Amateur Education, User-Created Content, and Internet2

Jeffrey Bardzell, Ph.D.

Human-Computer Interaction Design

School of Informatics

Indiana University

Computer Imagination

What you’ve been doing all along, only better

Vs.

Truly transformative designs

Researching for Imagination

• Study cultures of innovation

• Consider major online trends in the past 2-3 years– Social networking

applications– MMOGs and MUVEs– Amateur multimedia

Who Are the Users?

• Don’t watch much broadcast TV

• Every day engage with most if not all of the following:– RSS news aggregator

(favorite blogs)– YouTube– Facebook– Second Life– World of Warcraft

• Example: How did we learn about Virginia Tech?

Era of the Social Platform

• Massive communities, formed of thousands or millions of micro-communities

• Participant-created content

• Entertainment, leisure-time, personal, and even intimate

Paradigmatic Shifts

• Message-making is becoming radically decentralized• People increasingly create, rather than consume• Change in the composition of the “creative class”

– In the past: professional designers with college degrees in telecommunications, fashion and interior design, etc.

– Now: they are “regular” people--students, stay-at-home mothers, etc.

• Social interaction is media-intensive– Bandwidth is a problem

Community-Platforms

• Tight coupling:– Easy/accessible authoring tools– Micro/macro-network

distribution channels

• Examples:– Webcam/iMovie + YouTube– Flash + Newgrounds– Blog software + blogging

communities– Second Life authoring + Second

Life “game”– Facebook software + Facebook

social networks

Education vs. Corporate Uses

• Control– Corporations want to

control their brands, IPs– Educators desire to turn

control over to learners• Social constructivism

• Desire to learn– When consumption

becomes creation…– … Learning becomes

entertainment

Case Study

Amateur teaching and learning in Second Life

Introducing Second Life

• What?– Participant created

3D virtual world

• Who?– 5.8 million user

accounts– 25-35k in-world at a

time

Education in Second Life

• Real-life educators in SL– Huge, vocal, innovative

group who are wonderful to behold

– But I’m not going to talk about them today

• Amateur educators in SL– SL users who become

experts and leaders and move on to help others

– Offer bottom-up “theory” of teaching and learning

Amateur Educators

• Why amateur education matters– Disconnected from

professional/academic pedagogical discourses, not overwhelmed by them

– Presumably medium-appropriate

– Users will accept it

• Motivations for prospective teachers– Enhancement to own

reputation– Financial compensation– Desire to help/promote

Second Life

Forms of Amateur Ed in SL

• In-world– LSL and modeling events– One-on-one in-world

mentoring– Volunteer mentoring

positions– Subculture events

• Learn 3D modeling at an S&M-themed dance (!)

• Out-of-world– Wikis– YouTube videos– Tutorials on blogs

SL Amateur Educational Videos on YouTube

Video: How to design hair in SL (published on YouTube)

Learning Outcomes

• Discrete skills– Scripting– 3D modeling– Photoshop, Flash, Poser

• “Professional” skills– Animation– Sound design– Fashion design– Virtual environment

design– Video editing– Video game design

• Abstract/academic dispositions– Criticism– Professionalization,

disclosure, ethics

• Interpersonal skills– Conflict resolution– Self-presentation (“digital

hygiene”?)

Problems with Amateur Education

• Under-theorized– Emergence of amateur

theory

• Oriented towards discrete skills

• Technologies holding it back– SL’s performance and UI

won’t cut it

Nascent amateur theory at AnimeMusicVideos.org

Implications for I2 Ed

• Look not just at the technologies– What they make

possible– What existing

problems they may solve

• Look also at cultural logics– Open source vs. Microsoft– YouTube vs. “Must-See TV”– Blogs vs. MSNBC/Fox, – Machinima versus UbiSoft

• Massive communities of serious amateurs are producing cultural content that competes with and threatens top-down, mainstream culture

Conditions of Possibility

• At the micro-level– In-situ learning– Multimodal

communication channels– Serious hobbyist-

teachers

• At the macro-level– Socially constructed

values– Institutions and

bureaucracies– Cultural motivations

Conclusions

• Ongoing, situated learning saturates every level of cultural production online

• Learning is a part of the pleasure and one of the requirements of participation

• Leadership implies teaching and mentoring• The unit of analysis at which all of this operates is not “the masses”

but rather social networks of typically 10-50 people• Authoring tools, distribution channels, and consumption clients are

tightly integrated and will demand significant bandwidth and collocated resources

Thanks for attending!

Jeffrey Bardzell, Ph.D.Human-Computer Interaction DesignSchool of InformaticsIndiana Univeristyjbardzel@indiana.edu