing useful suggestions and comments.




Week 11: Building Your House in OpenSim II

Activities

REQUIRED: Virtual Meeting in the Metaverse (OpenSim)
Reading Discussion Forum -- summaries due on WEDNESDAY
Lead the discussion of your chosen articles here.  If you signed up for this week, you should post your summary by Wednesday at 11:55 pm., so the others have time to respond before Sunday. Please include a working hyperlink to the article. Those who will be leading discussions in a different week should respond to at least two summaries with relevant questions and commentary. Responses are due at the normal time on Sunday at 11:55 pm.

House-building forum
Describe your progress on your house-building activity here, and respond to the progress reports of at least two peers.
Scripted Learning Artifact Progress Report
Describe your progress on your SLA here.

This week you should:



As always, respond to the postings of at least two peers, giving useful suggestions and comments.

Week 12: Building a Learning Community in OpenSim I

Activities


REQUIRED: Virtual Meetings in the Metaverse
Learning Community Assignment
You and your team will develop a shared educational space within the Metaverse (something like a school or a museum, but don't limit your thinking to in-world replication of outside institutions). The space must contain significant and authentic educational content. As a team, you will submit a single short film (5 minutes or less total) shot in-world which explains what each member of the team did toward building the project, and how the project as a whole works. You will post the final product to YouTube so that everyone can see it. The project will be due at the end of the semester, and will count as 10% of the grade for the course.

Teams for the Learning Community Project
Team assignments for the group project
Reading Discussion Forum -- summaries due on WEDNESDAY
Lead the discussion of your chosen articles here.  If you signed up for this week, you should post your summary by Wednesday at 11:55 pm., so the others have time to respond before Sunday. Please include a working hyperlink to the article. Those who will be leading discussions in a different week should respond to at least two summaries with relevant questions and commentary. Responses are due at the normal time on Sunday at 11:55 pm.
Learning Community Forum
This week, you need to decide:

You can discuss the activity here or plan to meet in-world. If you meet outside of Moodle, please post a transcript of your activity here so that others may learn from you.

In addition to the discussion for your own group, please respond to the other group(s), providing useful feedback and suggestions.

Scripted Learning Artifact Progress Report
Describe your progress on your SLA here. This week, you should transition from the prototype/experiment stage into building the actual product.

As always, respond to at least two peers.

Week 13: Building a Learning Community in OpenSim II

Activities

OPTIONAL: Virtual Meetings in the Metaverse
Reading Discussion Forum -- summaries due on WEDNESDAY
Lead the discussion of your chosen articles here.  If you signed up for this week, you should post your summary by Wednesday at 11:55 pm., so the others have time to respond before Sunday. Please include a working hyperlink to the article. Those who will be leading discussions in a different week should respond to at least two summaries with relevant questions and commentary. Responses are due at the normal time on Sunday at 11:55 pm.
Learning Community Forum
Post a progress report on the construction of your learning community. I would like to see a description of what each person has done this week. At this stage you should have:


As before, you can discuss the activity here, or plan to meet in-world. If you meet outside of Moodle, please post a transcript of your activity here so that others may learn from you.

In addition to the discussion for your own group, please respond to the other group, providing useful feedback and suggestions.

Scripted Learning Artifact Progress Report
Describe your progress on your SLA here.

You should be well into the build by now and have a significant amount of the construction complete.

You should be able to post a work in progress at this stage (either the actual code for something like Alice, Scratch, or Inform, or a recognizable screen shot if you are building something in the Metaverse).

Your two peer responses for this week should be based on an actual use test of your peer's work in progress.

Week 14:  Thanksgiving Break


Yum!



Week 15: Experimental Virtual Environments

Activities


This week we'll be exploring Open Wonderland a cutting-edge virtual environments. While not as completely developed as Second Life or OpenSim, it has some very interesting features from an education perspective
Open Wonderland
Open Wonderland Activity
1) Visit Tony's test Wonderland server here. When prompted, log in using your NetID for both the user name and the password (e.g., if your NetID is "smith" log in as "smith", password "smith").

2) The software will have to download a lot of stuff the first time it starts up. Have patience! It will start much faster on subsequent runs (assuming you let it finish completely the first time).

3) Edit your avatar by going to Edit/Configure Avatar, then clicking New. Design an avatar of your liking and use it.

4) Install Google Sketchup if you don't already have it.

Pay careful attention from here on, or you're likely to get confused. The video below may be helpful.

5) Find a small (again: small. Don't try to import a full-sized model of a cathedral or something like that) model in the Google 3D warehouse. Import it into the Wonderland world using the procedure given on this page. You only need to follow the steps from "Converting a SketchUp (skp) file to Google Earth format (kmz)" on. All of the earlier steps (installing the server, etc.) have already been done for you. You can import the model using either of the methods shown, but I recommend that you try the drag and drop method first. We won't be doing any of the fancy stuff for which the other method is better suited.

Once the model is imported, find it in the Content Browser and create a copy of it in the world. Take a screen shot of your object and post it for us to admire.  :-)

This software is highly experimental, cutting edge stuff. Don't get frustrated if something doesn't work. Ask for help! We'll figure it out if we can, and if we can't, I'm not going to count it as a big deal (as long as you can convince me that you've tried).


Tony's Tutorial Video: Using Google 3D Warehouse Content in Open Wonderland
Wonderland Forum
Post a screenshot of your Wonderland creation here, along with your thoughts on this world.
Learning Community Forum
Post a progress report on the construction of your learning community. At this stage you should be well into the build. For this week, a very brief summary from one member of the group is okay, since we should be able to see your progress in-world.

In addition to the discussion for your own group, please respond to the other group, providing useful comments and suggestions.

The peer responses should based on visiting the construction site for the other group in-world (in other words, don't respond to the posting per se, but to what you see being constructed in the Metaverse).
Scripted Learning Artifact Progress Report
Discuss your progress on your SLA here. At the end of this week, all major components of your SLA should be complete. You can continue to make minor improvements, edits, and refinements until the end of the semester, but there will be no time to make major changes after this week.

Post your work in progress for peer and instructor review.

As always, respond to at least two peer postings, giving useful suggestions and comments.
OPTIONAL: Virtual Meetings on Tony's Wonderland server and in the Metaverse



Week 16: Projects Due, Presentations

Scripted Learning Artifact Final Report
Post your final report on your Scripted Learning Artifact here, including the SLA itself (if the artifact is in the Metaverse, post a screen shot so we can recognize it. If the artifact is Alice, Scratch, Inform, or something similar, attach the actual artifact).

Learning Community Final Report
Post your final report on your Learning Community project here, including a link to the film on YouTube. Discuss the process of building the community, including any issues you found frustrating or difficult (either technological or social).

Also, please attach or link the transcript of your group meetings, email exchanges, chat sessions, etc.

Final Presentations in the Metaverse
For the final presentations, we'll meet as small groups in the Metaverse (maximum 5 people per group). These meetings will occur on Friday during the evening hours and Saturday during the afternoon hours.

The presentations will consist of you spending 5-6 minutes talking about what you learned this semester and where you're planning to go from here, and 4-5 minutes responding to comments and questions from your peers.

You may want to go back and skim the larger projects (film, house, group projects, SLA) of the peers in your session to refresh your memory of what they'll be talking about. :-)