Chris Dede Transcript 10 July 2006
From SimTeach
Resources
Project overview: http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject
Streaming video: http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject/view/rc_videos.html
Article for discussion: http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject/documents/Dede_Games_Symposium_AERA_2005.pdf
Transcript
Note: Professor Dede's avatar name "Chris Olejniczak" has been edited for clarity.
Chris Dede: So what would you like to discuss?
Jim Olejniczak: How's Starbucks?
Chris Dede: Actually, I am in a Kinkos
MLani Montgomery: Welcome Chris
Chris Dede: Thanks
Mike Sellery: This is a neat space..even if it is taking time to rez for me
Aleister Goodfellow: lol
Bob Bravo: welcome Chris!!
naiad Remblai: Hi Chris - Welcome!
Cyberneticia Cela: Welcome. Great job on River City
Chris Dede: I hope that many of you had a chance to watch the River City video
Milosun Czervik: will there be question moderation through Jeremy?
Chris Dede: And to read the paper
Jim Olejniczak: We did have enough time
Chris Dede: I hope we can have a discussion rather than my attempting to give a talk
Danielle Damone: sure - sounds good
Chris Dede: Are there questions I can answer or comments you would like to make?
Milosun Czervik: Chris - you've seen lots of these kind of environments... how does SL compare?
MarkASmear Freelunch: how do i do that
MarkASmear Freelunch: I'm supposed to record so i have to pay attention and can't leave
Chris Dede: I have a couple types of concerns about SL. First, it appears to require pretty high end hardware. For the implementation environments in which I work, that is problematic
Chris Dede: Second, the firewall issues are troubling. We just lost 40 minutes
Milosun Czervik: Chris - agreed. Not great for the K12 environment because of those tech issues....
Danielle Damone: Its hard in higher ed as well
Cyberneticia Cela: What have you learned about what teachers need via professional development to use MUVES effectively w students?
Chris Dede: Third, fidelity (e.g., 32 bit color rather than 16) is typically not the key feature in virtual worlds, but that seems to be where SL is focusing
Danielle Damone: I had that trouble with my class and we have a laptop program
Jim Olejniczak: I think most of technology is like that. Lots more eye candy, little real-world benefit.
Shirley Marquez: not to mention that fact that nobody under 13 can get into SL, which writes off a big part of K-12
Chris Dede: So, I wonder if this is really being designed from a user's perspective.
Milosun Czervik: not anymore... there are no more age checks with registration
Jim Olejniczak: There's no way to enforce them, really
Danielle Damone: Jim - right
Chris Dede: In terms of features, it seems I can everything here an more in Active Worlds, which we use for our work, even though that is quite an old program and has its own set of issues.
Shirley Marquez: I meant "within the terms of service",... and that IS an issue for an educational program
Heidi TeeCee: I was told that they designed SL for the high end user... not really for the education sector
Jim Olejniczak: Scripting here is insanely difficult. The language needs some real help
Sven Thurston: Second Life will be upgraded to a new graphics engine and scripting engine soon
Chris Dede: But even for the high end user, interaction and expression is more important than fidelity
Sven Thurston: the scripting engine will be .NET Framework
Sven Thurston: MONO is the Linux equivalent
Milosun Czervik: Chris - did Active Worlds start as an edu tool? I do not think SL did not start with Edu in mind.... that is likely part of the reason behind usability issues
Drue Aridian: Chris - John Bransford says hello
Milosun Czervik: oops.. two negatives there
Jim Olejniczak: It's hard to do education when you can take your clothes off... hard to control the environment
Chris Dede: Someone asked about prof development for teachers in RC. We are studying this under different conditions. We train some teachers ourselves, others are trained by trainers we have certified, still others work simply through an online portal to download no
Chris Dede: non-interactive training. We are studying the strengths and weaknesses of each type.
Shirley Marquez: the hardware requirements are also an obstacle for business use -- few office computers have the necessary graphics hardware
Danielle Damone: right - although there has been some talk of corporate training
Chris Dede: The trick is to begin with what one wants users to experience, then work backwards to hardware and software.
Mari Asturias: edtech!
Jim Olejniczak: Yeah, but that's probably what they did here.. users want a new life, this tries its best to simulate it with subtle improvement
Milosun Czervik: lots of folks are doing edu in SL by using lecture & slide shows... not using the strengths of desktop VE really... how do we change this? How do we foster more constructivist/constructionist thinking?
Chris Dede: In River City, we have added tools like scientific instruments to measure data. that helps increase interaction and immersion.
Chris Dede: We also use agents to act as residents and provide clues for a back-story that guides students to learn
Milosun Czervik: do the physics of SL mirror RL physics?
Mat Warf: it's hard to feel immersed with a low frame rate, I can tell you that.
Jim Olejniczak: Well, you can't fly in real life
Danielle Damone: there is a fantasy element - like going back in time
Milosun Czervik: no, Jim... I mean do objects fall at the same velocity
Shirley Marquez: The physics engine doesn't seem to model air resistance
Sven Thurston: Second Life uses a modified version of the Havoc Physics Engine
Chris Dede: A second window in our world opens up other types of resources and we also provide a virtual notebook students can use to share screenshots and ideas
Milosun Czervik: can one do "real" measurements here? I assume these can be done in AW
Mat Warf: SL physics are a bit old and creaky at times, but all the basics are there.
Jim Olejniczak: no
Drue Aridian: everything has the mass of Styrofoam
Chris Dede: It's all a matter of deciding what types of interaction, immersion, collaboration, and learning you want to foster.
Danielle Damone: right - I read of using that second window to support a knowledge forum in another study
Milosun Czervik: How many students do you have in RC?
Mari Asturias: Dr. Dede... Have you done distributed learning... having students distant from each other... access RC at the same time?
Danielle Damone: I have not been able to replicate that with SL
Mari Asturias: and work together?
Chris Dede: Seven years in, we have used various versions of RC with about 7000 students over seven states.
Milosun Czervik: that'd be a lot of data
Jim Olejniczak: How well did that work out?
Chris Dede: We are learning a lot through qual and quant research and also have redesigned the world numerous times
Milosun Czervik: do students have a hand in redesigning the world?
Cyberneticia Cela: What has been the most significant redesign?
GiveMeA Freelunch: How many lines of code created RC world?
Chris Dede: Students focus groups have been very useful in our design, as has students feedback. We do the redesign ourselves, however.
Chris Dede: Currently, we are working on a redesign that gives participants "powers" in levels based on their learning and experience, parallel to games
Cyberneticia Cela: What led you to make that change?
Mari Asturias: as a motivational tool?
Danielle Damone: how would that work - what types of powers?
Chris Dede: We are looking for ways to draw students deeply into the world, not just for fun, but to care about the inhabitants and learn to save them from the diseases that are killing them.
Mari Asturias: so... knowledge = powers = ability to effect change?
Chris Dede: The powers we use are not extrinsic motivation (do this yucky learning and as a reward we will provide fun entertainment), but instead intrinsic
Jim Olejniczak: How did you do intrinsic motivation about water sampling?
Chris Dede: Powers in our world gives access to a spooky mansion and graveyard on the edge of town where you get clues about diseases in River City in the past
Cyberneticia Cela: How do you link between River City inhabitants and real world similar situations?
Cyberneticia Cela: In terms of caring I mean, and drawing them into caring....
Milosun Czervik: is there a certain group of people who can make all these changes, or can student actions/inactions introduce new diseases and/or problems?
Chris Dede: We are studying transfer, a potential strength of virtual environments. We have a River City world 50 years later in which we study how many skills students transfer from their initial experience
Chris Dede: Students can conduct controlled experiments to change the world to see if their hypotheses about problem causes are correct
Milosun Czervik: neat
Danielle Damone: very cool
Mari Asturias: I wonder if forming "relationships" with a character would also cause more intense caring?
Mike Sellery: I can see how I could use that in history
Chris Dede: For example, they can make a bog disappear or can change the season
Sven Thurston: good point
Jim Olejniczak: good point
Bob Bravo: How large is the group (Educators) working on this?
Chris Dede: We are very interested in building a world centered on history. OUr current world draws on history, but that is not its primary focus
Jim Olejniczak: Can you port River City to different geographical areas?
Chris Dede: We are negotiating with Singapore for them to build a variant of RC appropriate for their country
Milosun Czervik: no chewing gum!
GiveMeA Freelunch: Do you allow other universities to utilize RC for educational purposes?
Jim Olejniczak: Hrm. I suppose that students at the university couldn't adapt it themselves?
MarkASmear Freelunch: will the River City source code be opened to educators for modification?
Sven Thurston: Can students at Ohio U get a copy of this code?
Chris Dede: We are looking for grade 7-9 science teachers to implement RC. We do make RC available on a demo basis for university classes.
Jim Olejniczak: Well, couldn't university students change the project and then give implementation? It would be a good distributed source of funding, I would imagine
Sven Thurston: Are there plans to make River City Open Source?
Bob Bravo: Any plans for "moving up' to high school students?
Cyberneticia Cela: What have you found to be the greatest challenges for teachers stepping into this....
Chris Dede: Did everyone get a chance to watch our video? It is helpful in getting a sense of the world.
Mari Asturias: great video
Cyberneticia Cela: yes, great video.
Chris Dede: We have worked with students as low as 5th grade and as high as 12th. It is a little hard for younger students, and it takes less time to do for older, but all find it interesting
Bob Bravo: ty
Milosun Czervik: what kind of IRB problems do you run into?
Jim Olejniczak: Could you just make the simulations more complicated for older kids? Do you know if the concepts expand well?
Chris Dede: None. We do informed consent and have not encountered any issues. Our world is on its own server, so we completely control access.
Cyberneticia Cela: Greatest challenges for teachers using it?
Jim Olejniczak: How much does it cost to get a license to use River City?
Chris Dede: Our teachers are used to their primary issues being classroom management, keeping kids interested, and communicating information. RC makes those disappear.
Chris Dede: But then the teachers have to do interpretation and collaborative problemsolving, which is a big shift in pedagogy
Chris Dede: So the problems are not technical or with kids, but with building up new professional skills
Cyberneticia Cela: Yes. Thanks.
Milosun Czervik: are there particular subject that you find RC better suited for?
Chris Dede: RC is designed to teach inquiry, science, and history. I can imagine many other subjects that could be taught by other types of virtual environments
Chris Dede: Any questions about the article?
Mari Asturias: Once teachers have experienced RC.. Their reactions are positive.. yes?
Chris Dede: Yes, teachers typically want to do again and recruit colleagues. There are challenges with school infrastructure (e.g., enough computer lab time)
Milosun Czervik: ah.... ye olde logistics...
Bob Bravo: so, what ARE your minimum hardware requirements?
Milosun Czervik: how much time do the kids spend per week?
Chris Dede: Any Windows machine made in the last three or four years is fine.
Chris Dede: Our RC curriculum is 20 class periods of 45-60 minutes each
Jim Olejniczak: What do you do in the school has Macs instead? Is there a version?
MarkASmear Freelunch: Can schools with Macs use RC?
Milosun Czervik: so when Mac explodes back into schools once Parallels ramps up...
Chris Dede: No version for Macs. This is not our choice, but a "feature" of the Active Worlds authoring shell we use
Jeremy Kabumpo: Question about page 3 - you started with GSC and EMC pedagogies and year 2 added LPP from Lave, and yet this method seems to show the most potential? Why the timing on this - did you see something missing in the first round?
Chris Dede: LPP was harder to do in terms of design -- we brought on pedagogies as we developed them and that took the most time.
Chris Dede: Now we use a "best of the best" world that combines the capabilities that were most useful in each
Jeremy Kabumpo: so the building process for Lave's legitimate peripheral process looked different, how?
Chris Dede: We needed to use a lot of tacit modeling. Built in video clips that students could watch, showing "experts" modeling what they were doing
Milosun Czervik: Chris... if you were king of the SL world... let's call you Chris Linden... what would be some things you'd change right off?
Chris Dede: I would stop worrying about high end graphics and go for the biggest installed base. I would worry less about visual presentation and more about a variety of interactive capabilities.
Jim Olejniczak: The graphical requirements don't seem to be that high
Chris Dede: I would create some interesting embedded experiences, like RC, that people could experience as a way of seeing the potential
Milosun Czervik: Jim... have you seen the list of graphics cards that "don't* work with SL??
Jim Olejniczak: No, but I bet you have
Jeremy Kabumpo: you have seen the various tools for MUVEs and what they offer - what potentials do you see with the one we're in (and drawbacks, of course)?
Milosun Czervik: Chris - I think you'd like the PotHealer sim here
Jim Olejniczak: That's also not a requirements problem, but a software problem programming drivers
Mari Asturias: yes.. Pothealer.. excellent example.. And best done collaboratively
Cyberneticia Cela: I'm interesting in what you said earlier about trying to bring students more deeply into the world and motivate them to care about inhabitants. Can you say a little more about this?
Chris Dede: I'm still learning about SL. I would like to see some sophisticated agents. I would like to see some tools, like the microscopes we use to collect data.
Chris Dede: We make available as part of powers some stories, like a little girl whose family members are dying one by one. We take students back even further in time to show an earlier period when people did not know even how to begin in preventing and treating disease
Mari Asturias: you create empathy
Carolyn Carillon: ha
Bob Bravo: lol
Chris Dede: Exactly
Milosun Czervik: hahah
Jim Olejniczak: Incorporating some audio might also be a good idea... a la Skype
Jim Olejniczak: I mean if they're going for immersion, that's not too hard
Chris Dede: the historically authentic tenements in RC look like where a lot of our lower SES students live today. The women lead characters in RC encourage girls to feel science is for them
naiad Remblai: chat history will show more of text
Milosun Czervik: The WorldBridges group here does a lot with audio, via Skype & podcasting... it certainly adds to the experience.
Jim Olejniczak: Definitely. I'm surprised they don't have it; I imagine they could hack up something like TeamSpeak
Chris Dede: Yes, we have done a little with audio. The problem is, audio is problematic for schools, unless they have earphones.
Heidi TeeCee: NMC uses Team Speak
Milosun Czervik: yes.. And that stupid firewall thing again...
Sven Thurston: good point
Jim Olejniczak: Audio requirements aren't that high... even older computers should be able to run it.
Jim Olejniczak: If you can run SL, you can run an audio client :)
Danielle Damone: right but in a classroom it can be distracting
Jeremy Kabumpo: In the paper - you outline your datasources and besides chat and observation, how are you doing assessment IN WORLD?
Jim Olejniczak: What about headphones?
Danielle Damone: without headphones
Heidi TeeCee: especially if microphones are not use
Heidi TeeCee: headphones I mean
Danielle Damone: oh yeah - that awful feedback
Danielle Damone: we lost Dede?
Mari Asturias: ooooh nooooo
Mari Asturias: He spilled Starbuck's on his laptop
naiad Remblai: :)
Cyberneticia Cela: ;-)
Jim Olejniczak: Nah, he was in Kinko's
Danielle Damone: HAHA
Heidi TeeCee: oh my
Jim Olejniczak: Bet his hour ran out
Danielle Damone: does anyone here use Active Worlds?
Mari Asturias: yay!
Sven Thurston: did Kinkos get angry?
Chris Dede: Sorry -- SL crashed
Mari Asturias: been there, done that
Milosun Czervik: yeah... it does that...
Defne Demar: a lot
Milosun Czervik: and AW? server problems with it?
Chris Dede: I can stay a little more, but then have to go. Anything else you would like to discuss?
Chris Dede: AW is pretty stable, but we are experiencing some problems when the number of users is really high
Danielle Damone: future of MUVE research?
Milosun Czervik: What are some questions we should be asking of the edu folks here, Chris? SL looks like it's got a solid funding model...
Julia Wiggins: how many is really high?
Milosun Czervik: so it'll be around, I'd guess
Chris Dede: hundreds in our case -- but we have very high levels of interactivity and store quite complex logfiles
Jeremy Kabumpo: how are you getting in-world data points beside chat and observation?
Milosun Czervik: good question, JK
Chris Dede: I think the future of muve research is to keep building a variety of educational environments in muves and study their strengths and limits
Chris Dede: We are developing design heuristics and research methods we hope will generalize
Mari Asturias: :-)
Danielle Damone: thank you
Mari Asturias: Publishing more soon on this? and where?
Cyberneticia Cela: Milosun's question about questions we might want to ask edupeople at Linden Labs re: SL...can you speak to that for a sec?
Chris Dede: If any of you would like to involve your university classes in a demo, please let me know via email. We can work with faculty to arrange that.
Milosun Czervik: Chris.. that'll be great. Who do we email?
Defne Demar: I'd be interested in that
Defne Demar: what's the email?
Chris Dede: I would ask them if willing to partner on proposals to funding agencies like NSF or US Dept of Ed, building in money for custom programming in SL to add capabilities useful for educ. That is what we did with Active Worlds
Heidi TeeCee: We might be interested also ... what email?
Heidi TeeCee: email?
Chris Dede: Chris_Dede@harvard.edu
Jeremy Kabumpo: can you talk a little about the design of your microscope and how it iterated - with students involved in testing, etc.?
Cyberneticia Cela: thanks.
Chris Dede: Lots of publications available on our website, as well as videos, screenshots, etc
Chris Dede: We developed microscope in flash, runs in external window. We did pilot testing and focus groups, and then built into curriculum. Adds a lot, now use as template for other tools
Chris Dede: If you know grades 7-9 science teachers who might be interested, please ask them to contact me also
Milosun Czervik: So, Chris... here's another question.. What is the phonetic pronunciation of your SL last name?
Chris Dede: Who else is visiting this summer for your group?
Chris Dede: I have no idea. I find it obnoxious I cannot use my real name
Danielle Damone: We hope John Bransford
Milosun Czervik: he he... I thought since your RL last name was so easy... you picked that one!
Chris Dede: I would invite Yasmin Kafai from UCLA, Sasha Barab from Indiana
Danielle Damone: that would be excellent
Milosun Czervik: ah... one other thing I just thought of...about language....
Milosun Czervik: I know kids in RC can chat - what new lingo have you found them to be coming up with? Typical IM stuff?
Chris Dede: Kurt Squire from UW Madison, Eric Klopfer from MIT, Amy Bruckman from Ga Tech
Jeremy Kabumpo: Professor Dede - Thank you VERY much for your time!
Chris Dede: Typical IM stuff. We don't care, as long as they understand each other. Of course, to understand the logfiles, we have to learn the lingo.
Danielle Damone: thank you for the suggestions
Milosun Czervik: Indeed - tyvm
Cyberneticia Cela: Thanks so much. Great seeing you in SL.
Chris Dede: Thanks... please contact me with further questions. Glad you are doing this!!
Mari Asturias: Thank you so much
Chris Dede: Bye!!!
Mari Asturias: WooT
Julia Wiggins: TY
Heidi TeeCee: thanks!
Farley Scarborough: TY
Jeremy Kabumpo: My apologies to all for the initial technical difficulties! This has been a wonderful experience!
