Saylor.org are building a library of high-quality free online texts for a wide range of university courses. These all follow US based curricula outlines, but of course most will be equally useful anywhere in the world. The courses are arranged and grouped according to degree subject areas. So, for example, substantial progress has been made towards a complete set of texts for Computer Science degree level education.

There is also a current text-book writing competition, the Open Textbook Challenge, with prizes of $20,000 for accepted texts – and a number of job vacancies. I’d be very tempted to apply other than the requirement to attend monthly meetings in Washington D.C. (a big commute from Scotland!)

**Please Twit, share, post, or 1+ the following to help me promote virtual world language learning. Thank you so much! On with the show!**

I will be presenting at a fairly major international online conference next week and thought I would pass on this information to you. Many of you are aware I have been researching ways to use virtual worlds like Second Life for language learning. In the past few years I have grown my community, Cypris Chat (http://cyprischat.org), to over 500 active members from more than 40 countries. The conference I will be presenting at is focused on global awareness and education. I think it will be very exciting to show how a community like Cypris Chat has brought the world together with one main goal in mind, to learn or teach English. I hope this presentation will help promote this fantastic medium for educating students.

WHEN: Tuesday, November 15^th from 10:00pm to 11:00pm JST – 1:00pm – 2:00pm GMT

WHERE: Blackboard Collaborate link will be provided here on the 15^th: http://globaleducation.ning.com/page/globaledcon11-schedule-gmt-9-1 Please find my presentation in your time zone (Cypris Chat) I will be on Facebook during the presentation. Cypris Chat members can help you on our Facebook group page and chat channel here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/58820483559/

CONFERENCE INFORMATION

The 2011 Global Education Conference will be held November 14 – 18, online and free. Sessions will take place in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days. The 2010 Global Education Conference had 15,028 unique logins and presentations from 62 countries.

To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please join this network. The sessions schedule is now live and available in multiple time zones HERE.

http://globaleducation.ning.com (Notice the featured discussions. Mine is featured…wow)

Over 5,000 registered attendees. Hundreds of presenters over five days. 19 keynote speakers.

The conference sessions are being held in Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate), and can be accessed live from any personal computer. (All sessions will also be recorded and posted quickly after the conference.) All sessions are free to attend, and the links to the sessions will go live in the schedule when the conference starts.

To check that your computer is ready for Blackboard Collaborate, please click here. “Step 1″ will indicate if you have a version of Java that is compatible, and then “Step 2″ lets you actually go into a test session. We encourage you to do this in advance of the conference. If you have any difficulties, you can ask for help in the WeCollaborate.com user community.

MY (rough) PRESENTATION PROPOSAL

Session Title: Cypris Chat – Virtual World English Learning Community in Second Life

Session Strand (use the “tag”): 2011Teachers

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Your Name and Title: Mike McKay / Professor Merryman – Adjunct English Professor

Your Library, School, or Organization Name: Mukogawa Women’s University

Name(s) of Co-Presenter(s):

Session Description: Cypris Chat is a not-for-profit English learning community based in the virtual world of Second Life (http://secondlife.com). Visit my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/SLmerryman) to see videos which describe the community in detail. We have over 500 active members from more than 40 countries. The purpose of our community is to show how virtual worlds can make language learning immersive and real. We provide an environment which is friendly, safe, anonymous and interactive making it the perfect environment for experimenting with the language. Friendships and relationships have developed that will last a lifetime which shows that such a concept changes lives. This community certainly proves that global communication can be helped through the use of technology. Come learn more about what we do and why we do it.

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Japan

Your Bio: Mike McKay (aka Professor Merryman) is an adjunct professor of English at Mukogawa Women’s university in Nishinomiya, Japan. He is an American expat and holds a Master of Education with an emphasis in Technology. His research is focused on providing his students with more realistic opportunities for learning and practicing English. Technology has proven to be the best medium for him based on the fact that living in another English speaking country is simply not feasible. He hopes to bring the world to Japan and provide learners of all ages, young and old, with a place to learn, explore, live and enjoy in English. The results of his research could be applied to all languages. His presentation is meant to share his experiences and what one could do to begin learning about this wonderful teaching medium.

Link to GlobalEdCon11 Session Proposal (full URL with http://): http://globaleducation.ning.com/forum/topics/cypris-chat-virtual-world-english-learning-community-in-second

Target Audience: Educators, Educational Technologists, Teachers, Parents, Secondary+ Students, Language Learners

During gameplay, students naturally produce rich sequences of actions while performing complex tasks, drawing on a variety of competencies. Evidence needed to assess the competencies is thus provided by the players’ interactions with the game itself (i.e., the processes of play), which can be contrasted with the end product(s) of an activity—the norm in educational environments.

This presentation will describe the design and development of evidence-based assessments (embedded in a game) to measure 21st Century competencies. When embedded assessments are so seamlessly woven into the fabric of the learning environment that they’re invisible, called ‘stealth assessment’ (Shute, 2011; Shute, Ventura, Bauer, & Zapata-Rivera, 2009). Stealth assessments within games provide a way to monitor a player’s current level on valued competencies. That information can then be used as the basis for support, such as adjusting the difficulty level of challenges or providing timely feedback. One to two examples of the approach will be provided, time permitting.

Audience members are encouraged to participate and contribute.

More details, including link to local times for your time zone from the Transforming Assessment site: http://www.transformingassessment.com/

Stephen Downes’ first pick is Learning Science Through Computer Games and Simulation, while The Rise of Games and High Performance Computing for Modeling and Simulation looks more at the capabilities of games for scientific applications.

My own recommendation would be the expanded edition of How People Learn – which summarizes a wide variety research findings from across the learning sciences is a very straightforward way.

I’m looking forward to digging into this amazing resource, but perhaps I need to start with something that will help me deal with the sheer volume of knowledge now freely available? Something like Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages perhaps? Although sadly this one doesn’t yet appear to be available for download.

Some good quotes from Clifford Nass:

“It seemed as though they could actually do two things at once. What do these kids know that I don’t? It drove me crazy. That’s what inspired my research.”

But he found that “they’re not amazing. They can’t really do it.” His research shows that the students’ memories were disorganised; they fixated on irrelevant data, could not follow specific directions that required paying attention and wrote poorly.

… “We’ve reached a period where attention is no longer valued. There’s been a cultural change where we’ve forgotten about the idea of paying attention,” he says. “And people have started to resent that.”

I haven’t banned laptops from my own lectures – indeed, only small numbers of students bring laptops to lectures at UWS, so it hasn’t really been a major issue. In some classes I’ve given out laptops – but that has been to allow students to do practical work at set points in a class (its hard to teach programming in a lecture). I have this year used mobile phone based response/poll systems in class and that did work well – using the technology to concentrate attention on the task, without allowing it to become a distraction seems to be key.

Sherry Turkle makes a very worthwhile point:

But what professors are learning to say is: ‘You know what? In this class we’re here to be with each other. We’re here to be a community. Let’s make the most of it.’

There are of course two sides to this – lecturers need to do their part to engage students and to try to promote learning – and students need to learn how best to help themselves and understand the negative impacts of partial attention.

(See some of the other posts here on multi-tasking for links to other studies)

My short piece for EDUCAUSE Review “Second Life is Dead. Long Live Second Life?” is now online. I’ve had a few emails from different folk, generally in agreement. No hate mail yet

In the same week, I learned that Computer Games and Instruction, edited by Sigmund Tobias and JD Fletcher, is now available. I co-wrote a chapter in this book with Jon Richter on Multi-User Games and Learning – trying to encapsulate this broad, broad area in a single chapter, quite a challenge. The book also contains chapters by James Paul Gee, Chris Dede and Kurt Squire amongst others – so we are in very good company. I’m looking forward to receiving my own copy, but for now I have to settle for scanning the pages available via the Google-books preview (available from the book page, here)

Table of contents below.

SECTION I: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GAMES

Introduction, Sigmund Tobias and J. D. Fletcher

Searching For the Fun in Learning: A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of Educational Video Games, Alex Games and Kurt D. Squire

Using Video Games as Educational Tools in Healthcare, Janis A. Cannon-Bowers, Clint Bowers, and Katelyn Procci

After the Revolution: Game-Informed Training in the U.S. Military, Ralph Ernest Chatham

Multi-User Games and Learning: A Review of the Research, Jonathon Richter and Daniel Livingstone.

SECTION II: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND REACTIONS

Review of Research on Computer Games, Sigmund Tobias, J. D. Fletcher, David Yun Dai, and Alexander P. Wind

Reflections on Empirical Evidence on Games and Learning, James Paul Gee

Developing a Research Agenda for Educational Games and Simulations, Chris Dede

Comments on Research Comparing Games to Other Instructional Methods, Marc Prensky

SECTION III: COMPUTER GAME ISSUES

Multimedia Learning and Games, Richard E. Mayer

Action Game Play as a Tool to Enhance Perception, Attention and Cognition, Ashley F. Anderson and Daphne Bavelier

Developing an Electronic Game for Vocabulary Learning: A Case Study, Michael L. Kamil and Cheryl Taitague.

Instructional Support in Games, Henny Leemkuil and Ton de Jong

Implications of Constructivism for the Design and Use of Serious Games, Jamie R. Kirkley, Thomas M. Duffy, Sonny E. Kirkley, and Deborah L. H. Kremer

Implications of Game Use for Explicit Instruction, Putai Jin and Renae Low

Cost Analysis in Assessing Games for Learning, J. D. Fletcher

Using Computer Games to Teach Adult Learners Problem Solving, Joan (Yuan-Chung) Lang and Harold F. O’Neil

Gender and Gaming, Elisabeth R. Hayes

Computer Games and Opportunity to Learn: Implications for Teaching Students from Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds, David Yun Dai and Alexander P. Wind

SECTION IV: EVALUATION AND SUMMING UP

Stealth Assessment in Computer-Based Games to Support Learning, Valerie J. Shute.

Computer Games, Present and Future, Sigmund Tobias and J. D. Fletcher.

In this months Edge (UK gaming magazine, Issue 216, July 2010), video-game design consultant N’gai Croal resets a cosmic balance when he suggests that game designers think like teachers…

the primary goal of the developer should be not to punish the player … the developer should be invested not in the player’s failure but in the player’s success

and

developers could probably learn a lot from talking to teachers

Bringing Gee and N’Gai together then tells us that educators can learn from how the best games teach their players – and game designers can learn from how the best teachers teach their students. The circle is complete!

On the Horizon is the strategic planning resource for education professionals in the international post secondary and life-long learning arena. An environmental scanning journal, On the Horizon covers corporate universities, e-learning, private for-profit degree granting institutions as well as the traditional university. Areas include the business of education delivery, content and certification, as well as rules and regulations in areas such as institutions and intellectual property.

And for this week, as the featured journal of Emerald Press, online access to the journal is free – including full text of all articles. See the list of issues here [EDIT: Link broken as of 10am 29th April - hopefully a temp problem at Emerald - the journal page is here, but no access to contents until link fixed]. The 2009 issues are well worth a view – including special issues on virtual worlds, gaming and simulation, distributed learning environments and (an intriguing title!) Future consciousness in learning.

Remember – this is for one week only!

While players got progressively better at the games, the gains were not transferable, Nature journal reports.

Players gained nothing in terms of general reasoning, memory, planning or visuospatial abilities, experts found.

But they say more work is needed to see if workouts for the mind can help keep the brain “fit” as it ages.

More on the program here.

Note that this is distinct and quite different from the Brain Training study that LTS ran in Scottish schools – which did find that math Brain Training games did help students learn math (published in BJET). There will be a number of reasons for the difference – the LTS study was using games which asked students to do exercises similar to normal arithmetic exercises – and math was still being taught in class. Perhaps successful transfer of learning is boosted when learning in a game is reinforced with learning in a second setting?

(Offhand, a lot of work on transfer of learning has shown that being able to apply problem solving skills in multiple domains requires learning in multiple domains – which is why some children can solve problems in math class but not solve similar problems in different settings, or vice versa).