E1n1verse – WoW, Learning, and Teaching by Michelle A. Hoyle

The V.C. was doing a surprise (to us) departmental visit last month. We had a bit of notice and it was decided that everyone doing projects in our research group should produce a one-page summary of their work. This could then be presented to the V.C. I whipped up the following. As I haven’t completed the analysis for my recent survey into motivations in World of Warcraft, I couldn’t include any of that, so I focussed on the underlying ideas in the project.

Downloadable Resources:

• WoW Learning Research Project A4 poster (230 KB PDF)

I have my annual Ph.D. review meeting tomorrow afternoon. As usual, I’m more than a bit nervous, especially as I made the big step this academic year of completely dropping my former Ph.D. work and starting a brand new topic that intersects the boundaries of my three main interests: communities, learning and teaching, and Internet-enabled technologies. As part of the review process, we’re asked to produce a 4-page report that explains what we’ve done since the last report. In your first year, this report ought to focus on your thesis proposal, although many students won’t yet have one. I do have some ideas about what I want to do and how I am going to go about it. I’ve made an online version so that it will be indexed and easily findable by others interested in World of Warcraft and e-learning.

The 30-second summary: Examine how metaphors and game design of World of Warcraft motivate people to learn and to work, with an eye to transferring motivation, social knowledge building, and persistence to online higher education practices, like community building for lifelong learning.

Click the “More” link below to continue reading the online version of the proposal and progress report. A downloadable PDF version is also available.

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These are my slides for my August 19th interview presentation. I was given the remit of presenting a five- to ten-minute presentation on the “Challenges Affecting Disabled in E-Learning”. The interview was for an associate lecturer position on the new H810: Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students postgraduate course, part of the M.A. in online distance education. Each slide has been annotated based on my presentation preparation notes. A downloadable version is available.

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This collage, created in March of 2005, is a mish-mash of important things in the different areas of my life: teaching, research, and fun. This PDF version was developed to print out on set of four A4 (European letter size) sheets.
Downloadable Resources:
- A4 (regular page) collage sheets

This PDF document, created in April of 2004, is a three-page version of content from the EinCite poster which explains the EinCite project and results to date.
Downloadable Resources:
- EinCite 3-Page Project Description

This poster, created in April of 2004, outlines most of the work on the EinCite project to date. The original poster was a large piece, designed for a poster board. This PDF version was developed to print out on a single A4 (European letter size) sheet.
Downloadable Resources:
- A4 (regular page) handout sheet