Mark Childs

There’s a pattern emerging with these blogs - one weekly one looking back on the previous week, another looking forward to the next, and an occasional one informing everyone who reads this (both who read this) about something job-related that I’ve come across. These all seem to have had a Ludlumesque syntagm in the title - Definite article - pronoun - noun.

It’s been around since 1995 and I’ve indicated something similar to people drawing in the air where we’re at with attitudes to new learning technologies, but this is even better, they’ve got names for the different bits of the hype. There’s a link to it here http://www.gartner.com/pages/story.php.id.8795.s.8.jsp The hype cycle basically looks at the immediate enthusiasm, the backlash and then people taking things sensibly forward.

What’s also interesting is where they put various different technologies on the cycle and how different it is to where I’d put them. My job’s elearning, the only people I usually get to talk to in work-related places are elearning people, so it’s an accelerated cycle I guess. Not only that, but the technologies go through a couple of cycles often, there’s the “does the technology work?” cycle, then there’s the “does the technology work (or be allowed to work) in my institution?” cycle, then there’s the “does the technology work in learning and teaching?” cycle and then - finally I suppose, “will the technology be incorporated as the normal part of learning and teaching?” hype cycle, although I think the only technologies that have made it that all the way through that cycle are the book and the blackboard (the one you write on with chalk, not the VLE).

The question is though, with immersive virtual worlds, where are we (elearning people) on those various cycles?

Does it work? Slope of enlightenment.
does it work in institutions? Hitting the slough of despond
does it work in learning and teaching? working its way up the peak
will it be incorporated as a normal part of learning and teaching? still awaiting the trigger

A couple more fact-finding meetings, trying to put a plan together for the PhD to get some data in, and a trip up to Newcastle to talk to some partners on the Theatron project. Also I’ve got a trip round Coventry with a friend who’s just had a baby to buy some toys. So possibly not too busy. A chance to plan ahead. Then a week’s leave. Then September, which is already full.

Hhmm the schedule of blogging has slipped already.

Last week was still looking at what people are doing - spoke to a couple of learning technologists - lots of interesting work with a range of technologies. I’ve hit the “elearning = online learning” issue already. Uploading lecture notes to CUOnline is the least interesting thing that could be done with elearning, in fact it’s not really elearning at all, just another way to administer courses (a very productive one though). Rattling off a list of videos, videoconferencing, ipods, immersive virtual worlds, and so on does help in those circumstances, so I hope I’m making a few converts along the way. The plan is to find a few elearning “champions” (I find the term ridiculous though, always think of that 70s TV show with Sharron Macready and William Gaunt) find out what they do, and persuade a couple of other people to do it too.

I’ve also found out about SIGMA’s interactive classroom project. Lego robots. Cool or what? If I can help get that set up, and a few others to imitate it, then I’ll be happy.

Also finished off one task hanging over from the previous job - writing a report about serious games for health education. Difficult getting back into it again after about four months since I sent the first draft in, but it meant I came to it fresh I suppose. That should be the last of the Warwick projects, unless there’s a couple of meetings they need so I can help instruct the hand-over wind-up.

A bit of an up-and-down with regard to my PhD this week. Finding out on Monday that there’s a big project starting up here that’s looking at the same areas I’ve been looking at for the PhD - thanks to looking around on cuba blogs actually. I should have guessed that someone would look at the same sort of things at some point, (they are inevitably the next steps in immersive virtual world research) it just feels that my stuff doesn’t look so unique and sparkly any more. I’ve found out since that this is inevitably part of the process of doing a PhD, particularly part-time. If you;re taking five years to do something, other people will get there first. However, even if on the surface the questions may look the same, there will inevitably be differences, so the work is still a unique contribution. So that’s OK. I am relieved though that I got the basics of my research published a few months ago.

I was also worried that a large project trawling the same waters might use up all of the potential user groups that I could work with. Hopefully though a collaboration with the SGI might sort that one out for me.

Nothing specific for this week. I’ve been working on my profile for the department and staff pages - which took a lot of updating - and I’ll be working on the PhD more. I was going to work on a bid for the JISC Innovation call, but have found out that there’s already one set up to go in, and only one bid from each institution is allowed. I’m not sure of the logic of only allowing one from each institution. Surely they should be entirely on merit and the best ten (or whatever) across the country should be funded, even if that means more than one from the same institution. Still s/he who pays the piper and all that …

Also met with the architects for the new build in FEC. The buiding looks amazing and I really didn’t have any suggestions. I think my real input will be when it comes to placing the equipment in the rooms. I think getting the layout of PCs and so on will really make a difference. I also got to try out my new projection keyboard on my PDA. It worked fine, and very simply. Unfortunately with the PDA also being a phone it means I haev to leave it on, which meant that when I got a call that fleas had been discovered at home, it meant that the ringtone (the theme tune to Captain Pugwash) blared out through the meeting :$

Last week was spent talking to a few more people in FEC and CiPEL to get a better idea of what’s what, who’s who and how I fit into it all. I think I have a plan for the first year now and some clear targets, so I feel more like a have an actual job now.

Also writing last week was one of those times when a lot of different elements came together. My PhD so far has been trying to catalogue all the different factors that come into play when people are work in what are called “mediated environments” - basically any situation where there’s a technology between you and the other people in an interaction - they can be text-based, audio only, videoconferencing, immersive virtual worlds or even where you’re interacting via telerobotics. All of those different technologies have attracted different researchers, who have developed their own definitions and classification systems. I’ve been trying to merge them into one enormous whole, or hole.

What was missing was some way to bring these different factors together, then Sue M-G http://thinkingandresearching.blogspot.com/ showed me a paper that adapted Activity Theory to a specific context. After reading that, I got it, and applied it to what I’d got so far on the PhD. Amazingly the categories were very similar. I needed to split up activities from the rules that govern them - and added in division of tasks and my model matched activity theory. However, I’d got two categories left over. I figured it was about time I used the third dimension (two dimensions are so pre-digital). Adding them into the model and working out how they were connected gave me a really weird looking shape, which I then built in my back yard in SL, much to the bewilderment of one of my neighbours.

However, looking at the model in 3d enabled me to simplify it, the points could actually be made into the corners of a cube, so all that playing around and looking up different shapes on various maths sites actually paid off. Yay - score one for lack of focus.

I also managed to finish off my bit of the paper for ReLIVE08 and start on one for ALT-J - although after re-writing it I realised I was past the deadline on it.