Becoming virtual: prerequisites to learning in virtual worlds

Mark Childs13th Sept 2010

Preamble 1: Teaching approaches

• Associative – we can look around and observe, take in information from models, objects, notecards.

• Cognitive – exploring, creating, making sense of spaces and events and integrating experiences into prior knowledge.

• Situative – co-creating knowledge through discussion, exchange of ideas.

Preamble 2: Presence

Preamble 3: Bodies

Body image/body project Body schema

“for some, bodies can become conscious ‘body projects’ to manipulate this means of

representing identity to others” – Phoenix

“body schema is for action and body image is for identification’’ – de Vignemont

What bodies mean

Findings - quantitative

Qualitative findings: associative

• At first, students have to focus on software.• Can answer questions that constitute a

“window at” technology (hypermediacy).• After an hour or two, students acquire enough

competence at operating software. • Can answer factual questions about spaces

that constitute a “window through” technology (immediacy).

More findings - situative

• Students engaged in social constructivist activities, such as discussions, identity formation tend to:– Value social presence.– Use avatars as identifiers.– Prioritise avatar design even above navigation.– Feel exposed to peers and particularly non-

classmates.

Qualitative findings: cognitive

Experiential learning, field trips, etc.• At an early stage students could not answer

“what does this space feel like?”• Also could not answer questions on what

could be inferred about communities from the spaces.

• The former can take weeks or months.• The latter years, maybe never.

What’s going on?

The interpretation of these data is:• To purely communicate information, IVWs can

be treated as just a piece of software.• For more complex activities, IVWs need to be

learned as a world, and avatars as bodies, as in the physical world.

Virtual body image

• Used as a basis for social interaction.• Needs to be designed, personalised,

recognisable, aligned to identity.• Situative learning activities need to be

preceded by:– Time designing the look.– Shopping.

Virtual body schema

• Given enough time spent inworld, virtual body becomes mapped to body schema, technology “disappears into the architecture of the body”.– Proprioception (Rowe). – Appropriation (Littleton et al).– Approprioception (me).

• Around the same time students report “feeling the atmosphere of the space”.

A link?

• Embodied cognition.• “Cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the

body’s interactions with the world” – Wilson.• For cognition in virtual worlds to be effective :.

need to establish virtual body schema.

Bodies defined by acting

• Interaction is not what the objects do, it’s what the avatars do

• Experiential activities need to be preceded by a long time:– Acting inworld / interacting with spaces– Locations that have an emotional resonance

A FRAMEWORK FOR ENGAGEMENT

Contact

• mark.childs@coventry.ac.uk• SL: Gann McGann• Portfolio at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/edrfap/• Thesis available on request

ReferencesSlide 2Mayes, T. and de Freitas, S. (2004). Review of e-learning frameworks, models

and theories: JISC e-learning models desk study, JISC

Slide 8Childs, M. (2010) A conceptual framework for mediated environments,

Educational Research 52, 2, June 2010, 197–213

Slide 10Phoenix, A. (2007) Identities and diversities, in D. Miell, A. Phoenix and K.

Thomas (eds) DSE212 Mapping Psychology Book 1, The Open Universityde Vignemont, F. (2007). Habeas corpus: The sense of ownership of one’s

own body. Mind and Language, 22(4), 427–449.

ReferencesSlide 12Dobson, S. (2009) Remediation. Understanding New Media: Revisiting a Classic,

Seminar.net - International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning, 5 (2)

Slide 17Littleton, K., Toates, F. and Braisby, N. (2007) Three Approaches to Learning, in

D. Miell, A. Phoenix and K. Thomas (Eds.) DSE212 Mapping Psychology Book 1, The OU

Murray, D.C. and Sixsmith, J. (1999) The Corporeal Body in Virtual Reality, Ethos, 27 (3) Body, Self, and Technology (Sep., 1999), 315-343

Slide 18Wilson, M. (2002) Six views of embodied cognition, Psychonomic Bulletin &

Review 2002, 9 (4), 625-636