Transcript Using Virtual Worlds to Build Professional Proficiency William Eastwood, Ph.D. Oakland University [email protected] Empowering Students to Learn: 8th Annual Conference on Teaching and Learning May 14, 2014

Using Virtual Worlds to Build
Professional Proficiency
William Eastwood, Ph.D.
Oakland University
[email protected]
Empowering Students to Learn:
8th Annual Conference on Teaching and Learning
May 14, 2014
A familiar dilemma...
…how do we bridge the gap between our courses
today and students’ career success tomorrow?
Toward course design focusing on
career success
1. Desire
2. Practice
3. Reflection
Desire
“There are subjects that are school subjects and
there are subjects that are life subjects and
[students] can tell the difference. They work
harder at the life subjects. And what is the
difference between these two kinds of subjects?
Goals” (Schank 2011:4).
Desire
● A student wants to be there because she
knows the course will prepare her for the
future.
○ Explicit, post-college worth
○ Life-relevance, not just school-relevance
○ Motivated student
Practice
“This is the real use of education: the creation of new
habits. This can be done in only one way…by
repeated practice.” (Schank 2011: 17).
Practice
• Repeated activities in authentic contexts
o Real-life encounters that include life’s messiness
o Doing what professionals do.
o Doing it again and again.
o Under the mentorship of an instructor.
o Takes place where students are free to make mistakes.
Reflection
“You can move people ever so slightly by having them have
emotional experiences that they can discuss with one
another….” (Schank 2011: 43).
“Reflection-in-action” and “Reflection on action” (Schon 1987:
26)
• Thinking and talking about professional practice will improve
professional practice.
Reflection
• Students reflect on their practice through writing and group
discussion.
• Reflection includes whats, hows, whys, bad times, good
times.
• They reflect throughout the course and then after the course
is over.
• An instructor facilitates reflection by asking questions,
disclosing personal experiences, and using assigned readings.
My own course design based on
Desire, Practice, and Reflection
SOC-/AN-395: Ethnography in Second Life
What is Second Life?
• A persistent online, virtual world.
• Users create an avatar, and avatars interacts with the online
environment and other avatars.
• A “sandbox” community. Not necessarily a gaming world.
• International users.
• Free access. Free stuff.
Live from Munich
On Oakland University’s Island
Why use Second Life?
• Second Life provides students authentic contexts for
practice. Students can practice using ethnographic methods
in a real place.
“While being free and available to OU students, it is also a
genuine social landscape on which… real-life concerns,
meanings, and relations are made and lived out…. In Second Life
we study real people and … issues that are no less real for being
‘virtual’ or online” (Course Syllabus).
Why use Second Life?
• Many [anthropology] students have only cursory
overviews of methods. These often amount to
discussions about methods.
• Because it would be great in real life to organize or
participate in a fieldschool. But who can afford it?
• Second Life is free, accessible, and different from many
students’ everyday experiences.
What is “Ethnography in Second Life”?
•Description from course syllabus:
“This course endeavors to provide students a forum for
practicing ethnography, which they expect to use as graduate
students and professionals…. This is not a course about
Second Life or online games. Instead, this course treats
Second Life as a cultural milieu for in-depth study….”
What is “Ethnography in Second Life”?
Course Assessments and Grading Scale:
•IRB Certification 10%
•Moderating Week’s Discussion 25%
•Participation in Weekly Discussion 10%
•Proposal and Approval 10%
•Ethnographic Paper 30%
•Final Reflection 15%
Examples of Student work and perspectives
•Student projects:
Amusement parks
Evangelical churches
Suicide prevention centers
New User areas
Egalitarian nudist colonies
•Student comments– from their final written reflections
•Future changes: Immediate feedback in discussion forums
Considerations for Take-away
• Virtual Worlds can be useful tools for student practice of
professional skills.
• Would students in your department benefit from practical
application? Connecting theoretical knowledge to real life?
• Is there currently a time/space problem when it comes to
equipping students?
• Are qualitative methods or is fieldwork something your students
need for the future?