Two articles from Brandon Hall’s Janet Clarey:

The first is helpful in terms of criticality – identifying the money behind research.

The second deals with the use of Google as a research tool.

I think these will be of great help when I come to do my dissertation.

Today I attended a workshop on serious games. It was hosted by two organisations who are becoming an increasing presence in the field, and was addressed by the chairman of the serious games institute.

We were given a hands-on demonstration of a product developed by the host organisation, while another showed us the use they have been making of Secondlife as a space for delivering learning.

It was very interesting. However, I am increasingly concerned that the learning design of serious games has taken a backward step, with the control being in the hands of the designer, and the learner having reduced ability to target specific learning requirements that he has identified for himself. This is against the flow of developments in online learning.

However, the opportunities within Second Life or similar environments are enormous. I will post more on this another day when I have more time.

It’s high time someone decided to address this issue head on. Kids are moving confidently about in a space which many adults don’t understand. Some are frightened by it, others are blissfully unaware of the potential risks. Here is an 80 page overview for those who would like to gain a better understanding of the world of the digital native.

Last night we had another Educational Research session. I find that I am finally beginning to have some ideas.

My field is adult learning, in the corporate/workplace context. I have an interest in JIT learning, but I also have an interest in games and simulations in learning. So here’s me thinking that the steady move towards JIT learning in the corporate environment increasingly places the control in the hands of the learner. The learner identifies a gap in his knowledge base and uses available resources to address that lack at a time that suits him.

So how does this fit with games and simulations where the learning is often serendipitous? By playing the game or entering the simulated environment, the learner will plot a path through a series of scenarios which may or may not relate to his current learning need.

Hmm. So how do I get a starting question out of this to launch my research for my dissertation? And what will the research look like?

Second Life is getting “voice”. It already has a university campus. Sweden is opening an embassy there soon. Teachers at distance learning institutions are already running sessions within this virtual world. The pedagogical potential is enormous.

Sony seems to have realised this and jumped on the bandwagon.

The resources available to teachers today appear to be limitless. But availability isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. It doesn’t help for things to be available if people don’t know about them, or are afraid or suspicious of them.

How do we cross this great divide and combine the knowledge that teachers are able to share, the value that they have to add, with the technology that their learners know how to use? Perhaps teachers need to spend some time being learners for a bit, and allow their classes to teach them. As a joint exercise, it must surely be achievable?

I’m not a language teacher, but these 3D worlds built with a specific view to support teachers of literature strike me as being a great idea. I haven’t explored them but I support the concept wholeheartedly. As my friend Vicki Davis puts it: the future of the web is 3D. I’d be interested to hear whether anyone has explored these or similar simulation environments.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) turns his astute eye on curriculum in this post on his blog.

What a pretentious title! Increasingly I’ve been thinking about this subject lately. One of my lecturers pointed me towards a game called the Peacemaker. I won’t duplicate the content of my post on Karyn’s Blog about it, but it also put me in mind of the Darfur is dying game, although the latter is far less sopohisticated in construction. Both these games seek to inform the player/learner of the challenges facing a group of people in a wartorn situation. On their own, these games may not stand out from the many other games about war, and they may even suffer by comparison. However, used as a teaching aid and placed in context by teaching and discussion about the situation before embarking on the game, the situations must surely become more real to the user than a pure theory lesson. This is a way to make history come alive. It is a way to present history as something other than a sequence of inevitabilities (which is my own view of how it is taught in far too many schools).

I also recently encountered this game (I wish I could remember who gave me the link!) which allows players to take charge of a country and re-enact WWII. The outcome is not predetermined as the defeat of the axis powers by the allies, and players have the opportunity to explore alternative courses of action through to their conclusion.

Now this is history as a study of decisions taken by people, decisions with alternatives. I once read a book called Fatherland by Robert Harris, set in the 60s and written from the perspective of a detective in a victorious Germany. It is a thought-provoking read, and one I would recommend to a high school student studying second world war history, since it serves the same purpose as these games in that it allows the exploration of alternative hypotheses. What if…?

I have lost count of the number of British people who have told me that, if it hadn’t been for their grandfather/father/uncle, we would have been speaking German today. This shows a groan-inducingly unimaginative approach to the possible outcomes of the war. Let’s face it, speaking German is hardly the worst fate that could befall a person – it doesn’t seem to have hindered people in Germany a great deal! I am always tempted to respond, “Is that the best you can come up with?”

But of course, a book presents only one view. A game allows the user to explore several different alternatives. What if the assassination plot against Hitler (or indeed Churchill) had succeeded? What if the Americans had not joined the war? What if Switzerland and/or Sweden had not remained neutral? What if? What if?

The possibilities are endless.

Thanks to Derek for this pointer to a 23 minute Google video about games in education. There seems to be a lot more resistance to gaming in corporate learning than in formal education, although there does seem to be the beginning of a change of heart.

The pedagogy of play has long been appreciated in early years education – teachers have been teaching through games and songs since time out of mind. With older kids, though, there has been a tendency to move away from any learning activity that could be considered fun. Perhaps there is the fear that this would devalue the learning experience by equating it with entertainment. There seems to be a growing number of secondary teachers who are beginning to use games as a tool to teach a wide range of subjects from economics to history. Consequently, there is a growing number of providers who are developing simulations to fit this purpose.

By extension, some providers have ventured into the world of corporate learning, but it is a tough sell, and I think the reason is similar to that encountered in secondary and higher education. Not all Training Managers are happy to spend their tight budgets on something that could be lumped together with entertainment rather than learning. There are those who are forward thinking enough to see past their own assumptions and knee jerk reactions to harness the power (and pedagogy) of play.

I for one am looking forward to the day one of my clients joins these ranks…

Once,  several years ago, I showed my ignorant arrogance by telling an Austrian woman new to South Africa and due to stay for 3 years that she would be sorry to leave. I was surprised when she disagreed. And when she explained what was wonderful about Austria, I was puzzled as to why anyone would think the things she was describing were so wonderful.

I thought I had grown up a bit since then, but I did exactly the same thing the other night during a lecture.

One of my classmates is Indian. I had heard that the preferred style of instruction in India is strongly behavioural. I asked her about this, and she confirmed that this was indeed the case. She commented on the different assessment styles between the Uk and India, citing the example of economics. She had been interested to note that, in the UK, students would be taught the principles of economics and then expected in an assessment, to apply those to a case study drawn from the commercial world. In India, however, the questions would be things like “Define supply”, “What is demand?”

On a previous occasion, speaking to representatives of a hee-uge organisation in India, I was told that Indian students would be shocked if a teacher asked them to have a group discussion on a topic. Or if the teacher referred them to another resource for material on a module. This would be considered a deriliction of duty. It is the teacher’s job to teach. For the duration of the lesson, the teacher is expected to earn his/her keep by doing just that. And “teaching” to them means disseminating knowledge and information. A friend of mine recently spent two weeks in Bangladesh teaching English to medical professionals. Her experience echoed this. What was expected was rote learning. They were most uncomfortable with the idea of group discussions – although to people in the UK, this would seem the obvious way to learn a language: to practise it conversationally, rather than repeating stock phrases.

I just assumed that my classmate would be won over to the more constructivist style of teaching and learning practised in the UK. That she would immediately appreciate that behaviourism was an outmoded approach based on flawed principles.

I was wrong. We have yet to have a discussion in which she is given the space to explain what she perceives as the advantages of behaviourism, but I look forward to it. Who knows, maybe she will convince me… although I doubt it