Virtual Learning Environments

After  reading Presence, Interaction And Data Space by Mike Leggett, I began to think about what presence meant. I am quite ambivalent when it comes to the definition of presence.

However, I came across a paper on the internet written by Rita and Ijsselsteijn called Being there: The experience of presence in mediated environments. The writers mention Lombard and Ditton for their categorization of presence into three distinct elements:

-          Physical Presence: idea of being physically present in a mediated space.

-          Social Presence: idea that refers to the sensation of being together with a virtual or remotely located communication partner(page 5).

-          Co-presence: In the middle of physical presence and social presence. Sense of people gathering in a communal space with physical and social characteristics.

You will find in this paper, ( http://www.neurovr.org/emerging/book4/4_01RIVA.PDF) on page 6 , a figure illustrating the liaison between these three concepts as well as the corresponding media that fall into the different categories.

I could not agree more with the SVE’s incorporation into the co-presence category. Video – Gamers, playing  on common virtual platforms as well as First Person Shooter (FPS) games, are involved in a combative platform in which each avatar plays a significant role. These games are played online with multiple video gamers who prefer to use the voice channel to communicate. They are socially present through their voice chat but they are also physically present through their avatars on their virtual platform.

I’m happy to introduce you to Frank Cohn, Founder and Executive Director of Globalhood, which is the umbrella organization for the Global Potential (GP) program. The Global Potential program empowers low-income urban youth aged 16 to 25 to create positive change in their lives and communities. For 12 weeks, youth participants engage in a social entrepreneurship and leadership training program run at their high school, where they gain skills and knowledge that will prepare them to live and volunteer for six weeks in a rural village in a developing country (where at least half the students have a cultural background).

This semester our class will be working with GP to create two multi-modal educational projects: 1. a Global Potential Alumni Experience and Mentoring Program and 2. Ethnography and Mapping the Batey. I think GP is an amazing program and I’m excited to be working with them and hope that you’re looking forward to it, too!

You can get a good overview of the Global Potential program here:
http://global-potential.org/brochure
and at their blog:
http://www.global-potential.org/blog/
and Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Potential/27679576083?ref=nf

So, without further ado, here’s Frank Cohn, giving an overview of Global Potential and the projects:

Here’s a follow-up video with more detail:

TokBox – Free video chat and video messaging

Here’s the video conversation thread on virtual learning platforms — it’s great to put faces to names and continue the discussion in this forum, so keep the videos coming:

TokBox – Free video chat and video messaging

The Harasim article speaks of the expansion of elearning in the 80s and 90s. I am surprised that today elearning is not more widely recognized and accepted as a wonderful tool for education. Working in admissions for a university, prospective students are very skeptical as to what they could possibly learn online, believing that online education cannot be as good as in the classroom. In my masters program, many teachers are reluctant to teach online, and although more online classes are requested, the department still does not offer more, perhaps due to only a small demand, or no interested teachers. I find online education to be better suited for me, as I have more time to reflect on the learnings within my own time frame, and have the freedom to learn at my own pace. My first online class was an on campus/ online hybrid. The first few classes were on campus, then the course went online. The teacher taught the rest of the class from Germany, and it was taught through blackboard. Although I do not find blackboard to be the most effective online teaching platform, I have not used others.
I also found the section about a group of females beginning the online class to be interesting. Harasim says that individuals were responding the same regardless of their gender, and students that would normall not speak as much in class, worked harder through the online platform: Harasim says:
“Furthermore, it was always the same, small percentage of the class that spoke up. Even though these are technical courses there is a great deal of pragmatic content in many of the upper division and graduate courses that deal with design tradeoffs. We found that when every student had a chance
to reflect on their views and to compose their thoughts, the resulting
discussion was fairly equally distributed.”