#VWBPE - education & civic engagement; virtual conferences and social responsibility

I'm currently attending a conference that's going ahead exactly as scheduled - the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, taking place in 3D virtual worlds, particularly Second Life. It's free: participants need to create an avatar and download the Second Life browser (as it doesn't use an ordinary web browser. The conference venues are space-themed (in a virtual world you can fly and defy gravity!) and the first picture is of the main auditorium.
However, you can also watch many of the sessions by following the links from here: https://www.vwbpe.org/watch It continues tomorrow.
This is the 13th VWBPE. I don't usually liveblog it, since it is about education rather than information literacy, but under the current circumstances I would blog a couple of sessions today and tomorrow.The 2nd, appropriately, is on virtual conferences,

Firstly, though, today's keynote was from Professor Michael Thomas, Liverpool John Moores University on Virtual Worlds and Social Justice: An Impact and Civic Engagement Agenda. His abstract is here. The recording is embedded below. Thomas wanted to make us to become more aware of critical and historical perspectives on learning technologies. He identified some of the issues in higher education, such as marketisation and causalisation, that have had an impact on the online learning agenda.
Thomas highlighted the Guinevere and Camelot projects (on language learning in virtual worlds) as focusing on pedagogies and teachers (rather than technology). He cited Stephen Bax as positioning online educators as difficultators, which encourages educators to take a critiquing approach, rather than accepting that education has become a "product". The current crisis (with educators suddenly forced to go online) can be seen a an opportunity to reflect as well as to act. We can question things we have taken for granted (e.g. travelling to work) and look at education through lenses such as sustainability and inclusivity.

Thomas talked about the current requirement for "social distancing" which means physical social distancing. Those in tertiary education could be said to already practice social distancing, in being removed from civic engagement: when they are engaged, there is often a focus on economic benefits. He also mentioned a recent call for papers on virtual worlds and impact which had disappointingly few proposals to do with civic impact. Thomas referred to the discussion around MOOCs, which had initially been talked up as a way of reaching less advantaged people, but the statistics showed MOOCs were used extensively by those with existing qualifications etc. The way in which computers have been used in classrooms has also been critiqued, as have generalisations about "digital natives" who, in fact, vary in their economic and social ability to participate in the digital.
He quoted Jody Greene as saying " Teaching center staff who have been shouting into the wind about the benefits of learning communities can’t help but smile as the entire collegiate instructional workforce scrambles to find the nearest Hangout or Zoom teaching happy hour.”
Now that a lot of resistence to online working has, in the current crisis, been swept away, it is important to look at the implications for pedagogy, and develop pedagogy critically. He referred to Higgins et al.s' (2012) metanalayis which reveals what is familiar to me from other systematic or insightful research i.e. that the "success" of online teaching and learning is not a matter of receipes but depends on the nature of teachers, learners, context and pedagogy.
Thomas referenced Giroux in warning against having online learning appropriated by a neoliberalist agenda. He felt that there were signs of hope e.g. suggesting that ranking universities in terms of how they meet the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Thomas challenged delegates to reflect on virtual worlds education in relation to civic engagement and sustainable development. He further posed teh questions "Given the recent embrace of ‘online learning’, how will (VW) education change as a result? Will it revert to what it was before? (students and teachers may perceive the recent online turn as a failure). Or will it be changed by the experience?" His talked was followed by a lively discussion in text chat and voice.



Linda Wylie, with her talk Virtual conferences and social responsibility, was addressing the issue of face to face conferences and social responsibility, and in particular talked about the Virtual International Day of the Midwife, a virtual conference she is involved with.
She started by talking about the various studies that have revealed the carbon footprint of universities in terms of international travel. Wylie felt that, yes, this was socially irresponsible and inequitable. She, like the previous speaker, identified that the current situation may be changing people's minds about virtaul working and conferencing. However there may be "professional fear" of virtual working that persists despite this, including in her own area, the health sector.

Wylie mentioned lack of social interaction and networking being seen as barriers to virtual interaction, but she pointed out that this interaction does not always happen at face to face conferences either. There was agreement from those in the audience that virtual conferences can also provide opportunities to get to know people (particularly in 3D worlds where you can express your personality via your avatar). Wylie emphasised that virtual conferences can reduce the carbon footprint, although f2f conferences themselves could be made more sustainable (e.g. more regional conferences, streaming in remote presenters, thinking about the sustainability of refreshments, accompanying virtual communities, having less swag - though the library world isn't exactly heavy on swag, I think the healthcare one may still be).
Wylie then went on to talk about the Virtual International Day of the Midwife online conference. The event is a 24 hour event (on 5 May 2020), so it is celebrated worldwide, with a simple approach so that it is accessible to those with low tech. It includes a student stream. They use BigBlueButton as a platform and support novice online presenters - Wylie stressed how this can still be scarey for people who aren't used to it.
The link to her talk is here https://youtu.be/sg2mNRSpsIA