Open SUNY NDLW: Using open source virtual-reality environments for community building online

Editor's Notes

• #2: INTRO – start recording Good Afternoon. Could we do a quick sound check? Please let us know where you’re from in the chat area. Great! My name is Erin Maney. I am from Open SUNY and I manage our communities of practice across our 64 campuses. On behalf of the Open SUNY team, I would like to welcome you to this “Showcase” webinar as part of National Distance Learning Week. The Showcase aims to feature important and innovative activities, initiatives, projects or practices from around SUNY in support of our mission of networking and excellence in teaching and learning. On each of three days this week, presenters will share what they are doing on their campus. Thank you for joining us to learn from each other and support your peers! Before we introduce our speaker today, I want to encourage you to leave us your name and email address as part of our effort to recognize your engagement today. http://bit.ly/NDLW2017signin (paste link in chat)
• #3: INTRO (promote speakers to moderator) Today, we are pleased to host Eileen O’Connor, from Empire State College, who will be sharing about how she uses open-source virtual-reality environments for community building online. Eileen is an associate professor at ESC and I will let her tell you a bit more about her background. Eileen, on behalf of Open SUNY, thank you for joining us today and sharing what you know!
• #4: Eileen.Oconnor@esc.edu Immersive, 3-D environments have offered opportunities for distance participants to share in any number of activities. With the advent of open source environments that are low-cost coming either preconfigured or easily configured, this instructor will share how such environments have been used in areas ranging from class discussions to poster sessions to team meetings within a class to shared activities (such as visiting other islands or testing 3-D building). Using action research the effectiveness of these environments on community building has been studied and published; students have overcome the isolation of discussion-board-driven online environments and been able to form more effective academic and personal relationships within courses.
• #5: These are the intended topics and visuals http://jolt.merlot.org/vol3no3/vesely.pdf
• #6: http://secondlife.com/ Highlight the design and context of virtual-reality environments and review ESC’s history with these spaces. Give overview of how they are acquired and how they work. Although participating in virtual reality was initially quite expensive and was dependent on either having or procuring 3-D development skills, today with the open source movement you can either get islands for free and host them from your own servers or you can rent islands from other developers at very reasonable cost. Another thing that went along with the open source movement was the access of many more free materials that gender is 3-D developers have made available to the public. Also 3-D developers often offer very low cost ways to improve your islands or get interactive devices.
• #7: Indicate that the instructional design around using an immersive virtual-reality environment addresses the same issues as when you design any learning environment, face-to-face, online or blended. Creating a virtual reality environment is very much like designing a complete and comprehensive rich classroom environment. Although you can use in very limited ways, if you think about it as a learning experience that can even have place and interactions you can start to utilize some of the power of this environment.
• #8: One of the first things you want to think about is what's the place itself going to be. Do you want to use one of the premade islands — in some of these are shown later in the presentation? Do you want to create something of your own — do you have 3-D skills yourself; could you get quick access to them; do you have funding that will allow you to design an environment or updated environment to make it look like something of your own school or interests or simulations? Today you can have range of options and you can start in a minimalistic way and add on more as time and abilities progress.
• #9: Now looking to the core areas that you need to think about you first design around the location of created and ask what activity, or meeting, or curriculum do you want to have happen within the space? You want to know why is this particular interaction important — and how can I use this in ways to build understanding of the content or the discipline or building a particular knowledge or skill collectively?. You going to find that if you do this correctly, the very fact of the "telepresence" of the individuals within the space will make them much more attentive even though there at a distance than if they were simply on a Skype session, discussion board, or webinar. They will actually be able to communicate either through voice with a headset or by texting and they will begin to know and understand each other through seeing their own work, interactions, and struggles. You want to be sure that your students have some level of buy-in to working in an immersive environment — but don't wait until everybody agrees that this is a wonderful way to work. You are the instructor and you're constantly making decisions as to how to conduct your instructional interactions without consulting everyone for their particular needs. You must though be sure that your students have the proper computer and Internet bandwidth or else they will not be able to participate. That must be made very clear at the very beginning of the course. Generally if you have any issues with the technology it comes in the fact that people are not using a sufficiently powerful computer set up. Once you've gotten the individuals into the virtual environment you then really think about this is a communicative experience, as would be any face-to-face class or any field trip, and ask what you can do with in this space. You don't have to do everything the first time you use this so consider ways that you can start working and that you could eventually scale up as your needs and abilities allow.
• #10: And as with any learning experience, you want to be able to determine if you've been effective. Have the students learned the content or skill that you wanted them to? Do you have any evidence of interpersonal interactions that are meaningful and supportive of course objectives? Is the content that you want learned becoming more evident in students interactions, or in later course assignments? Also, is the environment working well for you and are the instructional materials sufficient to allow students into the environment and to get the support they need for their interactions within the environment? To determine if this environment is meeting your needs — and to find ways to correct and improve the environment — you need to be asking these questions much as you would've any face-to-face discussion, online discussion, or webinar or Skype session
• #11: And so far we have been considering these design areas without thinking of the larger context. You will need to address the scheduling and course integration issues that you would have with any activity, assignment, or interaction. Although these points may seem self-evident, failing to address them with in the procedural aspects of particularly an online course can result in a bad experience for the students. But if you integrate these elements into courses — such as threading discussion areas that were started in a virtual-reality environment into later parts of the course — can result in a very powerful communicative, possibly collaborative, educationally rich interactions.
• #12: Indicate that the instructional design around using an immersive virtual-reality environment addresses the same issues as when you design any learning environment, face-to-face, online or blended
• #13: Here's an example from the course that I recently ran and that I then studied and published about. This study is coming out in the Journal of Educational Technology Systems in spring 2018 Here are the objectives for the course and you can see that the areas that I've highlighted are the ones most relevant to the points would be making. The students had to get ready for a portfolio that they must submit to NYS to become licensed teachers. This portfolio is NOT reviewed by faculty that they've worked with; it's reviewed by external evaluators. And the requirements of the portfolio are very strict. The documentation alone on what needs to be done takes up more than 50 pages of single spaced directions. What I looked at in my course was how was a get my students ready for this portfolio (known as Ed TPA) within my class without it overtaking the class; it was not the primary objective of the class. The primary objective of the class was to get students to be good science teachers. That goes completely aligned with the goal of the portfolio but there were different considerations for both. So I put into my course objectives and getting ready for this test was an important consideration but it also made it clear that they're going to be networked with colleagues and that they were going to be using technologies to share with these colleagues to improve their own learning and to have a truly 21st-century experience.
• #14: So, these are the components of that course where I worked very much on community building. These are all teachers or soon-to-be teachers so they had already been in schools and were very invested in becoming teachers and meeting the rigors of the licensure test. So looking at the interactive elements within this course I had students creating videos that they shared with each other asynchronously so that they really did get some exposure to content and knowledge to the actual able to "see" one another. They also had the now classic discussion boards that you find in online courses. We had also a number of virtual-reality meetings where they had to be together at the same time but they could be together from their computers at home. As I saw certain areas emerged that were problematic, I developed a webinar where I then corrected some of the concerns that came up through a very one-way instructor led
• #15: Here is an example of the way I conducted the virtual reality meetings. We started and an open space — because I don't like to have them navigating through buildings if they're not that good with moving their avatar — and I went over the topics they're going to be discussing and the ways they would be grouped during the meetings. So on the left you can see the poster board that I was using and on the right you can see students assembled in my idea of a comfortable looking lecture. The introductory lecture lasted for about 10 minutes and I tape-recorded and then later sent the tape to the students
• #16: The students then went to different parts of the island to break into their discussion groups that I had assigned them. This gave them time to talk about the topics for that particular meeting and to work out any areas that were problematic to them. Remember they were getting ready for a very high stakes portfolio test that would require them also to create good videos of their students in the classroom. Teachers were very concerned as to how they could get appropriate, educationally, sound interactions from their middle school and high school students to show well on the cameras that they had to use to tape their own teaching as required by the portfolio assignments. So the students were very concerned about understanding the process and they worked hard among themselves. I came around to the different groups and address questions. I also was taping my interactions with the different groups of that they could hear any comments that I had made other groups later. Remember this is a very high state test for them and they wanted to be as prepared as possible.
• #17: Now I was able to hear everybody just by going to the different groups area; I also had them have a note taker for each group and they took notes about the topics and then looped them back into the online discussion board. Each group posted their comments and concerns about the topic of the day — which revolved around the portfolio — and they then went back into the discussion board, read each other's work, and then inputted comments or questions. Later I was able to go back and look at these combination of videos of the classroom, virtual reality experience and look at what the students were saying in the loopback session. And I categorized the type of comments and statements that the students are making about getting ready for the portfolio process. You can see here they were concerned about making the videotape (and who wouldn't be if you had to have 20 to 30 high school students sounding scientifically smart on the tape that is going to an external reviewer). There are also some outright mistakes that were being made that would actually have gotten the portfolio disqualified. Some of the student groups had disagreements about how they were going to interpret the directions and handouts that came along with the portfolio process. Though there are lots of areas that surfaced during the simultaneous discussions in the virtual reality environment and the subsequent discussion boards. My contention is that the students went a lot further with their thinking because they were able to interact synchronously with other colleagues without just the teacher being there all the time. I was able to find out a lot of the genuine concern to the students that might've been hard for me to find just in assignments and assignments that might've been academically focus but not procedurally focused.
• #18: Here I'm just pointing to some the things that came out from my having the experience with the students themselves in a facsimile of a face-to-face meeting that you might have in your own classroom. I did see that the community was evolving among the students and I could see that as a went around to the different groups. I think that the students were a whole lot more honest among their peers and when I showed up to talk to them they were able to bring forth some of the concerns in ways that they might not have if they were just putting a note in the course or having a discussion with me after class. Students are able to confess they really had trouble with the type of teaching practice that's now required in science education — teachers aren't supposed to just lecture and have students taking notes; teachers are supposed to students doing real investigations. So I felt that I was able to get a lot more important information from the students in this quasi-protected environment.
• #19: Now I'm asking you to think about your own courses at you either teach or that you design and ask yourself these questions about avoiding the isolation that can come about in online courses. Remember, the instructor gets to read everybody but the students themselves only get to read a small portion of what's happening in an online course. So find out where you might be able to strengthen your course by having interactions that you can design in such ways to build knowledge, to develop a sense of community; of course you want to be assessing these experiences to be sure the students really are getting value out of the interactions — which you should be doing with any interactions that you have with in your courses.
• #20: Here is some of the literature that supported the study that I did on the students in the portfolio class.
• #21: What will follow are just some examples of ways that I have used virtual reality with my students over a number of years. I also have some examples of how the students themselves have designed environments — I now in teaching a course on how to design these environments. But I really encourage you to just use those as points to spark your own imagination. You want to create a learning story and a virtual reality environment may be a piece of that story. Since you're absolutely unlimited in what you can visually create and what you can instructionally design, let your imagination bring you to some new heights of instruction
• #22: I've been bringing students into virtual environments for a long time. Initially I use Second Life because it was provided by the school. In this set up you see a situation where the Dean came and spoke to the students; you see a poster session where students display their work and visitors came and talked to them about their work; you also see some students at the bottom left watching a video that was modeling a way to teach; and in the bottom right at one student is doing a presentation in a pod area that he To post his own work.
• #23: Here you can see how I set up a space for students to display their work and I realize that I couldn't have an actual poster session but I could have the students display their work (I took a PowerPoint, saved it as image files, and then upload the files into the virtual space) there were a number of potty areas with the students work and for the night of the presentation we invited students from other class and faculty members as well
• #24: Here is a picture of one of the pod areas when the visitors were actually present. Each visitor was given an electronic ballot that let them vote on the presentations that they viewed in light of the criteria for the scientific activities that would be conducted in these teachers classrooms. From the votes, I generated badges. Later I did an in-depth study on the work of the students, finding that I was able to extend an online class into a more interactive environment through bringing students into a virtual reality space that simulated a scientific-education conference.
• #25: This slide shows the work done by one of our students in bringing the Empire State College work forward to a virtual reality conference. As you can see from the middle image, this conference was sponsored by UC Irvine and by other virtual world organizations. The student was a conference developer within her own company and she saw they need to bring us forward into a virtual presentation at the conference where they had booths and poster sessions possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yBI0bIGBto
• #26: This is an example of a set up that I've used to allow people to come into a meeting in a very simple way. I have put out easy chairs and created a comfortable set up. I don't have people navigating into rooms and buildings because their new and they may feel awkward in that situation. I've put posters around this area but primarily I use this as a meeting space and as a place to give presentations. Sometimes I give the presentations but often times the students present in the space and as they are speaking I am able to change the slides in the background just as you would if you were at a regular conference.
• #27: This is just an overview of the variety of posters that have been set up on the space. I leave the posters and encourage students to come back later and review the work of one another and continue their professional communications.
• #28: I have some work that I've created for middle school students where I have a simulation of a sub-Saharan Africa situation and I have information about disease and disease control for this area. I set up a facsimile of this environment and what you see here is the website that I use to help people navigate through and find these resources. I have worked with a doctor who can present a session to students about the type of diseases that can be found in these environments and then the students can research and report back ways that these diseases could be controlled. https://sites.google.com/site/servehealthcarestudy/ http://eileenoconnor1.wix.com/serve-healthcare
• #29: This is just an example of a building that I acquired that I made more colorful and within which I put a lot of educational resources that students could look at on poster boards and they could even go in and click on the interactive websites that they would find within here as well.. I want this to be a place that students can come to for information and materials and where they can come and meet with their colleagues with or without an instructor being present.
• #30: I was able to develop a course to teach people how to create these environments. Part of that we did in these courses were visit each other's work. Interestingly I found that by having students actually go in and immerse themselves in someone else's virtual environment — which was the work they were creating and writing about and papers as well — we were able to have a lot better conversations, idea sharing, and ultimately better projects. This was no longer in abstraction about what skills before developing; the students could see one another's work.
• #31: With all of the free and downloadable materials that are available, you can have any sort of environment for your learning scenario. Why where else can you download a castle for a day. And where else can I be a blonde for a day without spending a lot of money at the beauty parlor.
• #32: And, as I set up my island for meetings for my own students. I found and acquired many different free artifacts and buildings and resources. I have been saving them on my island and students and other developers come here to get access to free and open source materials. I have come to light the space that was meeting space. It has easy access. It demonstrates a variety of different ways to sit and meet. And students like the informality and the choices that they can have as well.
• #33: A colleague of mine use this space and she had the students come in on their own. To understand what the students did when they were in the space — and they were discussing literacy aspects of all content areas in K-12 — she had them submit their own snapshots. Here you see several students meeting and discussing their discussion topic and they happen to have captured the text box dialogue within the process. So even without the instructor being present the students were able to have useful meetings.
• #34: I've been able to use these spaces for many different purposes. Here I met with the number of students who had and working collectively on a project and they debriefed me about their work. Again, we had the feeling that we were together discussing these ideas but in reality everybody was at their own computers spread around the country talking about the project they had developed and shared using other resources but coming into this space to explain to me how it was working together.
• #35: And, although much of what I have shown you simulates meetings and classroom work, I have had students who have worked on more creative ventures. Here you can see a student who had a keen interest in music and art. She was able to take elements, such as this large-size walk on piano keyboard, and have us interact with these musical and visual elements. I brought an entire class to the students learning environment and we had a lot of fun including working with her programmed snowman that you might be able to see in the background here. Since these spaces are completely open ended, limited only by the imagination and 3-D abilities (and you can vendor out the 3-D building — assume you have copious grant money), it is good to see some examples of some more creative applications.
• #36: And meetings don't always have to be formal and noninteractive. I've put together some free interactive amusement park materials and sometimes we simply go over and have a little fun on the Ferris wheel or merry-go-round at the beginning or end of the meeting. Corporations pay a lot of money to get people together to develop relationships and team buildings. Often educators don't have that much money. But they can get together for some virtual teambuilding, and fun.
• #37: These are some of my peer-reviewed publications that address using virtual reality environment over the past 10 years or so. I also have many resources that explain how to acquire and develop these environments. Please get in touch with me if you want some of these materials or if you are interested in possibly using some of the resource I have as a pilot study. I would be glad to help you get yourself set up for some adventures of your own. Eileen.Oconnor@esc.edu
• #38: Q&A Eileen.Oconnor@esc.edu
• #39: Article just came out about Google’s new library called Poly: https://www.designboom.com/technology/google-launches-poly-library-ar-vr-objects/ Google has created a VR/AR repository where people can discover, view and download virtual and augmented reality objects. The new project aims to make it easier when it comes to creating a VR or AR app. You can also filter your search by Creative Commons license so that you can remix the object. Objects can be downloaded and imported into an app or program. Fun to browse Poly. Poly.google.com
• #40: CLOSING Thank you very much for sharing with us today. Today’s session was recorded. The recording, slides and resources will be posted on our blog http://bit.ly/SUNYNDLW2017 If you have not had a chance to sign in, please do so on the Google doc http://bit.ly/NDLW2017signin Our next NDLW Showcase will feature Robin Sullivan from the University at Buffalo and Cherie van Putten from Binghamton University sharing about a MOOC project focused on Exploring Emerging Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Success. This session will take place Friday, November 10th at 12:00 PM. You can join Robin and Cherie’s session using the access link provided in their session description on our blog: http://bit.ly/SUNYNDLW2017 Additional activities are happening around the globe for National Distance Learning Week. We hope you will take a look at the US Distance Learning Association’s line up: https://www.usdla.org/2017-ndlw-master-calendar/ (paste link in chat) Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope to see you at another distance learning event this week! STOP RECORDING