Colloquium

MUVE eventedness: An experience like any other

Dave Cormier

Address for correspondence: University of Prince Edward Island, 550 University Avenue,Charlottetown, PE, Canada C1A 4P3. Email: coarsesalt@gmail.com

IntroductionThe OpenHabitat project is a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Users andInnovation Programme funded project exploring the practical application of multi-uservirtual environments (MUVEs) to the higher education classroom. This paper discussesongoing research, drawing tentative conclusions from reporting streams coming out ofthe project. The researchers have identified that once lecturers have acquired literacy inthe MUVEs, there is a threshold after which they become able to see MUVEs in educationas offering an experience that allows for the exploration of existing content in a newcontext and which acts as a focal point for reflection. The ‘otherness’ of the environ-ment provides a ‘mirror’ for practice (for both student and teacher). The otherness,however, does not necessarily call for new pedagogies but rather relies on a long tradi-tion of experiential learning.

The use of MUVEs (Multi User Virtual Environments) in education is no longer therealm of the avant-garde or the charmingly quaint, and is encroaching on the edges ofthe mainstream. A recent scoping study conducted for JISC tells us that the (educa-tional) ‘use of virtual worlds has accelerated exponentially over the last two or threeyears’ (de Freitas, 2008). With the increasing prominence of these new tools, we needto start asking what the technology offers for the average classroom, and movingbeyond the ‘if ’ of virtual worlds to the ‘when’ and ‘for what reason’. The OpenHabitatproject is primarily an attempt to see past the complications of the technology to explorewhat happens when a virtual world comes to a regular classroom, or in the case ofOpenHabitat, two classrooms: Ian Truelove’s art and design class at Leeds Metropolitanand Marianne Talbot’s class at Oxford University overseen by the project’s PrincipalInvestigator David White.

The OpenHabitat projectThe project was conceived as a series of two iterative pilots where best practices andlessons learned could be gleaned from the results of the first pilot and used to inform thedevelopment of the second pilot. Each of the groups has kept an open, running discus-sion freely available online and aggregated to www.openhabitat.org using video, photo

British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 40 No 3 2009 543–546doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00956.x

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Becta. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

and text blogs. This reflexive method was chosen for the first pilot in order to track,develop and refine best practices. These practices would then lead to a solid foundationfor the second pilot, in addition to offering a preliminary opportunity to test out thosebest practices and further refine them. This method worked for us, but rather than thesecond pilot simply being a reinforcement for the first, it also allowed us to ‘see through’the technology to such a degree that we were able to focus from a clearer standpoint onsome of the real advantages of using MUVEs.

That clearer picture is something that we suggest may be the subtler and perhaps moreimportant part of our research with MUVEs. ‘Teaching and learning in virtual worldsis’, according to David White, ‘an experience’ (White, 2008a). In his first blog post onthe subject, he explains that it is the intensity and ‘eventedness’ that creates the realvalue of the MUVE experience. Bringing a virtual world into a classroom serves as acatalyst, a ‘shared event’ that takes learning beyond a simple knowledge transactionbetween student and instructor. It has the potential to bring students together as a class,and push the material far enough into a new context to allow students a new and,perhaps, more compelling way of approaching the content of a given learning event.

Literacies: identification and acquisitionThe planning for the first pilot primarily involved consideration of what we could dowith the technology. From the perspective of the project members, researchers designedthe platforms, focusing on specific kinds of feedback loops and avatar actions thatwould allow for an ‘authentic experience’. Best practices were sought that would allowfor replication of the immersive experience in other instructors’ teaching spaces.

In the process, we accumulated a great deal of data and found some patterns that wethought (and think) might be important. In reflecting on some of the lessons learnedfrom the first pilot as described, however, we saw a slightly different picture forming.Rather than the skills-based, step-by-step planning typical of a ‘traditional’ approach toHigher Education, we began to see the primacy of social literacies emerging as ourlessons learned from the process. We find that the intense curricular and pedagogical/technological planning is less responsible for successful learning ‘experiences’, and thatthe support of teacher/student dialogue and pre-MUVE socio/pedagogical conceptsstart to portray themselves as the primary and essential literacies needed for the learn-ing habitat.

The reflections from the project leaders during the first pilot revealed key principles thatformed the foundation of the new ‘what we already knew about teaching’ perspective,a move away from focusing on MUVE-specific best practices. Ian Truelove blends inlessons from his arts-based background when discussing identity.

Design education consciously and deliberately strives to achieve a balance between the unre-stricted and impulsive (Nobody), the collaborative teamworking, subject specific or audiencesatisfying (Anybody) and the personal achievement of the author/producer (Somebody). We

544 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 40 No 3 2009

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Becta.

glued all this together with many, many ‘Aha!’ moments (Eureka) ... . but it is clear that individualand collective identity is bound together with the creative process (Truelove, 2008)

This description could be applied to the MUVE environment as well as design education.There is some question of whether the issue of identity will really be very different thanthe identity stretching that happens to students when they come to university. In adesigned classroom, where you already know who the people in the class are, flights ofidentity are going to be less disruptive—and no different than those of art studentsusing other mediums or having other experiences.

There is also a sense in which the foregrounding of ‘natural’ collaboration competesmost directly with traditional views of Second Life as a call for a new pedagogy. Truelovewonders if ‘Maybe “collaboration” in these MUVE environments is more about discus-sion than construction. When people collaborate in world they are rarely to be foundwrestling over the same polygons/prims’ (White, 2008a). There is a sense in whichthinking through ‘construction plans’ and trying to force the MUVE medium can bringto the fore project member Steven Warburton’s concerns that ‘Second Life can bedeceptive ... It can seduce one into believing that “teaching” practices that work on theoutside can be readily transposed inside. It is a sobering experience when the particularconstraints of SL kick back and even the best-laid plans begin to unravel’ (Warburton,2008).

ConclusionWe took advantage of the two-phased approach and allowed the continuum to flowfrom the technology and towards the educational experience that the students weregoing to be having. Discussion among the project planning team moved from consid-ering what we could do with the technology to elicit certain learning behaviours fromstudents (the best laid plans) towards more immersive, experience-based plans thatcontextually allowed for the realities and limitations of the platform. The experience ofworking within a MUVE environment brings out some of the key concepts alreadyexisting inside the field or topics being covered; it exposes things that might haveremained hidden in a more traditional context. This is best represented by Ian True-love’s screenshot of the virtual houses built by students, with the caption ‘They’re firstyears. They only left home 3 weeks ago. Of course they want to build themselveshomes.’ (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubistscarborough/2978733707/)

If David White’s intuitions are correct that the MUVE should be seen as an experience,a form of journey or field trip, where students are travelling in both virtual space andin their personal development, it is possible that the project is only now realisingthe real fruits of the reflections gained from the first pilot. In this model, each of thestudents will be able to engage with both the pedagogy push from the lecturer andtheir reflective journey articulated in student–lecturer and student–student relation-ships, supporting not only peer learning but peer development. The learning designermight be better served by accepting the chaotic nature of the virtual environment andthe value of the field trip for what they are. A positive result from a virtual learning

MUVE eventedness 545

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Becta.

experience actually relies on the chaotic, organic nature of the MUVE and the inter-actions therein, on the literacy level of the instructor, and more importantly appearsto be pedagogically agnostic.

While Steven Warburton’s caution against directly translating real-world book teach-ing styles into a MUVE is well warranted, this should not preclude the inclusion ofteaching styles that are based on other, perhaps less traditional, but still valuedexperience-based learning pedagogies. Many of the same criticisms levelled againstteaching in a MUVE might be made of a classroom in the open air of a park, a lessontaught by mobile phone or a practicum in a hog farm. These are all experiences that dolend some confusion and some chaos, but it is this very unsettling of the learner (andthe instructor) that makes a change in habitat such a valuable learning experience.

Referencesde Freitas, S. (2008). Serious virtual worlds: a scoping study. Retrieved March 9th 2009, from

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/seriousvirtuallworldsv1.pdf. Archivedby WebCite(R) at http://www.webcitation.org/5f9ulxex1

Truelove, I. (2008). Eureka. Retrieved March 9th 2009, from http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/05/22/initial-impressions-first-open-habitat-pilot. Archived by WebCite(R)at http://www.webcitation.org/5f9uCxyfE.

Warburton, S. (2008). How tall is tall in Second Life? Retrieved March 9th 2009, from http://warburton.typepad.com/liquidlearning/2008/06/how-tall-is-tal.html. Archived by Web-Cite(R) at http://www.webcitation.org/5f9uLAg1d.

White, D. (2008a). That was an interesting experience. Retrieved March 9th 2009, from http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/11/27/that-was-an-interesting-experience/Archived by WebCite(R) at http://www.webcitation.org/5f9uNPPqn.

White, D. (2008b). Initial Impressions from the First Open Habitat Pilot. Retrieved March 9th 2009,from http://iantruelove.blogspot.com/2008/05/eureka.html. Archived by WebCite(R) athttp://www.webcitation.org/5f9tynZ6X.

546 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 40 No 3 2009

© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Becta.