Issues in 3D worlds research #socmethods

Here is the presentation that Marshall Dozier and I used in our session on Wednesday. It was entitled Social, ethical, digital: issues in 3D worlds research, part of a University of Sheffield Faculty of Social Sciences seminar series on Methodological Challenges.
The livestream was recorded (video and audio) and is available here: http://t.co/xhiuQUosV6 (that is the whole seminar, all of which is interesting of course, but our part starts about 1 hour into the recording). This is the powerpoint.

Social, ethical, digital: issues in 3D worlds research from Sheila Webber

Creativity in Second Life

Ridvan Ata, one of my PhD students, just presented about an aspect of his work at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference (which takes place in the virtual world, Second Life). He has been investigating teaching in Second Life (he has almost finished). He also put the presentation on Slideshare:

Exploration of creativity within immersive teaching experience from Ridvan Ata

Renditions of the discourse of persons with disabilities by the non-disabled role-playing in a virtual world #elel2013

Another report from the Everyday Language, Everyday Literacies Conference taking place in Sheffield, UK, #elel2013. In the first parallel session today I heard Natasha Rappa (National Institue of Education, Singapore) talking about Understanding Re-Voicing: Renditions of the discourse of persons with disabilities by the non-disabled role-playing in a virtual world. The places of research were (physically) Singapore and (virtually) the 3D world, Second Life. I chose this session because of my interest in Second Life. In Singapore there has been work to support those with disabilities, but they remain less visible than in e.g. the UK. The speaker's aim was to get students to hear and understand better the experiences and voices of teenagers who have disabilities. Rappa's research question was: How do non-disabled adolescents re-voice the discourse of those with disabilities. She worked with three groups each with 5 people. She facilitated role playing in Second Life. Before this the students analysed news artcles about people with disabilities (looking at choices in wording and grammar) to heighten awareness and knowledge. The students compared stories from mainstream media and a society for those with disabilities, and then looked at specific individuals who had written or told their stories of disability.
Following this, the students role-played scenarios in which they role played a disabled person or people who were bully or defending the disabled person. Data collection was through students' one-paragraph responses to the question whether the disabled should be taught in special schools, a worksheet about the chosen real life narrative of disability and an essay responding to the question "the disabled are weak". The concept of "Fresh talk" (Goffman) as a result of a change in footing was important in approaching the research.
She selected some insights. One was showing how one student had re-voiced some of the arguments of his chosen "real life" disabled person, in his defence of himself role-playing a disabled person in Second Life. To that extent there was not "Fresh talk", but rather echoing another's voice in the role play. In the post role playing reflection, this student distanced himself from the role and put forward the argument of the other students, saying that the disabled person would be better of in a special school.
In her analysis the speaker had described a matrix from "Imitating" (e.g. echoing) to "Recasting" (e.g. "co-opting") with a middle ground of "melding", "juxtaposing" etc., and she noted that the students moved between different footings. The "Fresh talk" occurred more with those students who took the middle ground (perhaps because they were trying more to work out the relationship between their own identity and that of the disabled person?).
In discussion the issue emerged of the students' immersion, or lack of it, in Second Life and how that impacted their reactions, and whether the task was a bit too binary or encouraging extreme responses rather than collaborative debate. The speaker talked about practical influences on the research design, e.g. where this intervention fitted into the students' curriculum.

Teaching and Learning in Second Life as Part of a Blended Approach: Reflections and Lessons learned #vwbpe

Today Ridvan Ata and I gave our presentation about the Second Life activities that the first year class is engaged with, at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference: here's a picture of us presenting and here is the presentation:

Teaching and Learning in Second Life as Part of a Blended Approach: Reflections and Lessons learned

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Teens, Virtual Environments and Information Literacy

In the new issue of the ASIST bulletin (free online): Beheshti, J. (2012) "Teens, Virtual Environments and Information Literacy." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 38(3). http://asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-12/FebMar12_Beheshti.pdf
"EDITOR’S SUMMARY: As digital natives, the vast majority of teens are used to cellphones, text messaging, social networking sites and other forms of electronic communications and technologies. Though rooted in the digital world for many of their daily activities, teens lack basic information literacy skills for academic tasks and other demands. Specific instruction through the educational system may not be feasible, but it may be possible to build teens’ information competence through interactive virtual learning environments. Game-style virtual environments are highly motivating and engaging, providing opportunities for repeated practice and reward for persistence and achieving goals. A virtual reality library, VRLibrary, was constructed, collaboratively designed by young teens and adults, based on the metaphor of a physical library. Teens could wander the virtual space and browse links to age-appropriate websites presented as virtual books. VRLibrary was very positively received and succeeded at engaging teen users. A librarian avatar could be incorporated to provide help as needed with a user’s information seeking"
Photo by Sheila Webber: Winter tree, Blackheath, January 2012

Student exhibits on Facebook, Google, Wikipedia in Second Life

On 27 October I presented at the at the M2N4SL – Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers conference in Second Life. I gave brief details about the class "Information Literacy" that is core to the BSc Information Management programmes at the University of Sheffield Information School & which I coordinate. After giving this introduction to the pedagogic approach and design for the class, I took delegates over to our SL island, Infolit iSchool, where my students have mini-islands with their presentations about "Should Facebook users be concerned about privacy", "Is wikipedia reliable" and "Are the Google generation really bad at searching and evaluating information". If you have a SL avatar you can visit (the mini-islands will be there until February 2012) http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/162/187/21/

Inquiry Based Learning with first year undergraduates

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Examples of using SL for research

Examples of how research results can be presented and explored in the virtual world, Second Life (TM Linden Lab). Filmed on Infolit iSchool, Sheffield University, by me, in June/July 2011

iSchool launch event in Second Life

This is a short machinima that I made highlighting our University of Sheffield iSchool launch event in Second Life on 13 June 2011.

The machinima was created by me, Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life) and the music "Forest Dance" is released under a Creative Commons License by Butterfly Tea: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/70768
The speakers at the iSchool launch event were: Dr Lorri Mon (Lorri Momiji in Secoind Life); Dr Joe Sanchez (North Lamar in SL); Lyn Parker (Maggie Kohime in SL); Professor Nigel Ford (Nigl Forder in SL) and Sheila Webber.
"Second Life" is a trademark of Linden Lab. The iSchool website is at http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/

Virtual Worlds best Practices in Education Conference

Today and tomorrow I (and some of my students) are attending the Virtual Worlds best Practices in Education Conference (VWBPE) which is free and takes place in Second Life, the virtual world. There are a huge number of sessions, with presentations, tours etc. You need to have a SL avatar and the browser installed on your computer to participate.
If you are in the UK, at the moment we are 7 hours ahead of SL time (e.g. 04.00 SLT is 11am UK time). The schedule (giving times in SL time) is on the website. http://vwbpe11.vwbpe.org/
There is one report on the first day here: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-574709

Polish article about using Infolit iSchool

This article discusses Infolit iSchool in Second Life, and the information literacy activities that go on there. The other articles look interesting too (if only I spoke Polish!)
Rozkosz, E. (2011) "Multimedialne przestrzenie edukacyjne: wirtualne centrum Infolit iSchool" EBIB, (119). http://www.nowyebib.info/2011/119/a.php?rozkosz
The picture shows Eva (the author, second right) participating in our discussion about "What inspires your teaching" in SL today

Information Literacy in our future careers

There is an exhibition with posters from this exercise with my students in Second Life (which I blogged about here), and this video has snippets from the session held on 8th December in which I talked about the activities. If you have a Second Life avatar you can visit it at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/230/35/28/

Exploring information literacy on Infolit iSchool

In this 5 minute video (produced a few days ago) I introduce some of the places on Infolit iSchool (in Second Life, a trademark of Linden Lab) where you can learn more about what information literacy means to you and to others.

An article from me about Second Life

Webber, S. (2010) "Investigating modes of student inquiry in Second Life as part of a blended approach." International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 1 (3), 55-70.
"This article discusses activities carried out in Second Life (SL), the virtual world, as part of a compulsory class ("Information Literacy") in the first year of an undergraduate programme. The paper aims to identify the contribution of SL to the students’ learning environment and to an Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) approach to programme design. The reasons for taking an IBL approach are explained in relation to institutional and disciplinary goals. The paper reflects on the contribution of the three key learning environments (the classroom, WebCT and SL) to students’ learning. SL is evaluated in relation to a conceptual framework of IBL. It is concluded that SL has made a contribution to students’ achievement of learning outcomes from the class, and has facilitated the development of students’ inquiry skills. In conclusion, further avenues for developing research and teaching are identified."
The articles in this issue also include one from Diane Nahl on information behaviour in Second Life: "Affective load and engagement in second Life: experiencing urgent, persistent, and long term information needs" (pages 1-16)

Journal club

Today we held the first meeting of a virtual Information Literacy/ Information Behaviour journal club on Infolit iSchool in Second Life, the virtual world, hosted by the Centre for Information Literacy Research at the University of Sheffield. Pancha Enzyme (SL name) of Edinburgh University proposed the idea, and led the first session, which discussed:
Kuhlthau, C. C., Heinstrom, J. & Todd, R. J. (2008) "The 'information search process' revisited: Is the model still useful?." Information Research [ejournal], 13(4), paper 335. http://InformationR.net/ir/13-4/paper355.html
Future events will be announced here and will also be on the calendar at http://infolitischool.pbworks.com/Calendar+of+events
There is a chatlog of the session here: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/chatlog-29-september-2010.pdf
I also made a short video (using Screenr and Animoto) with snippets from the session.

The music is "Konkete" by Alain Mikuni http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/47970

Using Second Life as a Learning Environment

Today I presented at the IVIG conference in Prague, Czech Republic on Using Second Life as a Learning Environment. I was responding to a number of questions about teaching, that had been posed to me in advance. In particular I was talking about using Second Life as part of a blended approach to teaching.I will post again about the conference, but here is my presentation. I also showed the video that I posted here yesterday.

Using Second Life as a learning environment

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Second Life and Information Literacy

This is a 3 minute video I created, for use with a talk I'm giving in Prague on Thursday (I'll post the presentation as well). It gives four examples of information literacy /librarians in Second Life: a discussion and an exhibition on Infolit iSchool, the IS Cream van on Vue (Edinburgh University), and Boolean pool on Know How island. Video created by me (Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life) using Screenr and Animoto, with creative commons licensed music via Animoto.

"Report from IFLA" event in Second Life on 19 August

There will be a one-hour session in Second Life, the virtual world next Thursday August 19th, starting at 12 noon Second Life time (this is the same as Pacific time in the USA, see http://tinyurl.com/2wge69r for start time in other countries. Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life) will report backgive a brief report from the World Library and Information (IFLA) main Conference, 11-15 August, and in particular report with material from the pre-conference satellite meeting 8-9th August on Information Literacy: Context Community Culture (see the conference blog: http://infolitsatellite.blogspot.com/
The venue for the discussion is Infolit iSchool, as part of the Centre for Information Literacy Research discussion series: location http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/127/237/21/ - in order to participate you need a SL avatar (you can get one free on the SL website http://secondlife.com/) and need the SL browser installed on your computer (you download it free from that website).

There will be an exhibit of material from this satellite conference (part of which is shown in the picture) to stimulate discussion. Please come along in particular if you participated in the satellite event or the main conference, to contribute your views!

Information Literacy conference, and teaching LIS in Second Life

This coming week is the World Library and Information Conference. Firstly, I am conference chair for a pre-conference event on 8-9 August in Gothenburg, Sweden, Information Literacy: Culture, community, context. This is organised by the IFLA Information Literacy Section, of which I am a member. We have an exciting programme, which you can see on the conference blog: http://infolitsatellite.blogspot.com/. The blog will have the extended abstracts and other material from the conference. I will probably do the main blogging about that conference there rather than here, but in that case I will do some linking posts here too. I will blog information literacy matters from the main conference on this blog.
Secondly, at the main conference, I am presenting a paper coauthored with Professor Diane Nahl, of the University of Hawai'i, Sustaining learning for LIS [Library and Information Science] through use of a virtual world. The full paper is at http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla76/123-webber-en.pdf and the powerpoint is on Slidehare: I have embedded it below.

Sustaining learning for LIS through use of a virtual world

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Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces

There is some material for those who missed the closing seminar in the Children's and young people's digital literacies in virtual online spaces series (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and organised by researchers at Sheffield University, Sheffield Hallam University and Lancaster University). This closing event was held in Second Life (SL), the virtual world.
There is a log of the text chat from the event at http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/chatlog-19-june-v1 (the presentations used voice, but there were transcribers text chatting key points for each speaker, and the text chat also reflects discussion).
A set of pictures of the event in Second Life on 19 June can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23396182@N00/sets/72157624252095321/
The speakers were as follows:
Peggy Sheehy/ (SL name: Maggie Marat) “I'm not good at Math but my avatar is” (her website is at http://web.mac.com/peggysheehy/MetaVersEd_/Welcome.html
You can see Peggy Sheehy's slides on Slideshare.

I'm not good at Math but my avatar is

Additionally, Knowclue Kidd produced two videos from Peggy Sheehy's presentation: on Body Image and on Exploring identity.

The second speaker was Rebecca Black (SL: Starseed Sodwind) “Early Childhood Literacy in Virtual Worlds.” Her website is at http://www.gse.uci.edu/person/black_r/black_r_bio.php and the text which was transcribed in the event chatlog mostly uses a text that she provided.

The third speaker was Constance Steinkuehler (SL: Constance Carnot) "Virtual worlds at the nexus of a constellation of literacy practice." Her websites are http://www.constances.org and http://www.popcosmo.org. At the moment if you go to the conference venue (you need a SL avatar and the SL browser installed on your computer) at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/169/173/22 you can look through Constance Steinkuehler's presentation on the presentation board, and you can also pick up the conference pack (including a set of virtual clothes with the seminar logos).

Second Life and Inquiry Based Learning

On Monday I presented a poster as part of the Centre for Inquiry Based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS) summer fair at Sheffield University. It was on Second Life and Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) (this embeds the pdf version that I uploaded to slideshare):

Second Life and Inquiry Based Learning

At the fair there were posters on Inquiry Based Learning activities in numerous other Departments of my university (such as Law, English and Engineering). I have mentioned them before, but there are case studies online http://www.shef.ac.uk/cilass/cases/projectlist.html, some of which have an information literacy aspect. There was also a display from the librarians at Sheffield University and a poster about Sheffield's Information Literacy Network.

I'll also mention that I created a 3D version (in Second Life) of the framework for Inquiry Based Learning that has been developed through research by Philippa Levy (CILASS Director), and I recorded a screencast giving a short tour of the virtual 3D model a few weeks ago. This is the same model that you can see on my poster in 2D form.