Choose Your Own Adventure: Using Lecture Capture and Social Media to Customize Learning Experiences

Hello, and welcome to our continuing series of live

webinars documenting creative use of

Mediasite around the world.

I'm Sean Brown, Vice President at Sonic Foundry.

And today's webinar is titled, "Choose Your Own Adventure -

Using Lecture Capture and Social Media to Customize

Learning Experiences."

Once again, we have a ton of people joining us from all

over the world.

We have over 450 people registered at this time for

this webinar.

And people, as I like to see, have joined us from almost

every province in Canada, almost every state in the

United States, and from many different

countries around the world.

Including my good friend Bill Lintner from Florida State

University, who actually informed me that he has a

large group of folks assembled to watch this.

Which is just a testament to the particular interest in my

presenter, who I'll introduce after a little bit of

housekeeping in this faculty focus of this webinar today.

Welcome to all of you.

As I said, before we get started I just want to go over

a few housekeeping items. Going over the features of the

Mediasite Player.

If you have a question at any time during this presentation,

please click on the speech bubble below the video.

You can type your question in, and I will receive it here in

the studio.

I'll hold your questions until the end of my guest's

presentation.

And then I'll relay them to her so that we can get as many

answers on camera for you as we possibly can.

She's graciously agreed to take on any questions that we

don't get that ask via text online later on if we don't

get to them.

So please put in your email address when

you're asking the question.

If we don't get to it on the air, we'll find a way to get

back to you as soon as possible.

Also, I want to specifically make you aware that under the

Links tab, there's some supplementary information that

my guest has provided.

Most particularly, a handout--

a PDF of a particular course handout that describes the

information she'll be giving you today.

You may want to use that during the presentation.

Download that now so you can follow along

with some of her comments.

So now it's my pleasure to introduce my guest and friend,

Dr. Diane Zorn.

Diane designs, implements, and teaches fully online rich

media courses using Mediasite technology and audio video

podcasting.

She was the second university instructor in all of Canada,

and therefore, one of the second in all of North

America, to offer video podcasts of her lectures.

Her student-centered, radically interactive course

design is based on her theory of an active education.

If you haven't heard about it before, you're going to be

hearing about it soon.

Her approach to online education allows students to

customize their learning and learn on the go, and

reciprocally involving an adaptive learning environment.

She's published a growing body of work on this subject, both

alone and in partnership with Kelly Parke, who some of you

are familiar with in the Mediasite user group, and is a

highly sought after speaking resource and workshop provider

to faculty all over North America.

Welcome to you to our office and headquarters.

Welcome back, Diane.

Thanks, Sean.

OK.

I'm so excited and happy to be here to tell you about two new

courses that I'm developing for York University.

I have a little less than a year to develop them.

So they won't be running this September.

They'll be running next September.

I would like to focus on, in particular, one version of the

two courses.

And that is the one that is modeled on Dungeons and

Dragons and World of Warcraft.

But I'd like to begin by just giving you a little bit of

background on the courses.

I don't want to spend too much time on that, because I want

to get to the heart of why I'm doing this, how I'm doing

this, and why you should care about this.

First of all, some background.

On the handout that I've given you, in the top left corner on

the first page, I have a little blurb about the courses

themselves.

The two courses I'm developing are first year

undergraduate courses.

The first one, "Modes of Reasoning About Morality and

Values." The second version of the course is "Modes of

Reasoning About Business Ethics and Corporate Social

Responsibility."

They're both first year, both undergraduate, with several

sections enrollment, 50 to 150 students, one section fully

online with anywhere between 80 and 150 in that section for

both of the courses.

The courses are in three modules--

both of them.

And they're critical thinking, conceptual analysis,

arguments, argumentation, skills-based courses, not

content-based courses.

These courses teach students how to think for themselves

from the ground up, which as you can imagine, any

skills-based based course--

it's very challenging to design that and teach that in

a fully online version.

A little list of some of the technology that I will be

using and that I am using.

I'm using Moodle rather than WebCt at this point, because

that's what our university is focusing on.

The Mediasite video streaming, the lecture capturing--

I could not do any of this.

I could not promote deep learning in the way that I

will in this course, in this Choose Your Own Adventure

role-playing game course, without the Mediasite

webcasting and the podcasting.

And I'm going to explain why that is and

how I'm using that.

So I am using podcasting.

As Sean mentioned, in Canada, I was the second professor at

the university level to use video podcasting in 2005.

What I am finding is that I'm leaning more towards the audio

podcasting rather than the video.

So that's more what I'm leaning towards.

Wikis, YouTubes, blogs--

the students themselves using blogs.

VoiceThread--

so some sort of voice-over web technology needs to be used.

I will be using VoiceThread.

Also, Prezi which is a type of--

you may have seen it-- really cool, interactive version of

PowerPoint.

Now Facebook--

I have question marks besides this.

I've been doing research that compares using Facebook and

Facebook users to social gamers and the difference

between the two.

And I'm not fully decided yet if I'm going to use Facebook

in this course.

I will be blogging about it.

And I would welcome your comments and

questions on that issue.

I'd like to turn to the second page of my handout and begin

very briefly with what inspired me to design a Choose

Your Own Adventure role-playing game course.

The inspirations are, first of all, a man named David Wiley,

who you can Google.

I've actually given you the URL to look him up.

In December 2008, Chronicle of Higher Education published an

article on David Wiley.

He designed a master's level course and turned it into an

online role-playing game course.

I was so impressed when I read this article.

And I knew immediately that I wanted to design an online

role-playing game course.

Only I had a lot of concerns because David Wiley's class

was really small.

And it was a graduate level class.

And my classes would have a minimum of 50 to 80 to

possibly 150.

And I didn't know if this would work.

I actually consulted with David Wiley and talked to him

on the phone for an hour.

And through our conversation, really came to see that a

multiplayer online role-playing game would only

work better with more students.

So that was my first inspiration.

My other two inspirations are Dungeons and Dragons and World

of Warcraft.

Dungeons and Dragons as the inspiration--

I'd like to focus on the version that is directly based

on Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft.

That's "Reasoning About Morality and Values and the

Meaning of Life," is the full title.

The inspiration--

Dungeons and Dragons is more of an inspiration than World

of Warcraft for me.

And based on the research that I've done on the digital

learner, it's not the 3D world as such that is attracting the

digital learner to games.

It's the social aspects.

It's the social gaming aspects of it.

And Dungeons and Dragons, very excellent role model for me to

structure my course on.

So what I've done is I've already designed

most of this course.

And what's happening is when students enroll in this

course, by week three of the course, they will have chosen

a character.

And they will have chosen what's

called a character class.

This comes directly from Dungeons and Dragons.

So what are characters?

Characters are things like-- on my list of characters, I

have humans, I have trolls, I have gnomes.

I have what are called gnoles, which are humanoid rats.

I have the undead, because you've got to have an undead

or zombie type character in there.

And elves.

So quite a list. I've got 12 characters

they can choose from.

They also choose a character class.

The character class decides what can their character do

and not do.

So by week three, the student will choose that character.

So let's say they choose a troll.

That's their character.

Then they have to decide what character class that troll is

going to fall into.

So for instance, is their a troll going to be a hunter?

Is their troll going to be a druid, a wizard, a shaman?

That decides whether they're a healer, whether they're a

protector, whether they cause damage--

that kind of thing.

So students will pick their character and character class.

I will then put them into guilds, which are essentially

learning teams. This course is a critical thinking

skills-based course.

So they go through the entire course in guilds.

Six students per guild.

And instead of doing assignments, students will go

on what are called learning quests.

Now because this is so radical, and it's a pilot

project, 50% of their final mark--

so half of the course only, which is still a lot--

will be based on 10 learning quests worth 5% each, or five

experience points.

Instead of marks for 50% of the course, they're gaining

experience points.

They go through, essentially, a 10 level game where they

gain experience points.

And those experience points are based on critical thinking

skills that they've learned.

And they ascend levels.

And they compete against other guilds for the

most experience points.

There's a local comic book store in Toronto.

It's quite renowned.

It's called The Silver Snail.

And they've kindly donated prizes for the guilds that

gain the most experience points.

So, like an action figure or a book.

They've also donated a 20 sided die, even though we

don't use that.

Like a little piece of dice that's used in Dungeons and

Dragons classically as a symbol for each student who's

enrolled in the course to have on their desk to the remind

them of their commitment to the role-playing.

So Dungeons and Dragons here is a big model for this

course, a big inspiration.

World of Warcraft is another.

World of Warcraft--

essentially the idea that they're going through not just

battles, but on different kinds of learning quests.

But instead a World of Warcraft, think world of

critical thinking craft.

So that's essentially what they're learning here.

Take a kind of Warcraft model, which is similar to Dungeons

and Dragons, except it's a 3D, fully online, massively

multiplayer online role-playing game.

My entire course is essentially a massively

multiplayer online role-playing game course

modeled on those two.

The other two inspirations I have--

one is to Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I read these in the '70s.

I read One-Minute Mysteries, and I read Choose Your Own

Adventure books.

As a kid, I loved the fact that I had a

choice about the ending.

And what ending I choose would change the story.

And in my course, students have quite a bit of control

over their learning experience.

I'm going to go into details about how they can customize

their learning experience in many ways.

Which really maps onto the way the digital learner learns and

the values, the norms--

what Don Tapscott talks about in Grown Up Digital--

all those characteristics and norms of the digital learner.

So choosing your own adventure-- how is this course

a Choose Your Own Adventure course?

In several ways.

One way is not only is there you choose your character, you

choose your character class, how your guild is going to

resolve the learning quests, which are problem-based,

skills-based collaborative learning problems.

And I'll give you an example of one of them.

So there is a Choose Your Own Adventure aspect

of course in that.

But also, something that's almost unheard of in a first

year course.

I have some required readings that are about the skills

they're learning.

But I also have, working with the publisher called

Thomson/Nelson, I have three lists of readings that

students choose from.

They select which reading they would like to do.

And they theme their interest, which helps them choose their

adventure also.

And that not only are they picking many of their own

readings weekly, so students may not be reading the same

things, they also get to pick their assignment topics based

on their interest and how it's themed.

My last inspiration is my desire to

promote deep learning.

The number one reason I'm doing all of this is to

promote deep learning-- deep and durable learning.

So I'm going to take one minute to tell you about the

two versions.

And then I want to get onto the innovations and why and

how students can customize their learning experience and

the role of lecture capture video streaming in this.

I'm now on the second page of the handout--

two different versions of the course.

Just want to introduce you to them.

The one, "Modes of Reasoning About Morality and Values and

the Meaning of Life," that is the one that is based on

Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft.

But I want to point out--

this is not the only kind of model for an online

role-playing game or role-playing

game course at all.

I want to experiment and compare and contrast and

collect data, which is what I'll be doing.

I'm keeping a blog also on the development over the course.

The address is on this handout.

I only just started the blog.

It's just set up.

No entry even there yet.

But I will be making entries in there.

The second course is a role playing game course.

But it's about business ethics and corporate social

responsibility.

There instead of fantasy characters, the students take

on the role of stakeholders.

So a student by week three in that course would be choosing

whether they're going to be an owner, a director, an

employee, a customer, the consumer, and so on.

A competitor, an NGO.

And that's a slightly different way of doing a role

playing game course I want to point out.

Now, innovations.

Probably one of the biggest aspects of this course that's

really innovative is allowing students to customize their

learning experience.

And it's not just for the sake of providing a customizable

learning experience.

It's rather that giving a student, giving a digital

learner-- any student--

more control over their learning experience will

promote deep and durable learning.

Now how can they customize their learning experience?

OK.

First of all, there is a lecture

component to the course.

And there is what's called guild

meetings in each lecture.

So the class is a normal class time of two

hours and 50 minutes.

Some of that time is lecture.

And some of that time is what's called a guild meeting.

It's essentially a workshop session, or something like a

tutorial, but where they're in their guilds.

In the in-class session, it would be like that.

And so the lecture--

students can first of all choose where, when, and how

they want to view the course itself.

Like, the lecture.

So they can watch the lecture on their PC, on their Mac, on

some handheld device like PlayStation or

something like that.

Also, the very technology, the Mediasite for video streaming

the lectures themselves, allows the student to

accommodate what they're viewing to

their learning style.

So if some students, if English is a second language

for them, they can slow down the viewing speed of the

lecture and the listening speed, and the audio pitch

will still remain clear.

They can speed it up if they're multitasking.

I do need to say, though, that social games

involve intense attention.

And the digital learner will do a lot less multitasking and

have a lot more attention on what they're doing when

they're in a social game.

But it does allow someone to speed up the listening speed

and be multitasking and view that lecture in less time.

And it's not just lecturers.

When the title of this webinar says using lecture capture,

that's far too narrow a way of looking at what I'm doing.

I mean, you need to know that I'm using video streaming for

mentoring messages, for coaching messages, for

lectures themselves, for welcome messages from the

authors of the books that they read, welcome messages from

the teaching assistants.

And all those are made available as podcasts too.

So in order to promote deep learning, you have to think

broader than you're just video streaming a lecture.

You're also video streaming coaching

and mentoring messages.

You would have to teach the students how to play the game,

how to succeed at the game, the skills that they need to

know, and all of that.

So they can customize their learning experience in those

ways, and the ways that involve the Choose Your Own

Adventure, and the role-playing game course

itself in ways that I've already mentioned.

Something else I want to mention about this is

promoting deep e-learning and educating for social change--

innovative factors of a Choose Your Own Adventure online

role-playing playing game format.

So the idea behind promoting deep e-learning--

I've listed the seven main methods for

promoting deep learning.

And on your handout, I've given you references.

So you can look up a book by Van Weigal's book called Deep

Learning for the Digital Age.

If you only read three books this year that have to do with

teaching with technology, you need to read Van Weigal's

book, Deep Learning for the Digital Age.

You need to read Don Tapscott's book.

And you need to read a book written by Watkins.

And it's on social media.

And I've got the title over here.

Did I include--

I didn't--.

You know what?

I don't think I gave you that.

I will make sure that Sean gets a list of references that

includes all of those three books.

We'll put it in a link in the player.

We'll talk about that.

We will.

We'll put it in a link.

So what the game allows me to do to promote deep learning in

the Choose Your Own Adventure format is something called

cognitive apprenticeship learning.

So that is, students get to learn not just actively and

problem-based, but it's an apprenticeship style learning.

And that requires modeling--

externalizing cognitive processes for the students on

my part as the instructor, modeling cognitive processes,

modeling behavior, coaching, watching students do what

they're doing in those guilds and being able to coach them.

So modeling when you're teaching someone how to do a

skill like tennis, that's when you tell them, here's how your

feet should be.

Here's how your hands should hold the racket.

Coaching, you modify, you watch.

You say, no, you need to move your hand over here.

You need to be doing that.

Also, scaffolding is a big part of promoting deep

e-learning, or any deep learning.

And I use video streaming for all of this.

So for modeling, I can actually--

let me give you an example of a learning quest and then tell

you how I model, coach, and the scaffolding that would be

around it to promote deep learning.

Am I OK for time?

Absolutely.

OK.

Let me give you an example of a learning quest. I've been

teaching this course, "Reasoning About Morality And

Values," for 10 years.

And I'm constantly trying to improve it.

And this I think is going to really solve some of the

teaching tensions that I have with it.

There's something I'm trying to teach my students every

year that they have a hard time grasping.

And it's, what is an abstract idea?

So I put them through this exercise where they learn

these nine steps on using reasoning by cases, and they

can come to understand what an abstract idea is.

One learning quest that I put them on is that their guild

has to enlist a group of peaceful people to help them

with a battle.

Only the catch is that they have to meet with the king of

the peaceful people in order get the king to help them

enlist these people to fight the battle.

The catch is that these people have no idea of

war in their world.

They have no word war in their language.

They have no experience of battles.

They have no idea of what war means as an abstract idea or

as a practice--

the warness of war.

I use that learning quest, which is that the guilds have

to find a way to teach the King what war means as an

abstract idea.

Not this particular battle.

Not this particular war.

But what is the idea of war?

And they have to teach a King whose people have no idea of

what war is in order to enlist them.

There is one learning quest. That's the first one in module

two of the course.

So how would I model that?

I would model that by video streaming a presentation in

which I talk about how I would teach someone who has no idea

of chair what chair means as an abstract idea.

So I would be video streamed teaching that with slides,

PowerPoint slides, synchronized.

And I would explain how would I go about teaching somebody

what chair means.

I would start by bringing them to a room with three chairs.

And I would show them a desk chair, a beanbag chair, and a

wheelchair.

And I would say to them, take a look at this desk chair.

This is a model case of chair.

This is a case in which I would say, this is a chair.

This is what we mean by a chair in my world.

And here's why.

And I would pull up the essential defining

characteristics of a chair.

It lifts you up off the floor.

It supports your back.

Then I would move to a contrary case, the beanbag

chair, and I would say to that person, look here.

See this beanbag chair?

We call that a chair, but it's actually not.

It's more like a pillow.

And I would explain how the defining characteristics of

that beanbag chair do not make it a chair, like in that it

doesn't support your back, and you can feel the

floor through the beans.

And I would show the wheelchair.

And I would say, here's a borderline case-- a motorized

wheelchair.

It lifts you up off the ground.

It supports your back.

But it has a motor and it actually moves.

So I would be externalizing this process of going from the

concrete to be abstract in that video.

That video would then be available through iTunes as a

podcast. And they could view this on their PC or Mac as a

Mediasite presentation.

Then, coaching and mentoring.

In the course site, which is a Moodle site in my case, I

would have what's called a coaching and mentoring room.

And also, under the weekly class, there will be

coaching there too.

So I would then have a coaching presentation where I

would walk them through other examples and show them how

this might be done with PDFs with written answers next to

it, before they go on their learning quest. So they get

coaching and they get modeling before they go on that

learning quest. Then they have to figure out how are they

going to do this and go through the process.

And the scaffolding.

I would say scaffolding, coaching and mentoring room,

have a technology training room on the

site, use video streaming.

Not just for lectures, use it to promote deep learning in

these other ways.

Educating for social change--

I'll very briefly say that.

And then I think I'm going to have to stop.

Because I know there will be a lot of questions, and we need

to leave time to talk about this, and to interact, and to

really discuss this.

And I do want to really enforce the point that Sean,

that on my handout at the very top, I have my email address,

I have my faculty website, I have the blog, which

I've just set up.

There's nothing even on the blog yet.

But I will be keeping it over the whole year about this

course and developing the two versions.

I want you to feel completely free.

Don't hesitate to email me.

If you would like, I'm also welcome and open to having--

I consider this open source in a way, what I'm doing, the

same way David Wiley did.

So if you want to have me talk with you over the phone even

about some of this, I'm totally willing to do it.

I'm very excited and want to learn together through

developing this.

I feel a bit like when this course begins, I'm going to be

out on a limb.

And it do really, really well.

But it's very risky too.

And we don't have a lot of examples of

this kind of a thing.

It's very conceptual.

Students are not going into a 3D world.

They're going into Moodle with video streaming and

podcasting.

So it's all about their imagination.

So lasting educating for social change.

My course design will be fighting against aggressive

competitiveness, scholarly isolation, lack of mentoring,

and valuing product over process.

These are things that absolutely have to be changed

in higher education.

If we're going to promote deep learning, if we're going to

build our communities, which is what we're certainly trying

to do in education--

in Plato's Republic, Plato said, what we're talking about

is no small matter but how we ought to live.

That's what I think this course design is about.

Not just promoting deep learning, but educating for

social change so that we're building communities.

I mean, social gaming--

to return to the idea of social gaming and the Choose

Your Own Adventure format.

Games embody what Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman call

culturally transformative play.

So it's a totally immersive experience that--

as you know, research shows that digital

learners love gaming.

It's not for the 3D world.

You will not see your digital learners in Second Life.

Because they don't want a 3D world.

They want a social experience.

They want social interaction, not just a 3D world.

And that makes a Choose Your Own Adventure role-playing

game the perfect excellent learning environment.

Some scholars compare this to playing in a sandbox, being in

a course something like this.

Because the conditions permit a kind of exploration, a

making of wonderful creations, discoveries, mistakes.

So you're learning in games, not by being told,

but rather by doing.

So this is what Kurt Squire, a game scholar, calls

possibility spaces.

And I'm going to stop there.

And we'll talk about this.

And I will make sure Sean gets a list of all these references

that I've just said.

And remember, don't hesitate to contact me.

I'm totally open to this.

Well, that's good because they're

already contacting you.

OK, good.

So you might want to ease up on that.

Great presentation.

And I just first want to say to my mother, I told you that

my Dungeons and Dragons master level was going

to be useful someday.

I'm just kidding.

I'm going to start off with gathering some of these

questions into clumps.

Sure.

Pam asked it best. She said, this is a great presentation.

But what if the students aren't familiar with gaming?

Right.

Does it work?

If somebody is a geek like me and they're way into it-- it's

obviously going to reach me.

Yeah.

This is a huge concern.

And I have really thought this through.

I still have, obviously, less than a year to work out all

the details.

But my immediate response to that is I have to build

something into the course.

Even though we're advertising--

I wanted to run this course this September.

And the university, we decided at the last minute that we

wanted to make sure students knew what they

were getting into.

So they knew that when they enrolled in this course, they

would be in a role-playing game kind of setting.

So how would we overcome the fact that, for sure, there are

going to be--

I don't know how many.

I can't even guess.

But I have to be safe to say maybe 30%, 40% of the students

might not actually be gamers or even know what World of

Warcraft is.

So the way I've gone around that is using video streamed

presentations for starters.

So I have coaching about how to play the game, like in a

video presentation that's downloadable podcasts too.

I have a consultant who's 23 years old and an expert on

World of Warcraft who I've been consulting with--

not just for copyright issues around Wizards of the Coast

and Blizzard Entertainment, but also on

how does this work?

How would you play this game?

That 23 year old will actually be doing a video presentation

that's video streamed right on the site that students will be

required to watch.

I have marks associated with doing this.

So there is an orientation in the first two weeks.

They have to do certain things, including watching

these videos.

The other thing is, OK, fine.

That still doesn't fully answer your question.

Because we can teach them how to play the game.

What if they don't like it?

What if they, even coming into the course, what if this was

the only section they could get in, and they don't like an

online role-playing game?

This is what I've only been able to come up with so far.

But I will probably come up with more over

the next six months.

But one thing is, for starters, they can be a human.

That's one of the characters.

They don't have to be a gnome.

They don't have to be a troll.

And I think I'm going to have to have a couple guilds that

are entirely humans.

If you want to be an orc or a dwarf, you can.

You can.

All right.

That's enough for me.

Or the undead.

You're welcome to do that.

But for these students who want to be a part of this

course-- and maybe they're interested in seeing what this

is like, but they don't want to be completely immersed in

the role-playing.

They can join a guild that's just humans, and they can be

human character.

Which is kind of like them going through it as themselves

in a sense.

But they're still in a role-playing game.

So that I think would help address some of that.

I still do expect that there will be some resistance on the

part of some students.

And this is a whole new thing.

And I'll have to see how this goes.

But your team is with you out there.

I mean, it's a great question that Pam and some asked.

But there's just as many people, because you talked

about the business ethics course--

Right, right.

And people in MBA courses- I mean, simulation if you're

going into nursing, medical school, law school, business

school, there's so much simulation, role-playing game

playing, but not based on any popular modalities out there

like Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft.

And certainly not the thought that went into these highly

commercially successful things.

There's as many people saying this is really creative, and

can it used in place of the traditional

ways they're doing?

Back to what people are saying really quick.

Teresa says, I would like more information about using social

media to integrate critical thinking into a nursing

course-- jumping right into what I just said.

Do you think that these critical thinking paths could

be used for things beyond philosophy, ethics, and the

other deep concepts that you talked about?

Well, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can I be totally clear on the question?

She was wondering if it applies to nursing or other

types of topic areas.

If you're teaching somebody something more technical, or

vocational, or--

I actually think, to be honest, that it would work

even better there.

And I think it would work even better there because the

skills that I'm teaching are quite abstract.

Even though they're concrete for philosophers and applied

for philosophers, they're still quite abstract.

And this is quite conceptual in that sense-- the skills I'm

teaching them.

But I could only see it working better for nursing, or

engineering, or any sort of--

More structured.

--area like that.

It's all going to come down, I think, to how you design the

learning quests.

And what kinds of characters and character classes are you

going to have?

And the learning quest, it's going to come

down to that I think.

So for nursing, instead of assignments for some part of

that course, they would be going on these learning

quests, which is essentially problem-based

collaborative learning.

Now I realize that there is a discussion and a debate going

on in nursing and in the field of medicine in general for

teaching, whether that kind of problem-based learning is the

way to go or whether a more traditional--

like take for instance McMaster University.

If you take nursing at McMaster University in

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, you're going to get a very

different experience than if you take it

a University Toronto.

Because the problem-based learning model is more like

you're throwing the students into doing.

And the more traditional model is that you teach them a whole

lot of theory and that kind of thing first.

So I can only see it working better.

Because I don't have a background in nursing, I can't

tell you what those learning quests would be like.

But that's where the challenge would be-- to create learning

quests that meet the six conditions for

promoting deep learning.

So you'd have to have coaching, mentoring, modeling,

reflection, exploring.

If you can get all of that into that learning quest--

and I would make the learning quest as concrete as possible.

And by that I mean, my learning quests

have kings in them.

They have swords.

They have things that have to be resolved.

So in the case of nursing, you would have to

have people with names.

And you need to create a world, essentially.

Now that world--

I can only guess.

I may be wrong, but I can only guess.

In nursing, that world would be not a fantasy world, but a

clinical world likely, where your learning quests would be

very different.

But you could still gain experience points.

You could still play guilds against guilds without it

being aggressively competitive.

That dovetails to a question from my

friend, Professor Jones.

She said, I love the idea and the presentation.

We have been role-playing for over 10 years in our

professional--

it's a business program, a sales program.

Curious as to the interface for the actual execution.

How does a guild go through slash execute a quest?

Are they writing a paper?

Are they doing a presentation, et cetera?

And two, did you write a software program or automated

decision tree for the Choose Your Own Adventure piece?

No.

Those are concrete questions.

Yeah, OK.

People are asking similar ones of that.

Yeah, OK.

Can you just repeat the first one again?

Sorry.

Yes.

What is the interface for the actual execution?

How does a guild go through and execute a quest?

Are they writing a paper, doing a

presentation, et cetera?

OK.

It's going to vary, depending on what that learning quest is

and what the skill is.

Mine is basically just in a Moodle site.

So that's kind of limited.

But based on the research that I've done-- and there's one

book in particular.

There's one chapter in this book that you probably need to

read that's all about social gaming.

But in there, that chapter talks about the important role

of voice-over internet or voice-over, basically.

I haven't done this yet.

But I'm guessing that in order for this to really work, that

there has to be a way for students to meet online, see

each other's faces, even if that face is just not a

picture of them but something else.

And they have to be able to talk over that.

I'm going to be using VoiceThread.

Because there are some faculty members who I've seen present

on this, and it seems to be quite easy.

And it allows you to have a document about the learning

quest that, for my course, would have a picture of a

character on it, like the king, for instance.

It would have the flow of the learning

quest, what's involved.

The lore--

because there has to be the lore or the story behind the

history and what's going on there.

That kind of technology--

the voicethread.com, you can look at it--

allows you to have that in the middle and for people to be

talking in real time.

Some course sites will allow you this do too, to talk in

real time that way.

And you want to be able to interact.

And depending on the learning quest, you may also want to

have students create something else, like a wiki or something

like that, where they have to draw on other terms. So for

instance, let's say your quest involved somehow the idea of

corporate social responsibility.

You could have that quest in stages, where it involved

having to solve a problem.

But in order to solve that problem, you have to create a

wiki on the idea of corporate social responsibility.

You know, that kind of thing.

So if I may, this is like with the approach that brought you

to us so many years ago.

If I'm in this quest, if I'm in this class that's going to

work this way, as usual, the base of it

will be a Moodle page.

Right.

Your Moodle, period-- a site.

Not Second Life.

I won't have to put on the 3D goggles and get in there.

It's conceptual.

Right.

A rich media site with lots of video stream presentations.

It'll have some Mediasite on it.

It will have some VoiceThread on it.

It'll have some Prezi.

It'll have--

Prezi, yeah.

But you're talking about constructing a base site--

things that everybody watching this can do

based on these concepts.

And you don't have to go all the way to Harry Potter 3D to

get this effect.

Yeah.

And what's really cool is--

I actually just read an article yesterday published in

2009 that talked about this very thing.

It compared Facebook users to social gamers, and what does

the digital learner really want?

Really, it's not about entering a 3D world.

I would think in my demographic, oh, it must be

because World of Warcraft is so compelling because of its

images and its music and all of that.

That's not really what it's about really

for the digital learner.

That's a bonus.

And it's fun and all that.

The essence--

The essence is really about social interaction.

And it's the social dimension on different levels.

Like, whether it's with their friends or it's with people

they don't know, they're getting to know.

They're teaming up.

Yeah.

And there are articles that show or that are trying to

argue that social gaming does actually enable and teach

leadership skills, and social skills, community building--

that sort of thing.

Now, we need a lot more years of research to actually figure

out whether that will carry into our communities or not.

That part is still speculative.

But there do seem to be good reasons for believing that you

do learn leadership skills and community

building in social gaming.

I've never had this many questions all at once.

And each one of these--

sometimes the questions are more tactical.

And you know, what cameras did you use?

Each one is an essay.

To use our time well, I'm going to take some short ones

and hit them.

This is the lightning round.

And you've promised to help us with

everyone's questions later.

One person asked--

this one will be short.

One person asked, would you say from your experience that

men engage more easily in these kind

of cognitive processes?

This is Karin asking you a very good question.

You've really focused on these things.

Cognitive processes or social gaming?

The gaming.

The social gaming.

Absolutely.

And I just read this yesterday.

Right in that bag over there, I have the book.

It cam out in 2009.

And in there, there are several studies that clearly

show that young men between the ages of, I believe it was

18 and 34, are the number one social gamers.

Like over all other demographics and over women.

So do you fear in Karin's good question that this would give

them an advantage in this course?

Oh, do I fear it would give them an advantage?

I picked a simple, quick question.

I mean, I can't really change the fact that men between the

ages of 18 and 34 are really primarily using social gaming

the most. I can't do anything about that.

I think the fact that my course promotes deep and

durable learning for everyone and gives people

opportunities, whether they're that age or not--

because 10% of my class will be over 30, 40, and 50.

So there's that issue.

And there will be as many women as there are men.

So I can't really--

Well, I like the way you designed it--

It's tough for me to answer that except to say that I

designed the whole thing to promote deep learning, to

provide a customizable learning experience, to go

beyond what's possible in the conventional classroom, and to

educate for social change.

So are they going to have an advantage?

Well, yeah, you're probably right.

They are going to have a slight advantage in the sense

that they're going to be more familiar maybe with games like

Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft.

Well, I think that the way you've set it up looks very

good to democratize that, emphasizing all

the important aspects.

Another question that matches a lot of questions are, do you

think this could be used in a workplace environment?

So a lot of our viewers are actually from corporations,

not from the institutions.

And some people think that this could be a good way to

put together a training course inside work.

Yeah, absolutely.

Of course.

Of course it would work just as well in that kind of a

workplace setting.

Again, it's going to come down to I think probably the

learning quests, your characters,

your character classes.

You have to have a lore.

So it's called a lore in Dungeons and Dragons, which is

a history to the world.

For the game, you have to have a story.

So I really believe that probably just about anyone

would find it far more engaging and would learn at a

much deeper level if they were playing a game.

And if there was a question.

And there's a quest. And you're

gaining experience points.

If there's maybe a little bit of competition, like

there is in a game.

Just think about the playing in the sandbox thing.

If you could get people to explore, to feel more

comfortable making mistakes through trial and error in the

workplace, that can only help.

Because that's only going to help people not only learn

better, but do what they need to do better and to let go of

aggressive competitiveness.

They're not going to feel as isolated in the workplace when

they're playing a game with their other coworkers.

Peter asks a good question.

He asked, how many people participate in the development

of this course?

And do you have any estimates on the cost of development of

this course?

Was it all you?

Is it a team?

What should they expect if they want to do this?

The cost this is actually really low.

Really, really low.

Because there's no software being developed--

all of that.

So basically, it's just having your learning platform,

whichever one you decide to use, whether it's Moodle, or

WebCT, or a blog.

David Wiley used to blog.

That's it.

And he ran a course that was a role-playing game course.

So costs are low.

I came up really with this idea.

You saw what my inspirations were.

I'm pretty much developing it mostly on my own.

But also, there's a lot of collaboration in

order to make it happen.

We have the Mediasite box.

We have the people who will convert it into podcasting.

But none of that ends up being really all that expensive.

So for instance, I'm going to have much in class lectures

Mediasite taped while I'm teaching them.

Then there's just one person who watches that camera, who's

a work study student actually.

And then on top of that, we have one person who converts

them to podcasts.

And it's a lot of work on my part as an instructor.

So for a first run, that will be a lot of work.

Second run, not so much so.

But as you can imagine, the learning curve for the first

run is probably going to be a lot of work for me the first

time that it runs.

Not the second or third time.

So it's low cost. It's low cost. The ideas itself and

most of the developing, like the website, the course site,

and all of that, I'll be doing myself.

But there are a small team of people--

And sharing.

You'll be sharing your results.

I'll be sharing.

Yeah, I'll be blogging the whole time.

And I'm totally welcome to--

I like feedback and all of that too.

And I'll be keeping track of challenges.

And I made a little list of some

challenges on my handout--

On page two of your handout.

--on page two.

So, like, creating learning quests that are clear and easy

to use that address a digital learner.

The one question that came up--

students who don't really want to play the game.

Question of Facebook.

Should students be allowed to switch characters?

Facilitating the guilds is going to be a lot of work.

So that faculty member would have to be committed.

And you might have to have a TA, if the class is large

enough, to help you with that.

And the other is support from Wizards of the Coast and

Blizzard Entertainment.

Even though I'm not violating copyright in any way, I've

already gone through the copyright clearance center of

my university and discussed this.

This is sort of open domain--

in fantasy, literature, elves, gnoles, trolls, all that.

It's important to still get the buy-in.

I'm working on that right now.

And I'll be blogging about what kind of a response I get

from Blizzard and how things work with Wizards of the

Coast. Dungeons and Dragons does have an open source

gaming license, but not so with World of Warcraft.

That's a perfect place to end.

Everything that Diane referenced, different links or

things like that, we will build up even more in the

links area underneath our video right now for you to

look at later on.

I would like to thank all of you.

Sorry we couldn't get to all of your questions.

But we'll pass it along to Diane.

And she's given her contact information to you as well.

You could do another whole webinar based just on some of

the fantastic questions that these people asked that I

couldn't get to.

Well, talk to me on the blog too.

It only just got set up, but we can talk that way and

through email, definitely.

I'd like to thank you so much for putting together such a

great topic and sharing your research so

freely with the audience.

And I'd like to thank all of you out there once again for

joining us.

We will see the next time.