I just had a great experience participating in a group discussion that was based on a TED video talk with Philip Rosedale titled “Second Life, where anything is possible.”  I find the Second Life phenomena very interesting.  It is one of the few topic areas where the smartest people I know, hold very different opinions from each other.   Not that all of my reference group ever agrees on any particular topic, but opinion about the value of Second Life seems to bring out the extremes.

In any event, the video and facilitation activity got me thinking a bit.  Personally, I have a lot of time for Second Life.  Not that I actually spend all that much time in my remarkably buff avatar, but I am very willing to spend a lot of time listening to what other folks have to say about it.  And, after listening attentively and watching people react to what we at the World Campus are doing with Second Life, I am quite convinced that the idea has a tremendous amount of potential for extending the range of learning experiences.  (This is when I know some of my colleagues roll their eyes and others smile.)

I would like to share a thought that has been hibernating for a while, and just started stirring  (actually transforming) again.  About a year ago I read an article that reference the Graphic Turing Test, which is basically the application of Alan Turing’s test for machine based artificial intelligence to virtual graphical environments.  Simply, the basic Turing test…

… proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which try to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. In order to test the machine’s intelligence rather than its ability to render words into audio, the conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen.

The “Graphic Turing” test is basically the same thing, but not only removes the limitation placed on conversation to include just text, but also expands the challenge to include graphical representations of actors.  One of the actors will be a representation of a human (biological programs), while other avatar is a representation of an “artificial” nature (computer programs).  Now this test has some pretty high standards.  For example to pass the test, the artificially generated simulation would have to at least exhibit:

• comprehensive communication with the judge and other “intelligent” actors,
• realistic biomechanical movement (including reaction times, expressions of curiosity, etc.),
• awareness of its environment (spatial awareness and awareness of the characteristics typically possessed by objects), and
• empathy.

As an aside, and not surprisingly, apparently there has been some progress on the graphical Turing test, which was reviewed in the eeTimes AI researchers think ‘Rascals’ can pass Turing test article published last year.

This is all good, and on my first reading it got me pretty excited, then I watched the TED video talk with Philip Rosedale and realized that the Turing Test that I have been fixated on does not get me where I want to go.  That is, from my perspective, the Turing test might not hit the mark.  In his talk, Rosedale talked about how as a child he wanted his bedroom door to recede into his ceiling instead of operating like a typical swinging door.  Apparently he performed some basic carpentry and cut a hole through his bedroom ceiling and rigged a garage door opener in the attic to pull the door through the ceiling.  I suppose the he got into a bit of trouble from his parents, but Rosedale’s point was that it would have been great to have had a virtual bedroom that allows for alternative door design.  It would have quicker, caused him less tension with his parents, and he would have had the opportunity to try various designs.

For this to be satisfying, Rosedale would have had to be emotionally attached enough to his Second Life bedroom so success or failure met his original needs to experiment and create.  If it did not, he would have to resort to cutting holes in his parent’s house anyway.  This means that he would have to personally care about his virtual self and his virtual bedroom to the same degree as he cared about his “real” self and his real bedroom (at least for the purposes being considered).  The environment would have to behave in such a way that it allows for a sense of satisfaction on the accomplishment, which brings me back to my revelation.  The Graphical Touring test sets the bar too high.  If we needed Second Life and other virtual worlds to meet that test, little boys and girls would be performing amateur carpentry on their parent’s houses for decades to come. Right now, at least relative to Second Life, I am more interested in a test that…

“… proceeds as follows: a learner engages in an interaction in a virtual space with another human actor or object, and for specific educational purposes, they care as much about the experience that they have based on what they witness and the impact of their actions on the their environment and themselves as they would have in a traditional non-virtual environment, to achieve the pedagogical intent of the experience.”

I am not sure if this test exists, and if so, what it is called, but I think that for educational applications in environment like Second Life, it is relevant.  The virtual and non-virtual experiences do not have to be absolutely indistinguishable, as they would be in a Touring Test, they just have to elicit indistinguishable emotional responses in the actor for the educational purposes desired.

Yesterday, after watching the TED video talk with Philip Rosedale, a facilitated discussion was opened.  The facilitator was Shannon Ritter, who serves as the World Campus Community Development Advisor and is responsible for much of the World Campus Second Life Island and is quite experienced with Second Life.  The first question that was asked after the video was “Is it safe to talk to strangers in Second Life?” to which Shannon responded, “Well it depends on how you define safe.”  The exchange continued in a way that made it clear that the individual was concerned for the safety of both her virtual and real self, which I think opens all sorts of potential for educational experiences.

As you saw in a previous post, last Wednesday was the official opening of the Penn State World Campus space in the virtual world of Second Life.  We spent the day chatting with students from around the world, other World Campus staff, and colleagues from other universities.  Over the course of twelve hours, we saw 78 unique visitors, 139 visits and the average time spent in the space was 52 minutes.

Spending time chatting with our students and getting to know a little  more about them was such a wonderful experience.  We had students from the USA, France, and Spain chatting with us in addition to World Campus staff members that work in locations outside the Outreach Building.  We brainstormed about ideas for student meetings in Second Life and listened to students talk about what’s important to them and what they like and dislike about their courses.  We met colleagues from other institutions curious to see our space, and discussed their projects in Second Life as well.  It was a wonderful day.

Our opening was followed on Thursday by two amazing events - the launch of the Penn State Outreach intranet and a live music concert in Second Life to benefit the Penn State Dance Marathon.  The intranet launch was amazingly successful and it was so exciting to be part of it and watch people from all across Outreach connecting with each other and learning more about each other - just like we had done with colleagues and students the day before in Second Life.  The live music benefit concert for THON was held on our PSU World Campus space in Second Life and attracted over 60 people who enjoyed the music, danced, and donated to THON to help us fight pediatric cancer.  The Penn State Dance Marathon (THON) is the largest student-run philanthropic event in the world and for the first time, Penn State World Campus is an official fundraising organization for THON.  Using things like Second Life and Facebook to raise awareness and support for this cause are just a few of the ways that World Campus can take advantage of technology and social networking to make a difference.

Last week was an exciting week at Penn State Outreach and Penn State World Campus.  With the launch of the Second Life space, the connections we’re making with co-workers and students, and the exciting ways we’re using technology to meet and learn more about each other, we’re making a difference in lives every day.

If you’re in Second Life, stop and see us - we’d love to meet and connect with you too!

Next week, on January 28, the Penn State World Campus island in Second Life will officially open.  Our space in Second Life has already allowed us to connect with students, staff and faculty from World Campus and other Penn State campuses.  We have hosted a virtual tailgate during All University Day at Penn State, we’ve gathered together to watch a live webcast of the Penn State homecoming parade, and we’ve listened to amazing live musicians at benefit concerts for the Penn State Dance Marathon - and we haven’t even officially opened yet!

Providing this virtual space for our campus allows us an additional opportunity to build community among our students, faculty, and staff. Just as students gather together in student centers on our residential campuses, they can now do the same on our virtual campus.  I’ve met prospective students, graduate students, undergraduate students and alumni on our Second Life island.  Each and every time I meet someone new, I’m reminded just how powerful meeting and connecting with others can be in this sort of environment.

Our goal in creating this space in Second Life is to connect our students outside the classroom so that we can begin to build a community of engaged, active learners who feel connected not only to the experience, but to the university.  Distance education students can feel disconnected and at times less a part of the university than their counterparts who may be studying on a residential campus, but using tools like Second Life, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube, we can begin to give them different ways to connect with us, and with each other.

If you are in Second Life and available next Wednesday, January 28, please come and say hello! We’ll be at “PSU World Campus” in Second Life and we’d love to meet you.

I hope that you’ll bear with me as I bring a slightly different approach to the posts here at Terra Incognita. My interests and passions fall directly in the argument for openness and transparency across all forms of teaching and learning. I am not going to write a case for opening learning or open courseware, but I will attempt to engage you in a discussion related to our overall willingness to change some of our fundamental models to empower those around us to participate.

I am curious of how we see the emergence of remix culture and where it fits into our domain — and I am really anxious to know if these notions resonate with the readers here. So if my post misses the mark I apologize in advance, but with that …

I have been making the argument lately that what is beginning to happen (in a more general sense) is that the web is finally starting to fulfill its promise as a platform to support and extend conversations. I know this isn’t news to those of us who have been ultra-connected for the last 10 years, but its emergence recently to a larger audience is very interesting in several ways.

The ability to instantly create and share is shattering the notions many institutions have built their teaching and learning models on. The emergence of the social web has jump started discussions around open learning, engaged communities of practice, Creative Commons, and so much more. This focus is bringing into question our reliance on closed tools to support teaching and learning practice. Faculty and students alike are interested in participating easily inside the academy just like they can outside in a place like Facebook. It is a frustrating world we live in and I am not sure we are paying close enough attention.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time talking to people in the newspaper industry to help them understand our students and what they mean to their continuously downward trending subscription rates. One thing is certain, they are afraid. They are obviously fighting for their lives in an industry where there seems to be few answers. I talk with them about how important it is to embrace new practices and models, to rethink the role of the traditional publication, and to look at trends across the social web that can be superimposed on their space. The announcement that The Christian Science Monitor will go to a totally online newspaper has brought new focus on the inevitable need to rethink existing practice and embrace a more open model of publication. Clearly circulation is plummeting for all sorts of reasons, but the short sighted lack of acceptance of the social web is a major factor in my mind.

At the same time, other media industries are actually starting to get it. For the longest time many of them have either ignored the power of the web or dismissed it as the land of the criminal. It appears that some of them are starting to see that there is huge potential for letting people participate. The lessons from a space like youtube.com has not only transformed the ease with which one can publish online, it has totally shattered the notions of presence, conversation, and ownership. The fact that I can easily, with a couple of clicks, publish video with a global audience that can be instantly mashed up, commented on, and embedded in any website on the planet is pretty staggering. The fact that big media has ignored this opportunity is, to me, even more astonishing.

My problem with this is that I believe higher education is further behind accepting these simple facts.

The best example of big media getting it I can point to is the emergence of hulu.com as a real player in the online TV distribution world. Not only can I do almost all of my TV watching online for free, but I am now able to do something that I never thought I’d see from the likes of NBC — embed real TV content on my own site legally. Not only do they give you the simplicity of the embed tags, but they even let one embed custom versions of the content. If I only want to point to 30 seconds of a Saturday Night Live piece, I can do that. With this simple affordance, the future of personalized media just took another step forward. Where are the tools for education that take advantage and promote these ideas?

Imagine what that does to student expectations? If a student can control NBC, why in their mind can’t a faculty member respond to email on her terms? The future is happening right in front of us. I think it creates some interesting questions for our course and learning management systems, our policies, and our responsibility to promote open access to content. With the rise of blogs, with easily embedable media, and the explosion of point and click user-generated content what should the new tools look like for teaching and learning?

I have, for the most part, abandoned the notion of the walled garden as the assignment dumping ground via CMS drop boxes and have instead fully embraced the concepts of student centered creation. As we attempt to drive more students towards portfolio thinking via open platforms, what will it look like to turn an assignment in? Should we be rethinking a model built around aggregation that allows content to be “owned” by the creator and more easily shared to the faculty and the learning community? What does it mean for life long learning and an ability to connect with a broad community? How is moving towards a distributed set of resources that are easily reused going to challenge our control over curriculum? These are just some of the questions I am asking my administration and staff. People wonder if the print media folks are listening … I am more concerned if we are paying attention as well.

I’d love to hear thoughts.

Penn State University recently celebrated “All University Day”.  This day brings together students from all of Penn State’s campuses and recognizes those students and campuses during the halftime celebration of a Penn State football game.  Penn State World Campus participated in this event and ten of our amazing students traveled from their homes in Texas, California, South Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with us here at Penn State’s University Park campus.

Our students arrived on Friday afternoon and evening and we welcomed them with a tailgate featuring local BBQ, great conversation, and the opportunity to mingle and meet World Campus staff members and the Nittany Lion himself.  Saturday’s events consisted of a rehearsal for the halftime celebration, a tailgate for all the participants, and a fantastic football game between Penn State and Illinois that evening.

This year’s event also featured something else - a virtual component. For the first time, All University Day was also celebrated in a virtual world.  Penn State World Campus now has a private area in the virtual world of Second Life and the All University Day celebration there consisted of a virtual tailgate, guided tours, a live musical performance from a former World Campus student, and the opportunity for students, staff and faculty to meet and mingle with each other.  Throughout the course of the day, visitors included Penn State faculty members, staff members, World Campus students, prospective students who were considering attending Penn State, and Penn State graduates. It was truly an amazing day and wonderful experience.  Hours after the “official” event concluded in Second Life, several staff members and students remained watching the Penn State vs. Illinois football game online while discussing the game with others in Second Life.

Second Life and education have been hand-in-hand for years and this environment certainly provides us with the opportunity to experience our learning in ways not possible in the physical world.  These virtual spaces are not limited to classes, however, and Penn State World Campus plans to use Second Life as a way to provide our students with a way to connect with their education in a very different way.  Online students face different challenges than resident students not the least of which is developing a sense of belonging and pride in their campus experience.  Creating a virtual campus space for our students is the first step in personalizing online education, unlocking the power of informal learning and connections, and building a community of learners.  We’re looking forward to meeting you there.

-Shannon

I want to welcome Martin Weller and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software and Open Educational Resources on Education series on Terra Incognita.  Martin will be discussing the SocialLearn project, which is the Open University’s attempt to create an open API-based social networking system for learning. He will look at some of the motivations behind the project, what it hopes to achieve and how the technology is being used as the medium through which the institution itself comes to understand the changes happening in society and in education as a result of digital technologies.

Martin Weller serves as a Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. He chaired the OU’s first major online course with 15,000 students, was the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Project Director and is now Director of the SocialLearn project. His interests are in elearning, web 2.0 and the implications of new technologies for higher education. He blogs at The Ed Techie.

I have been following Martin’s work for some time through reputation and through his many open blog contributions.  I am very excited about having Martin contribute to the Impact series and look forward to some active participation and development of dialog.  Martin’s post is scheduled for October 15, 2008.  Please feel free to comment (early and often!), ask questions, build on the conversation, and enjoy.

A few weeks ago I participated in my second graduation celebration for World Campus and Continuing Education learners at Penn State. I would have a hard time really explaining why I enjoy the graduation events so much. But really, what is not to enjoy? Learners bring family and friends to spend a few hours with the people who they have grown to know over the phone and through email. In addition to bringing guests, learners can invite a Penn State employee, which tends to be an adviser or member of the faculty. Food and drink is available, we have light live background music, children run around the lobby, the formal part of the ceremony is brief and up beat, photos are taken, and we even include a short induction ceremony for learners entering the Alpha Sigma Lambda honors society.

Everybody, I really mean everybody, seems to enjoy themselves. Hugs are shared between learners and their invited guests, stories are told, and everybody leaves with a smile and some swagger, feeling pretty good about themselves and Penn State. During this Summer’s celebration we had learners who joined us from across the country, making special and expensive trips to be with each other and us. So, and here is the pointed question, why do such a small percentage of our graduating learners join us in person? About 50 percent of learners who study in programs delivered through the World Campus are out of State, many are working adults who would perhaps find it difficult to give-up a Saturday to spend in State College, and some might just not feel “connected” enough to bother.

This last possibility is an important one for Penn State. I am not a Penn State graduate, but I can see what the Penn State experience means to so many students and other members of our community. The connection with the University is an important “asset” that a learner gets beyond their development and degree, it is something that they have for life, and it is troubling that distance learners might be missing out.

So what can we do about this? How can we overcome the barriers of distance, schedule, and organizational isolation to provide the opportunity for “connection?” Obviously connection does not happen at or because of a graduation ceremony. There has to be something else going on. Within the resident world of Penn State very little institutional effort is placed on generating “connection” within classes, while enormous amounts of resources are invested in creating connection outside of the class experience.

We have a culture of Penn State identity that revolves around community events such as football, Thon, All University Day, and hundreds of other University and student activities. In distance education, on the other hand, we have spent a lot of time considering and designing “connection” into class experiences through formal learning design, but relatively little in forming connection through social presence “outside” of class. I guess that this should lead us to ask if “connection” to Penn State is important to distance learners and why is it so evident in some and absent in others?

Given the growing number of learners who are taking online courses and participating in study “at a distance,” should a lack of “connection” be a concern for some types of Universities? I think so. If so, who is doing anything about it? A few months ago I asked the question, Where are all the Global Online MBAs?. Now I am asking, “Where is all of the great online student activity programming for distance learners?”

Open educational resources and personalized learning environments are hot topics these days in higher education and you’ve seen many related discussions here on Terra Incognita about these subjects. This idea of openness and personalization is something that I’m extremely passionate about, but from a slightly different perspective – social networking.

Social networking is a term that’s being tossed around quite a bit lately and is a pretty sweeping term used to define the use of tools and sites to develop and build online communities. I’m quite certain that everyone reading this blog has used some form of online social networking.

At Penn State World Campus we’re beginning to take advantage of the opportunities with tools like twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Second Life in the hopes of building a true, active community of faculty, staff and learners. I’ll be talking about these tools in detail in future posts, but for today we’ll concentrate on twitter. If you’re tired of hearing about twitter, just give me five minutes of your time and let me tell you how twitter has really, truly, changed things at Penn State.

When I first read about twitter I thought, as many others have, that it was the most ridiculous, waste of time, arrogant social networking site I’d ever seen. I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would care what I was doing and I could not fathom any reason why I would need to know those details about anyone else either. I thought that anyone that had time to sit around all day and just answer twitter’s simple question of “What are you doing right now?” in 140 characters or less really needed something more to do in life.

Once I took a step back and started thinking less about what valuable content I could possibly provide via twitter and more about what I could learn from others, twitter changed for me. The brilliant thing about twitter is that it’s simple, easy to use, and you choose who you want to learn from. For instance, if I’m interested in learning more about social networking, I can go to Summize (a twitter search engine recently acquired by twitter itself) and type in “social networking.” Summize will give me a feed of people on twitter that have been discussing social networking and then I can learn about those people and follow them with twitter. So now twitter isn’t about me, but about what I can learn from others in the field.

At Penn State, twitter has changed the culture on campus and has given us ways to connect across our university that we couldn’t have imagined. We’ve used twitter to ask for help, work on projects, discuss topics during conferences, schedule impromptu lunches, and offer things for sale. We’ve planned meetings, found opportunities to collaborate and have become a much more connected, intelligent, communicative group that now includes people from several Penn State campuses, departments and academic colleges. We are IT professionals, professors, advisers, learning designers, and students. We have used twitter to build a community that now thrives at Penn State.
For some examples of how the Penn State community has used twitter, you can go to Summize and search for “#LDSC08″ or simply visit http://hashtags.org and take a look at the twitter discussion from Penn State’s most recent TLT Symposium held in March of 2008.

We’re incredibly excited about the things we can do in online and distance education with social networking and I can’t wait to share more of it with you. In the meantime, if you’re using twitter or have decided to give it a try, feel free to follow me on twitter. I’d love to meet you.

-Shannon