2b3d’s CEO, Randy Hinrichs, coedits with Dr. Charles Wankel a new book called Transforming Virtual World Learning. Hinrichs and Wankel review the latest research on long term use of virtual world education among practitioners who have demonstrated several years experience in using virtual worlds. The various authors from universities and community colleges cite empirical evidence, narratives, virtual world frameworks, and lesson plans for developing advanced learning techniques.

What the book aims to do is teach something called thinking in 3D. How is the planning, design, development and implementation process different in the creation of virtual worlds for e-learning. Transforming the way you engage in the process of creating virtual worlds for learning requires all the stakeholders to be engaged in-world from the outset. From the moment a client wishes to use virtual worlds for learning, the stakeholders need to start in-world touring and experiencing the virtual world. The design process must occur in world, with all of the project management assets lining the walls of a virtual meeting space. Development should occur in world, with clients able to come in-world at any time to review progress against the plan, interacting with any of the developers, and following through development from beginning to end. Implementation requires the stakeholders to participate in world for reviews, roll out and evaluation. Think in world, be in world, succeed in world.

Key among the process for thinking in 3D is understanding two key concepts: cybergogy and residency. What is the learning science for developing learning in a virtual world that specifically can be defined as a place with discernible activities and processes. Scopes from the University of Southhampton in the UK, provides us with a framework called cybergogy. Cybergogy is identified as a formal model shaped by learning archetypes (role playing, simulation, peregrination (tours), social networking meshing and cybergogy assessment and four learning domains (cognitive, emotional, dexterous and social) that must be played out long term in virtual worlds.

Residency is a concept that underscores the entire book. Residency is similar to what a medical intern experiences when working as a “pre-doctor” in a hospital. The virtual world learner, armed with the archetypes for surviving in a virtual world, culturally adapts to the environment by living in it. Creating and using a personal location in world provides students with a place to learn, to meet, to store and to display their work. To build on personal assets and group projects. Faculty similarly build long term presence in world and use it to meet for office hours, create lessons collaborative, persist their activities through recorded multimedia and engage in technical, communicative and cultural exercises that engage learners on a daily basis.

Dr. Owen Kelly at Arcada University, professor at small technical college in Finland writes “In 2002 Arcada began an experiment that aimed to develop a learning laboratory in the form of a virtual culture embodied in an online world. For seven years, Kelly looked across multiple courses within the University and developed a “third place” to teach various topics interdependently. His in world country, Rosario, provided not only lessons on how to structure information, how to brand and design, how to explore research methods in health medicine, how to use virtual worlds for entreprenurial studies, foundations in Photoshop, tourism and media, and cross media studies, but created a culture, a language, an economy, in effect a transformation in virtuality. Professor Kelly created a “world” in which a culture emerged and declined. He discovered that adoption across the institution was required to sustain the novelty of using a virtual world. He was on to the right idea, at a time in which institutions haven’t fully embraced the need to involve the entire institution.
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Woollard, a Southhamptom professor in virtual worlds, outlines the social rules needed to work effectively in a virtual world. One of his students captures the need for such rules very well in saying “It feels a bit strange walking around an environment where you don’t actually know the social rules, and the social rules are definitely an area that needs to be defined in an online virtual environment when considering the mental and physical well being of pupils”. These words express a trainee teacher making her third visit to the “staff room” at the University of Southampton Island in Second Life™. It reflects the three important aspects of teaching and learning in a virtual world: the world is immersive, it requires listening and reacting to the the sights and sounds coming from the computer that engender emotional engagement. It needs to follow social rules in which people need to acquire information, get advice and guidance and understand the procedures and ethics of in-world behavior, and finally, avatars need to have a mental and physical sense of well being, whether this includes the way people are talking to each other over VoIP, the way they are dressed, the way they comport themselves, and the way they support or don’t support each other.

This blog entry cites the importance of adhering to a transformation model: identify what the cybergogy is for creating effective and meaningful activities in the virtual world, and develop a sense or residency with social rules, and a comprehensive construct to fully experience the benefits of immersive learning and significant cost savings. However, be warned that successful transformation requires the entire culture of your organization to engage in the process of thinking in 3D to effectively utilize this game changing software.

In the first quarter, the students jump from one virtual world to the other as fast as we can present them. One week, we’ll jump into 3DXplorer, hosted by the CEO Darius Lahoutifard. The next week we teleport into Reaction Grid with Kyle Gomboy and move into his 3D Unity models to get a glimpse into the future of engineering. Then, we’ll move over to VastPark and explore the dynamism of full Internet integration, and so on and on for a good six or seven weeks. We use this model to provide students with the ability to see how a professional owner of a company presents the product and the future of the product. As the students gain access to these virtual world leaders, they develop an ability to evaluate, present and manage other individuals inside a virtual world. They grow to a point of finding another world, InWorldz, World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, Protosphere and on and on. And they develop ways to get the rest of the class to come in, look around, and listen to their presentation of that world, emulating the executive that they saw previously. It’s wondrous actually to watch the growth.

The students have to figure out how to get into the virtual world, bring a set of 15-20 people along with them (figure out what to do when the virtual world is not cross platform), and in some cases figureing out how to present in those worlds through more than one medium at a time. Sometimes they rely on Adobe Connect, sometimes they stream the presentation. Their job is to figure out how it’s done and make it a smooth experience. They don’t get a grade, they get an experience they’ll never forget. They have 20 critics who have to do the same thing watching them. We want to get in and get out knowing we’ve seen what there is to see. It’s one thing to teleport to another virtual world, it’s quite another to figure out the presentation system, gain everyone’s attention and keep their interest while you’re presenting from a distance. Not being able to see your audience is something you truly don’t understand until you can’t do it yourself. These students always succeed at it. Why not, they have a class of 20 mentors to help them do it, not to mention access to virtual world team leaders themselves. These ladies and gentlemen avail themselves to our class with extreme selflessness. We are blessed.

The students reflect on each one of these visits while reading academic papers from various research organizations. They read, they explore their thoughts on a wiki, and they comment on each other’s thoughts. They self reflect and group reflect at the same time. They do all of this under the identify of their avatar. I don’t think we even say our real names during the first day of class. We create personas, so we can ask deeper questions. What is a virtual world? What is the Proteus effect? Am I becoming my avatar? What is the future of the metaverse? What will I be prepared to do there? Which hardware technologies will be integrated to sense my physical and emotional reactions? Will I invent them? What is the future of mesh in Second Life? Will I design the next world? The questions go on and on, and we frame everything against an emerging understanding of how to choose a virtual world to solve a business problem, design an educational experience, and consider building a business.

Further, the students examine avatar persona deeply. What does it mean to be present in a virtual world with other people? How do you manage your own attention, and how do you get and keep the attention of others? What is the impact of clothing in the virtual world, or appearance, and continuity of character? The questions abound. How do I use narrative? How do I use multimedia? What is the design constraints and the affordances of the environments? We believe by living there, you can come to understand these questions very deeply. Hiro Protagonist would easily find a place at our table.

As students get a firm hold on that, they begin to feel what it is like when taking on a client. The client calls and has an idea they want to go into a virtual world. Your first question is, what is the business case and what do you want to accomplish by moving your solution onto a 3D virtual platform? How much immersion, interactivity and collaboration do you want to experience? And the fact that each one of us does this several times a quarter, and gets instant feedback from all of the other users makes this the equivalent of a Reality TV like experience. We do vote people off the island at times :>D

As students prep for these scenarios in the physical world, they build a sense of camaraderie and belonging to the virtual biodome in which they live. They develop a psychology of interaction, and a sociology of collaboration. They develop natural tendencies to acknowledge others, clarify appropriately, support their statements with references, URLs, multimedia. The objective is to enrich, embrace, and enlighten.

Success in taking a class in a virtual world is, as Woody Allen might state, is simply 90% showing up. I’m not saying Woody Allen takes classes in a virtual world. If he did, he’d probably be even more alienated than he is today. Or would he? Would he have a sense of community, of other people caring about his actions, his inactions, and his contributions. Would he have a venue for talking to someone at 3 am in the morning when he can’t sleep and just looking around for some humanity. I think he might be quite pleased, especially if he decided he wanted to jam a bit with a colleague over the Internet.

Immersing yourself long term in a virtual world, has a very profound effect on the psychology of learning. A certain responsibility and accountability grow out of being there. You see performance from everyone, all the time. That’s different than sitting in a class listening to the teacher talk. It’s active, it’s focused, and it’s personal. It’s everything you want it to be, if you are reaching out for interaction and experience.

Visit us at UW Avalumni, University of Washington Virtual Biodome. These are the types of experiences that 2b3d has brought to the university environment. This model provides a wonderful foundation for bringing instruction to the business scene. We know how to teach in a virtual world with performance of the student on our mind. We know how to build it, and we know how to make it work. Try us!

This is a virtual world platform that says community, is in touch with its people, knows how to increase customer loyalty and advance their business model. Taking care of the educational long term is a brilliant move.

However, I am secretly hoping this opens the door to privatized education. In an era of scarcity, we needed institutions to bring our kids to common locations for access to people and resources. What Linden Lab and all the other virtual world platforms are providing is access to virtual places and virtual resources at a significantly lowered cost.

Instead of paying for overhead, cutting back on textbooks, classroom size, teacher pay, and struggling with a Union that is so Sinclair Lewis, wouldn’t it be great if we focused instead on the affordances of virtual worlds for education at a price that is affordable? With experiences and access to people that are actually immeasurable in their innovation.

Access to the student today is even more important than access to the teacher. Students are solid. They know how to get information and they know what to do with information. What they need is jobs. And if the job pays participation and accreditation, what a great entree into the work world, and what a fantastic way to get an education.

The price that Linden is charging for educational islands is a drop in the bucket. You can move so many students in and out of an island – hopping from topic to topic, job to job, experience to experience.

I embrace that Linden is taking care of the educational community for the time being. But, they are setting a great timeline — 24 months. Start figuring out how to get more market driven, more innovative, more participatory, more interactive, more fun … let the virtual world teach you (the teacher, the school district, the principal, the school boards) how to move elegantly into the 21st century. You may have to go struggling, but in the long run, education will be available to all and there is hope that the aggregate will result in creating a place where people come together to solve problems, identify solutions, and visualize everything from anthropology to zoology.

Thanks Linden!

Now roll up your sleeves educators and get out there and use the virtual platform that will become your best affordable chance for transformation.

I have to give snaps to Linden Lab for understanding just exactly how dependent the end user, the consumer, the educator, the military member, the business owner has become on your platform. Your support for their continuation is honored, and you’re about ready to see another explosion of innovation and solutions that you weren’t even thinking about. These populations are adding value to the Second Life platform in ways that will define the platform, and define the uses of virtual worlds even more than the last six years. A lot of human effort has gone into self expression and group community and offering services over the Internet in 3D is a game changer.

I applaud Linden Lab’s decision, and feel even more confident that this technology is going to be the tipping point for experiential learning, experiential marketing, and next generation interaction. What I want to see is an application like LinkedIn or FaceBook mixing with Virtual Worlds like Peanut Butter and Chocolate.

There are content generation virtual worlds, game based virtual worlds, enterprise virtual worlds, browser based virtual worlds, and each one of these categories serves a part of the population who venture into the world of 3D. Social networking is a requirement for these worlds, and making 3D a requirement for social networking I believe is the next big goal.

We have a long way to go before we see the correct business models, the awesome pedagogical models, but we have a solid platform in Second Life, Blue Mars, ProtonMedia, 3DXplorers, Teleplace, Reaction Grid, Unity and on and on to allow a level of human experimentation that is not only evolutionary in computing, but darn right fun.

I awaken from a summer of building five virtual worlds, persistent worlds in which the consumer emerges engaged in services and experience based active learning environments.

Cisco is one of those interested in taking WebEx to the next level of interactivity. We have our meetings in WebEx to facilitate Cisco’s use of PowerPoints when they prepare flow charts for us, instructional design plans – they can circle words on their white board, and engage in telephone calls (that sometimes drop too). Then, we hike on over to the virtual world, inside our retail store to run a game in which the user is a mystery shopping and has to figure out the pain points of a retail District Store Operator. Points are involved, observation is required, interacting with the characters (NPC mostly) reveals information that likely could not be uncovered in a “real setting” – who’d talk to you? The physicality of the environment demonstrates at the end that you’re probably not a good sales rep for retail. It is humbling – and from my vantage point as an instructor and a learning scientist — true to the constructivism we all hail.

We found the same thing with Ernst and Young doing inventory observations in a virtual warehouse. In fact one of the anomalies in the data was that people who went through the virtual world warehouse felt “less prepared” to conduct a real physical inventory than the people who took the web based training and answered all the questions right. We attribute this to attention to both the unforeseen and the detail of objects (not words) — it’s a sort of intimidation of the environment, and the inability of the learner to discover all the common mistakes planted in the warehouse. I suppose they have been training to ask “is this going to be on the test”. The defining moment – 50% of the employees could not get their laptops to run the program because they did not have good enough graphics cards.

I find that amusing because Intel and Microsoft are focused on the concept of refreshing the desktop and getting people to increase their graphical consumer needs so sales increase in both hardware and software. Who is running the show in making these monumental leaps? Educators or retails? Or better yet, the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Our next venture was digging deep into the mind of the solider returning home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Our theory – neuroplasticity works – if you refire neurons through long term exposure therapy, flooding the visual cortex with the right kind of images, it’s possible to rewire the neurons. So instead of telling soldiers where to go to get information about PTSD, it’s more interesting to reexposure them to their war environment, complete with IED and several levels of visual intensity, then send them off to an American mall to watch, literally and engage in realistically, different experiences that are triggered by the “in theater” experience. Images slowly morph from content in the mall back to Afghanistan when the IED exploded. This is done over and over again, until the user gets bored. The more bored, the less avoidance, and again health meters, points, and motivators to continue engaging in play.

There’s something churning in the ooze … something primordial – and remember you NEVER are present when evolution is happening.

I cite these examples because I am watching the emergence of using technologies to do something other than communicate – something we talk about that is more than just flow of information – it’s activity – “experiencing” and “reexperiencing”. And soon, you won’t even know how it’s happening. Kinda like the way a motor works in a car.

We program the technology primarily now to focus attention for long periods of time – create experiences where there is no room for multitasking because the clock is ticking and you must perform. All of this is so Gloria Geary and Don Norman — but it’s all becoming real.

Perhaps it isn’t making money – but Linden Labs has not gone the way of Forterra, in fact they just acquired ActiveVision’s VP of Marketing – of Call of Duty and Guitar Hero! Now those are experience – so something’s afoot.

It’s the consumer market for virtual goods – it just keeps making millions and hundreds of millions – why do people want virtual objects. Oh, I know – to dress their avatars – hmmm – something about vanity and money ….. . Learning will happen, learning will happen.

I agree that the Enterprise (like the Church) will progress ever so slowly, managing their domain with religious fervor. And the charter of differences will be ignored, until more Bibles are printed, and more analysis is done by Saints, who work for pittance while the Cardinals rake in all the dough and get closer to the Pope, but less close to God. Oh boy, television is influencing me still demonstrating what a refuge I am from the 50s. But, as always – I stick by Alan Kay’s wisdom, “if you want to know the future invent it”.

So, instead of working on my Facebook page, I’ve got five more virtual worlds to conceive and experiences to envision for the end user.

Next idea ….

Move photons, not people.

Who is going to provide the finest Cloud based service? Who is going to provide the best Cloud based applications?

The virtual world running Linden Lab Second Life could certainly tell both of those companies how to serve up cloud applications, afterall they’ve been doing it for nearly seven years. And, they’ve served up a user content generation environment that enables anyone to build a 3D marketplace, and use Google Apps, or Microsoft Office Live in place.

My recommendation to accelerate the operational use of these environments is to stop warring, and start partnering. There is so much software, so many services, such saturation that the user world is growing very fatigued of all the choices and differences – when there really isn’t any difference.

What we’d like to see is a solid virtual world that enables us to access content through secure interfaces, share and interact in 3D places that provide meaning to the user and business value for the company.

Whether we end up using Teleplace, Protosphere, Unisfair, Blue Mars, Second Life isn’t what is going to make up our minds as virtual world decision makers. What is going to make a difference is integration, seamless integration that allows us to work without concern if this feature is going to work.

Think of the Internet as a Builder’s Emporium, a HomeDepot if you will. Think of it as a place where users go and get the products they need to build the houses and buildings they want to run an international small business anywhere they want in the virtual world of the Internet.

Make your products good, the nails strong, the wood pure, the tools precise. And we’ll build new jobs for you.

Call to Action: I trust the theory: communications, HCI, semiotics, situated cognition, learning archtypes, following Gagne and Briggs, Clark, Bandura, Rhinegold. I love it all. What we need now I think is a book for the average instructor. I think it’s time to start laying down some practical advise on how to do it. This means lesson plans, curriculum, programs, and of course back it up with research. But, we need the Dummies Guide to Education and Virtual Worlds.

A Practical Way of Putting Games in Education. Richard Fertig at U. Florida in his book Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education offered some. Let me reshare it. Let me just use a poetic format to do it.

“Specifically, an effective video game
will allow players to choose
the difficulty level of the video game
and gradually increase the challenge
as a player’s skill increases.

Skills learned in the beginning of a game
should be practiced
to the point of automatization and
continually utilized as new skills are practiced.

Educational video games should
be made to take advantage of the ability
to provide immediate feedback.
The system of reinforcement is a critical
component of an educational video game.

The most effective games at motivating players will
make use of both extrinsic reinforcement
(e.g., points or impressive visual effects)
and intrinsic reinforcement
(e.g., a sense of accomplishment
or competence”.

Analysis: Okay, like poetry, the advise is sound, the measure and beat tied sweetly to the message. Here’s what I think this poem said. Make it easy, then make it hard. Make it stick. Tell them when they’ve done good, and fix them when they did it wrong. That way they’ll be smart.

Doin’ It. Now I want to move from poetry to hard core to do lists.

1) Limit your virtual world learning to no more than 15 people.

2) Meet in a virtual world at least 3 hours per week in a group.

3) Encourage 3 hours per week of smaller group meetings with a mentor.

4) On the first day, teach everyone to navigate, communicate and move objects by going to go find stuff and show you they found it.

5) After you do that, give everyone their own work space.

6) Give them something to build immediately. Start with a box. Have them number each side of the box with a texture.

7) Turn the box around so everyone has a 4 lined up in rows.

Turn the boxes so every box turns to #2 simultaneously.

9) Repeat that with another object like a circle.

10) Give the students 5 minutes to line up the boxes or circles up from 1-15 in five minutes.

11) Pick the best students and the leaders for the next session and ask them to meet with the other students before next class.

12) At the start of the next class, repeat exercise above and give out an award for doing it under 5 minutes.

Get “R Done (Borrowed from Larry the Cable Guy). You now have a formula for the first 3 hours of class, the in-between practice class, and the beginning of the next class. When you state the rules, provide ownership of space with tools that enable the learners, and walk through a concrete task with a concrete outcome, you’ll get results. Add people and cooperation, a use of the menu and a real use of the 3D object space like you’re really in the place, you’ll get 3D learning results.

Challenge: Now, please write me a lesson plan and send it to me at rjhinrichs@2b3d.net so I can include it in the book.

Use VW in Context to Show Cloud Apps. Now, what is the relevance to virtual worlds. It’s simple – virtual worlds provide a realistic interface to cloud computing – instead of looking at so many different kinds of screens, we can put the cloud applications in context in a place we can relate to easily – an office, a desktop, a manufacturing plant, a classroom.

Distribution and Provenance. Broadband and mass distribution have helped of course. We’ve commercialized computers, created devices we could create content on, and enabled a communications industry to provide services to access the infrastructure to store up, serve and protect our assets for years to come. I’m delighted Tom mentioned how Google’s Chrome is taking on the provenance issue – in short how do you make sure you can run a copy of your iPhone in 50 years, or run a copy of your spreadsheet on a Windows 32-bit machine with XP.

Research is Useful. The implications of cloud computing with a virtual world’s interface will be a great journey in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research and I’m looking to hear it all. What is working, what isn’t working? Who is using the cloud in a way that I can use the cloud? How does the virtual world interface connect to the cloud? How can interoperability help be achieved by use of the cloud? A journal should ask questions like these and provide potential venues for research and outcomes from research.

Practical Uses. You have this amazing virtual world in which the objects you build look like the objects in the physical world. So if you build an office in a building, it looks like an office in a building. If you have a desk with drawers, you can store 3D objects in there that you can use in your world. If you build a table, you can lay out documents from Google Docs on the table. If you build a training center, you can host Dabbleboard and YouTube on the screen, and enable users to separate into breakout rooms and brainstorm about the video or presentation, or latest idea shown in a prototype room.

More Practical Ideas. If you build a desktop computer, you can share your desktop on a single prim and watch someone else use their cloud application and guide them to learn faster. You can use 3D lighting effects and motion to highlight a patient lying on a table in a medical education simulation and stream cloud stored videos from a resource library at a University into the virtual operating room. If you have an office, you can lock the office for cybersecurity so no one can enter into your part of the cloud application unless you authorize them – playing off of User ID and login, and using the office metaphor as a group login concept.

VWs better than File Open. If you build 3D posters or 3D picture frames you can draw off your intranet what your key missions and values are using art work that sits on a cloud application managed by your art department, or use Flickr that hosts pictures of your family. In short, you have a 3rd place to store digital items in a virtual world that enables you to remember where it is better. 3D representations of spaces are much easier to manage the cloud than say File Open Network Documents … shall I go on?

Avatars in Clouds. Take the avatar in the cloud in a virtual world. Imagine creating a 3D image of a Rolodex – but one connected to LinkedIn for the recommender system and programmed to have avatars pop out through teleportation when you connect with them. Think novel cloud applications using Web 2.0 social networking software.

Attention Management in Clouds. You have a “presence” that identifies who you are, or better yet what you’d like to project about yourself. Your avatar is essentially your cursor, it represents where you are in the 3D virtual space at any given time. As your avatar is walking through a cloud of applications, he may look around and use the avatar to alert other individuals what you’re looking at or what you’re doing. If your avatar faces a screen, you’re likely paying attention to what is on the screen. If your avatar is reaching out to initialize a program, you’re likely launching the program or working on part of the program. If your avatar is following behind you as you discuss something and you are showing off items in your virtual world, there is a strong possibility that the avatar is paying attention to you.

Leveraging the Cloud. If this is done over many different spaces in a virtual world, you are literally looking into an environment that is a representation of what is happening on the “cloud”. But, you’re not talking about the cloud, you’re not including the cloud, you are leveraging the cloud, and using all of the applications on it along with your collaborators.

Invent and Innovate. We are in an age of invention and innovation. Invention being the application of money to create ideas, and innovation being the application of ideas to make money. Let us start getting specific about what those ideas are.

Well, the pay off of course is the student talents that emerge. For example, Valibrarian, appropriately named for adding “Val”ue to virtual world explorations, the future of libraries and commencement speeches as student speaker, demonstrates the integration of graduating from her home office with her virtual graduation. She pulls her hair back, dons her graduation cap to get into the role, and turns on the camera to poke a hole into the internet into her home and watch graduation.  With her family in attendance, and every device turned on around her, she brings you right into a place in our graduation in Second Life and you are there with the class sharing our experience.  Her family in attendance, she participates in the ceremony directly. You can see her there in real person manipulating her controls, her avatar, and her experience. Your experience.

With her pan in and pan out of her school mates, she captures the unique spirit everyone is simultaneously enjoying. She blends the iPhone with the Laptop, with a big screen and video of her watching her avatar in a virtual worlds. It seems so out of body experience watching it on a YouTube video.

There certainly is a revolution happening right in the very home of the individual learner. When you ask the question 2b3d or not 2b3d, the answer is really why not. If you can go to school, spend one entire year with a group of people all over the world, meet in a singular location that is your home base, create an entire sim with a partner like the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories called Cybersecurity island, and get your 3 part video – showing Cybersecurity Island, Club One and a Public PTSD Consultation island shown at a White House Briefing, you know that you have changed the outcomes of the world. Way to go class of 2010, and way to go 2b3d.