Tranforming Assessment

August 29, 2011 — Daniel

The new season of online presentations on Transforming Assessment continues on the 7th of September with a presentation on “Stealth assessment: embedded evidence-based assessment in games” from Valerie Shute

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/

Posted in Assessment, Education, Games Based Learning, Learning, Technology. 2 Comments »

Using Web 2.0 Tools to Develop and Support a Multi-Campus Class

June 12, 2011 — Daniel

I was at the JISC RSC Scotland SW Future Focus event on Friday. There were some great sessions during the day – Jane Hart gave the opening keynote, with a very motivational (and fun) afternoon keynote from Gavin Oates of Tree of Knowledge. In between I attended a couple of sessions related to games and 3D technologies in education: Dr Vassilis Charissis 3D training applications for surgeons and medics, and Keith Quinn’s demonstration of the use of the PSP Second Sight application to develop augmented distance learning training packs for Glasgow City Council. More details on these and other talks in the full programme.

The event closed off with an awards ceremony awarding prizes to some of the institutions and individuals who submitted case studies to “Best of the West” – a collection of examples of effective and innovative practice, to help share knowledge and expertise across the region.  There are about 50 of these, and they are well worth a browse – covering a wide range of tools and technologies across a range of disciplines in FE and HE. My own case study – Using Web 2.0 Tools to Develop and Support a Multi-Campus Class – has a bit of everything bar the kitchen sink, as I used a bunch of different resources and technologies to allow me to develop new materials for a multi-campus class with limited time. The class finished after writing up the case study, and I’m pleased that it received some of the most favourable feedback I’ve ever had from students. Re-writing the module as it was being taught was undeniably hard work – but the technologies and resources used both made it easier and made it better than it would have been otherwise.

On Friday I was extremely surprised to find out that my case study was one of six shortlisted in the Teaching and Learning category of the awards – and somewhat taken aback when I was awarded a Highly Commended prize. As you can see by the breadth of my smile here.

 

Posted in Assessment, Teaching, Technology. No Comments »

Computer Games and Instruction

April 13, 2011 — Daniel

Nothing for ages, then it all happens at once…

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.

(more…)

Posted in Education, Games Based Learning, Learning, Teaching, Technology, Virtual Worlds. No Comments »

Article: Virtual Worlds, Standards & Interoperability

October 29, 2010 — Daniel

New paper just published… sadly not free to view. Not even sure if I get pre-prints to distribute :-/

Livingstone, D., & Hollins, P. (2010). Virtual Worlds, Standards and Interoperability. International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research, 8(2), 45-59. doi:10.4018/jitsr.2010070104

Abstract
It is well documented that virtual worlds today are applied in both educational and commercial teaching and learning contexts. Where virtual worlds were once the reserve of entertainment, they have now taken on a variety of roles as platforms for business meetings, simulation, and training and education. In this context, the integration and interoperability with both online and offline resources and technologies is important. In this paper, the authors review progress toward increased integration and interoperability from the first virtual world games to today’s virtual world platforms. This paper highlights opportunities that will arise from further improvements in the ability to create virtual world platforms, content and activities that are truly interoperable, as well as more significant challenges along the way.

Posted in Technology, Virtual Worlds. Tags: . No Comments »

Open Access Again

October 23, 2010 — Daniel

Peter Miller reminds us that it’s Open Access week again, and shares instructions in a nice and brief tutorial that will get you set up with OpenSim on a USB stick and loading and saving sim archive OAR files. Very handy. Peter also points out usefully that OAR has some limitations – notably that it does not preserve (for now at least) information on who actually created the objects in the archive. I guess that that is one area where OAR (and OpenSim itself) could be improved – with the ability for objects & entire sims to preserve real IDs for creators, and attached licenses.

My own contributions for Open Access this year are little to do with virtual worlds – but over on 3dgamedev.wordpress.com I’ve been posting tutorials, labs and comments on 3D game development with OpenGL.

Posted in Game Development, Technology, Virtual Worlds. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Yet another blog…

October 6, 2010 — Daniel

This blog is overall pretty quiet of late – other things keeping me busy. One of them is http://3dgamedev.wordpress.com/ . I started this over a year ago, intending to put together a book based on my OpenGL classes. This didn’t get very far. So I’ve rebooted – instead I’ll be posting bits and bobs from my classes as and when I can. Powerpoints, handouts, examples. Bits and bobs.

Many of my notes use content that I’m not free to repost online, so don’t expect to see a complete course appearing there in the immediate future – but I’m starting to replace this content with stuff that I generate myself or that is CC.

If enough stuff ends up there, I can always rework it into something resembling a book format later :-)

Posted in Game Development, Technology. Tags: . No Comments »

Reward Systems that Drive Engagement

September 5, 2010 — Daniel

Over the summer I’ve been ‘running’ UNversity – an online choose-your-own-project summer un-school for UWS game technology and game development students. A key feature of this was that it had to require minimal investment of time from myself (other stuff to do!), but I wanted to try to engage students, and encourage regular participation. Using a custom Moodle site, with some minor hacks, we have a points system and a leader board. We also have a basic badge system  – though I haven’t been able to spend the time to award badges, and they aren’t automatically awarded – so students have to self track their badges until UNversity wraps up and I’ll give out certificates and prizes.

The system has kind of worked – it has engaged some folk, and once folk have got into it, they have indeed kept up regular participation. But a number of students started, and quickly stopped – while others never really got started.

I’ve just watched a video of a presentation on by Amy Jo Kim from GDC 2010 that might have helped me better design my points and badge system – MetaGame Design: Reward Systems that Drive Engagement. This has given me food for thought, and I can see a couple of ways I went wrong – particularly on the need to provide more ‘early’ rewards for people getting started, and making those more visible. (A way to automatically tweet or send a Facebook message  from Moodle would be nice to make this easier!)

Overall, I think I’d have been limited by what I had time to implement though, so I’m not going to beat myself up too much about it… but perhaps there is a good student project in this – building the system I need to do this better next year.

Posted in Assessment, Game Development, Games Based Learning, Social Networking, Students, Teaching, Technology. No Comments »

Make your blog Zotero friendly with COinS

July 12, 2010 — Daniel

I’ve known for a while about a data standard known as COinS.

This is publishing OpenURL data in an HTML format, and allows you to insert bibliographic metadata into web-pages. COinS data is normally hidden from human viewers – it exists to make it easier for other programs to extract relevant biblographic information from a web-page. If you are a Zotero (the fantastic free and open-source bibliographic software) user, you’ve almost certainly used COinS even if you don’t know what it is.

When browsing a the contents page of an issue of an academic journal or the search results from Google Scholar, a simple click of a button in Firefox allows you to instantly add all (or a selection) of the articles listed. It can do this because the webpage includes the COinS metadata for each of the papers and articles listed.

For an age I’ve been wanting to create COinS data for the papers on my own publications list – as well as for any articles I blog about. There is a COinS plug-in for WordPress – but this creates the COinS tag for each post on the blog, it’s not for creating COinS tags relating to the content of a post. Alternatively, COinS Generator will create tags for you – but requires laborious and tedious manual data entry. I just knew there had to be an easier way.

And indeed there was… and I’m kicking myself for not seeing it before.

Simply select the references you want want meta-data for, choose “Create bibliography from selected items…” – and “Save as HTML“. This will save the reference(s) as a web-page with COinS metadata included. Cut and paste from this file into your web-pages as required. With just a little work you can also paste references (and metadata) directly into WordPress or any other web-page.

First you need to tell Zotero which pages you want to paste metadata to (by default Zotero doesn’t include the metadata when you copy references to the clipboard). Open Zotero settings, then Preferences…, Export. Add a “site-specific setting” with the ‘+’ button. Enter the domain name (e.g. dlivingstone.com), choose an output format (e.g. APA, Harvard and so on), and check the Copy as HTML option.

Now, you can select references in Zotero, select your references, and simply drag into the text editor, like so (if you don’t have Zotero installed, view source to see the COinS metadata!):

Livingstone, D., & Fyfe, C. (2000). Modelling Language-Physiology Coevolution. In The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form (pp. 199-215). Cambridge University Press.  

Livingstone, D., & Kemp, J. (2006). Massively multi-learner: recent advances in 3D social environments. Computing and Information Systems Journal, School of Computing, University of Paisley, 10(2).  

Livingstone, D., & Kemp, J. (2008a). Integrating Web-Based and 3D Learning Environments: Second Life Meets Moodle. Upgrade: The European Journal for the Informatics Professional, IX(3), 8-14.  

Livingstone, D., & Kemp, J. (2008b). Integrando entornos de aprendizaje basados en Web y 3D: Second Life y Moodle se encuentran. (F. Sanchez, Tran.)Novatica, (193), 7-12.  

Posted in Technology. Tags: , . No Comments »

CfP: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds

July 12, 2010 — Daniel

Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds
Provisionally to be published in 2011 in Springer’s Human-Computer Interaction Series

Editors: Anna Peachey (Eygus Ltd / The Open University) and Mark Childs (Coventry University)

Invitation to Submit:
We invite abstracts of between 500 and 650 words describing the proposed chapter. Abstracts should be supported further by up to 500 words explaining the theoretical underpinning to the chapter, and a brief summary describing how this chapter will contribute to the book. If the work has been previously published in any format, or is under consideration elsewhere, please indicate details of this with your submission.

Submissions should be sent as a Word or RTF document attachment by email to virtualworlds@open.ac.uk, by 31 July 2010.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by 31 August 2010.
Final chapters, of between 8,000 and 10,000 words, will be due by 30 October 2010, before a double-blind review and revision period.
Completed manuscripts to be submitted on 15 December 2010.

Objectives:
We anticipate that this book will:
Explore how living, working and learning in virtual worlds is changing notions of who we are and how we mediate our identities;
Develop understanding and awareness about the diversity of identity issues in virtual worlds;
Contribute to the theory and development of good practice in identity management and research in virtual worlds;
Propose visions for future practice and research relating to identity management and research in virtual worlds;
Provide examples and case studies from key areas of professional practice.

Further details, including a more detailed guide to content, can be found at http://www.open.ac.uk/virtualworlds/p2_1.shtml

Posted in Call for Papers, Technology, Virtual Worlds. No Comments »

Call for Papers: Learning in 3D

July 1, 2010 — Daniel

Special Issue of the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL): Learning in 3D

Guest editors: Carlos Delgado Kloos and Daniel J. Livingstone

Download copy of call for special issue on 3D learning (pdf)

Journal Aims

IJTEL fosters multidisciplinary discussion and research on technology enhanced learning (TEL) approaches at the individual, organisational, national and global levels. Its key objective is to be the leading scholarly scientific journal for all those interested in, researching and contributing to the technology enhanced learning episteme. For this reason, IJTEL delivers research articles, position papers, surveys and case studies aiming:

  • To provide a holistic and multidisciplinary discussion on technology enhanced learning research issues
  • To promote the international collaboration and exchange of ideas and know how on technology enhanced learning
  • To investigate strategies on how technology enhanced learning can promote sustainable development

Subject Coverage of Special Issue

This special issue seeks to bring together research, from different perspectives, on a range of 3D technologies that may be used to enhance or support learning.
Suitable topics may relate to, but are not limited to, the use of a range of 3D technologies in enhancing learning:

  • Virtual Worlds
  • Game-based Learning
  • Immersive Simulation
  • Augmented Reality
  • Cross and mixed-reality
  • Assessment in 3D environments
  • Pedagogies for TEL in 3D environments
  • Communities of Learners in 3D environments
  • Standards and Interoperability

Submission

Prospective authors are invited to notify the intention to submit a paper by
sending a one-page abstract to the editors by 6th August 2010 and submit the full
paper by 6th September 2010.
Abstracts may be sent to the editors at cdk@it.uc3m.es or
daniel.livingstone@uws.ac.uk
Final papers should be submitted electronically via the InderScience online
submissions system at: http://bit.ly/ijtel

Important Dates

6th August 2010: Title and Abstract deadline (optional)
6th September 2010: Full paper submission deadline
15th October 2010: Decision notification
12th November 2010: Camera-ready version
Early 2011: Publication (tentative)

Guest Editors

Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés (Madrid, Spain), cdk@it.uc3m.es
Daniel J. Livingstone, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley PA1 2BE (Scotland, UK), Daniel.Livingstone@uws.ac.uk

Editorial Committee

Ignacio Aedo, UC3M, Spain
John Belcher, MIT, USA
Josep Blat, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Darryl Charles, University of Ulster, UK
Thomas Connolly, University of the West of Scotland, UK
Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, University of Ottawa, Canada
Lesley Gourlay, Coventry University, UK
Miguel Lizondo, Deimos-Space, Spain
Judith Molka-Danielsen, Molde University College, Norway
Mariano Rico, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Pilar Sancho Thomas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Kath Trinder, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK

Posted in Call for Papers, Education, Games Based Learning, Second Life, Technology, Virtual Worlds. Tags: . No Comments »
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