Clark Aldrich to keynote Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference, with Edward Castronova and Tony O’Driscoll

I hope to see some of you in two weeks, at the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference. I will be keynoting, and I will be signing copies of my newest (and most revolutionary) book, The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games.

If you don't know about it, there are going to be cutting edge panels (e.g., 3D virtualization, artificial intelligence, innovative computer input devices, etc.), over 30 government virtual world projects, and virtual world services and software vendors. Check it out on the website: http://www.ndu.edu/irmc/fcvw/fcvw10/agenda.html.

Registration can be found at http://www.ndu.edu/irmc/fcvw/fcvw10/registration.html. Registration for the workshops at the National Defense University (NDU) on May 12 is $75 for the entire day of workshops. This includes continental breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. Registration for the 2-day conference at NDU, May 13-14 is $150. This includes a continental breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack each day as well as a reception on May 13 from 4-7. If you plan to attend virtually, the cost will be $0. Please register even if you plan to attend virtually so that they can keep you updated.

Send me an email as well if you are going!

Review of “Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds”

Justin Reeve posted a review of Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds. Click here to get to it. In his conclusion, he writes:

After reading this, my thoughts on virtual worlds have changed. I used to think that virtual worlds were just a good way to increase student engagement. Students like games, so naturally many of them would become more involved in the learning process if games were used, right? Well, it’s a lot more than that. There are times when an educational game, simulation, or virtual world is THE best form of instruction.

His entire review is well written and highlights the main themes of not just the book but the discipline, so worth looking at even if you have no interest in Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds.

How should virtual worlds that are designed for one person differ than those designed for one thousand?

In a recent consulting assignment from an academic consortium, I was asked what needed to go into a virtual world. My first question was, how many people do you expect in it?

Why does that matter? It matters a lot.

If just for one person, then the virtual world should support:

• Artificial intelligence, to create interesting inhabitants;
• Interactive props;
• Rigorous map and level design capabilities, to lead the person through carefully expanding opportunities and challenges.
• Trigger and other context based pedagogical information, so that the virtual world is presenting explicit information to the inhabitant.
• After action review tools for later review.

If supporting the role of a coach as well, the virtual world would also have to support:

• Real time communication tools.
• Scenario control tools to reset a situation, freeze it, or otherwise intervene.

If supporting small groups, such as 3 to 8, the virtual world should support:

• Collaboration and communication tools;
• Waiting/staging rooms before going into a scenario;
• Real time interaction between people at different locations; and
• Props that can be interactive and handed between avatars.

Supporting large groups (10 to 50) requires:

• Survey tools;
• Audience control; and
• Common places to communicate.

Supporting very large groups (30 to thousands) requires:

• Load sharing/multiple servers; and
• Persistent environments.

With this information, the team calibrated the opportunity and the scale.

We are finally at a time of interest in implementation, not just talks. It is satisfying to help organizations align their goals and resources.

Education should be more like World of Warcraft... I mean the iPad... No, Facebook. The quest for silver bullets through new popular media/technology

Here's the best way to establish some cred as an education visionary: Take the newest example of consumer media/technology and argue that education should be more like it.

I'll even help you write your presentation. First, show some glossy pictures of the new media/ technology, preferably being used by children. Second, show some graphs displaying its rapid adoption. Third, show a few tentative examples of quasi-educational uses. Then slam schools. Finally, present a giant and impassioned call to action. Cut to applause. You are a visionary. You "get it." Plus the stuff already exists - you just have to figure out how to pay for it.

The critical flaw in all of this thinking is, let's call, The Disneyland Effect. It is education based on consumerism. In all of these uses of new media, the participants are very carefully and successfully being managed to feel like they have control and relevancy, while in reality they are simply gobbling up more stuff. (Being in a flow state is important, but it also may be more addictive than crack.)

In one TED presentation, someone was arguing that a player of World of Warcraft was learning how to be a hero, even a messiah. That's absurd. If they wanted to be a hero, they would be helping their neighbor clean out their garage or their little sister learn to ride a bicycle.

Consumer technology provides an infrastructure and new techniques to use. New media is more expressive, and in that expressiveness is a tremendous opportunity (I have produced both custom sims and corporate Facebook-style communities that have been incredibly successful in transforming real world behavior, as well as award winning books). But without a vision for education and a lot of hard work to support it, drafting off of ready-made popular culture and consumerism will work in the future about as well as it has worked in the past.

The problem is not that schools will refuse to adopt the new media/technology. My greater fear is that they will adopt it. Because the sad truth is that school are already based almost entirely on a visionless use of the most successful popular culture media/technology to date - the book. Books' ability to create fantasy microwords and convincing but hollow models of reality that are both addictive and self-referential with only dubious ties to the productive world is what got us in this mess to begin with.

Evolving Education will Require: New Media, New Assessment, and Homeschoolers

I suspect even the most ardent supporters of K - 12 and college education haven't been thrilled by the way the industries have evolved over the last twenty or more years. And given the last few years, it is seeming unlikely that either Foundations or Government grants are going to change the status quo.

Back in the late '90's, I had hoped that corporations would pioneer and role-model better approaches. Sadly only about 5% of corporations today are viable role models even for other corporations when it comes to being effective learning organizations. Surprisingly (at least to me) emerging institutions providing alternative approaches to Masters degrees at the University level are currently showcasing the most viable new sustainable methods.

Having said that, along with these, I believe there are three connected areas that currently have the most promise for evolving K-12 education. They are: new media, new assessment, and homeschoolers.

New media, to readers of this blog, may be the most obvious. Schools rely so much on media, including books and movies, and term papers and tests. But simulations will provide the ability to teach students how "to do" not just how "to know;" Social media will help students learn "to be." And both will have a massive impact on curricula and even alignment with the rest of the world. See The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games.

Assessment is critical, because it is tied to to certification, and even alternatives to formal education. Progress here seems the furthest away today, but will necessarily be enriched by new media. See Assessment + MMORPG + Real World Challenges: How The MESH will Change Education and The future is portfolios, not transcripts.

Finally, a vital homeschooler movement is critical to productively evolving education. They are unique in providing legitimate "competition" to a monopoly of philosophy, reinventing post-industrial K-12 education, looking both backwards and forwards. I am trying to capture some of their tenets in Unschooling Rules.

There is reason to be optimistic. In the next 20 years, education will evolve tremendously. And with these influences, this time it will be in the right direction.

Most Sims Fail at the First Level

Creating the first level of any Sim is harrowing. It has to be nearly impossible to fail yet still deep enough to entice. If you don't get it right, any deployer has to waste significantly more time getting students interested. And so many Educational Simulations get this wrong.

Here are five rules:

1. The player has to get a general feeling for the interactivity.
2. A player can finish it quickly (in less than one minute).
3. The directions and goals are unambiguous, with immediate feedback and a clear sense of success or failure. It should be set up through a brief cut scenes, and very high feedback, such as in-game tips/directions.
4. There is a reset button (to encourage exploration and reduce fear of failure).
5. There is room for some exploration, and/or promise of more interesting things to come. The first level has to both be so easy as to be intuitive to use, but also deliver a slight learning payoff and foreshadowing.

Typically, a disproportionate amount of developer time should be spent on this first level. There should to be a lot of verbal and text directions.

There are two big traps around the first level.

One of the biggest traps is making the first level have a strong educational goal. Rather, if a user engages the interface and meets with success in a very short time, the goal of the level should be considered met. The deeper learning should wait to level 2.

The second trap is to put too much linear content before it. Players want to dig in to the most interactive part of the sim as fast as possible. Until they get a taste, they will rush through all earlier content. It is only after they engage a little bit of the "real sim" that they will pay attention to more subtle points.

The first level may also explicitly a training level (especially in a complex game), but can also just as easily not, especially for a mini-game. The first level can also be a demo level.

(This entry taken from The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games)

Evaluation Strategies and the Analysis of Learning

Evaluation strategies are activities to analyze the success of a formal learning program in accomplishing Learning Goals and Desired Results for students, sponsors, and other members of a community.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a formal learning program in academics, enterprises, or military organizations is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it is strife with paradoxes and tough decisions, that necessarily ask, what is wisdom, what are the attributes of a perfect person, how do you balance big skills and process skills, and what can be rigorously developed? And, of course, what are the relevant philosophies of learning?

You are Where?

For some, the challenge of measurement of any formal learning program is captured by this circular reasoning:

• Training is not important, learning is.
• Learning is not important, doing the right thing is.
• Doing the right thing is not important, having measured results is.
• Having measured results is not important, having a positive Return on Investment (ROI) is.
• Having a positive ROI is not important, meeting the needs of the budget holder is.
• Meeting the needs of the budget holder is not important, having revenue next quarter is.
• Having revenue next quarter is not important, having profit next quarter is.
• Having profit next quarter is not important, having the right people is.
• Having the right people is not important, having the right experiences are.
• Having the right experience are not important, having the right training is.

Here are some basic questions:

Cheap evaluation or expensive?

Evaluating the effectiveness of a formal learning program can easily double or triple the costs. Who pays, and why?

High impact or low?

Evaluating a formal learning program, such as by using 360 degree measurements, is intrusive to the participants, the managers, the peers, and potentially even customers. Is it worth it?

Hard or soft?

Most training organizations and schools have overcompensated for the personal nature of the business by focusing on so-called objective and measurable metrics such as return on investment (ROI) and other numbers that are thought to be comparable and rigorous. However, for the most important skills, hard numbers are just not possible. And for many Big Skills, softer metrics, such as recorded anecdotes or glint in the eye, may be more useful.

Easy or Easy?

Trainers have already stated that ease of deployment is more important to them then effectiveness. If that is the philosophy on the actual program, just imagine how low their threshold is for measurement.

Short term or long term?

Real tracking of improvements, such as seeing any promotion of students, takes months. But the decision to "go or no go" on a program, or make corrections, has to be done in weeks.

Evaluation as pure analysis or future marketing?

Despite the thoughts of purists, the real reason to do most evaluations is to market the next program, not justify the last one.

Value to sponsor, to student, or to educating organization?

Whose needs should a training program's evaluation meet? As with television programs, the customers for formal learning programs are different than the consumers (the customers for television are the advertisers – we viewers are, well, chum). The sponsors are the people to impress, and they care about more than fresh doughnuts. More importantly, is the promotion of staff the only metric that really matters?

What a person learns in a classroom is how to be a person in a classroom

(This is a reposting from my other (temporary) blog, Unschooling Rules, which can best be described as thought experiment pondering: what if Michael Pollan's critique of food was applied to education?)

The teacher can be talking about history or math. But what students in a classroom are learning is how to be students in a classroom.

And they are learning it very well. They are given ample opportunity to practice this skill in a variety of settings and contexts. As if they were playing a rigorously-designed computer game, students in school systems over the course of a decade are put in ever more challenging situations of sitting in a classroom.

They are learning how to take notes. They are learning how to communicate with peers without getting caught. They are learning how to ask questions to endear themselves to the person at the front of the room, even if they know nothing and care even less.

It is impressive, at one level, that we spend billions on this perfect, practice-based environment to build and hone children's abilities to sit in classrooms. And we have built an incredibly complex reward structure to praise and promote those people who can sit in classrooms better than anyone else. As a result, much of our planet is currently run by people who have perfected the skills of sitting in a classroom.

However, given this model is economically running us into the ground, and obesity is a global epidemic, it may be time to collectively build and reward different skills. Learning is a full contact sport. To learn something new, a student has to do something new, and often be somewhere new.

Rather than treating those who want to do something new as trouble makers to be disciplined and controlled, we need to recognize that these people not only will be the engines of our improvements in standard of living, but, in fact, always have been.