E1n1verse

Credit: Screenshot by dyashman under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Image: The blurred boundary between the Stranglethorn Vale, Duskwood, and Deadwind Pass zones in World of Warcraft.

I posted this entry originally early in November, but somehow an entire paragraph disappeared, so I’ve re-posted it with a new date. — Michelle

_arien:
games based learning, i think has potential but learners struggle with transferring the learning & dealing with blurred boundaries #fote10

Eingang:
@_arien I think you’re right that learners have trouble with learning when boundaries blurred like in GBL, because of context. #fote10

_arien:  
@Eingang exactly, our minds still work in boxes and takes practice to cross between formal and informal contexts

Eingang:
@_arien Blurred boundaries & different contexts are particularly problematic for, eg, people w autistic spectrum disorders. #h810 #fote10

Eingang:
@_arien AR can help overcome the context issue/blurred boundaries of learning we were just discussing, because RL there too. #fote10

The above is an extract from a Twitter conversation I had on October 1st during the Future of Technology in Education conference (#fote10) with @_arien.   Arien was attending the conference, watching Ollie Bray’s talk, while I was following the conference on Twitter.  Arien, as it happens, is one of my Open University H810 students.  Ollie Bray (@olliebray), of Learning & Teaching Scotland, was discussing the use of computer games in education.

I think Arien’s hit the nail on the head: it is about context.  One of the reasons game skills don’t transfer to learning well is because learners/players do not see something in a game as being applicable to something academic.  Much learning we do is completely context-based.  Without the context of the “subject”, we do not necessarily think to apply something we have learned or maybe even realize that it is applicable.

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Back in April, I posted my first preliminary study to look at motivation, community formation, and learning in World of Warcraft.  When I was crafting my ethics approval for that study and future studies, I was very concerned with maintaining the privacy of the individuals participating.  The first survey was designed specifically to not require any personally identifiable information, although participants did have the option of giving an e-mail address if they wanted to participate in future studies or if they did not mind being contacted for any follow-up questions.

A problem arises, however, in following participants across multiple studies.  This is somewhat related to longitudinal studies where repeated observations are collected over long periods of time from the same participants.  The purpose of such studies is to help distinguish actual effects from short-term causes.  However, longitudinal studies aren’t the only time researchers may want to track participants across time and across multiple studies.  That would also be useful to help me build a more complex, detailed picture of participants, even though I intend to be asking different questions in different surveys.

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As part of my tasks, I need to acquire a suitable image of myself plus put 30 words of copy together for the annual Human-Centred Technologies brochure. 30 words isn’t very much, and I wasn’t quite sure whether those should be about me or about my project or about both. In the meantime, I set the EinSweetie to sorting out possible pictures. I dislike having my picture taken, so our collection isn’t vast and many of the pictures were taken outside where I’m wearing my sunglasses.

Here’s the picture I chose for myself. Even though it’s several years old, it was the best we could find on short notice and spending several hours trawling through iPhoto.

That still left the 30 words. I settled on the following 31 words:

Michelle concentrates on Internet information retrieval: improving the indexing and return of search engine results using semantic relations. She is an award-winning Open University lecturer, incorporating IT into distance education.

Not quite 30 words, but close enough.

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