The Psychology of Learning Environments

Third post today from reading back issues of Educause Review and this article "The Psychology of Learning Environments" (Ken Graetz, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 6 (November/December 2006): 60–75) is another good read. From his vantage point at Winona State (a Tablet PC school) he discusses the bug-a-boo of students having laptops and doing other things while lectures take place. But his point is rather than this being a major distraction, the curriculum is moving from lecture delivery to collaboration. Bill Becker and Mike Watts have long assailed the chalk and talk delivery and Graetz points out the the presence of computers in the hands of students leads one to collaboration and discussion and in turn this does or should lead to changes in classroom design. At the ASSA meetings in January 2007, Marcelo Cericli Arias (Stanford) spoke compellingly about smart classroom design and how the learning space assisted students in economics to fo "From Zero to Agent-Based Modeling in Ten Weeks," a task unheard of in a non-collaborative environment.

In my posts on 1:1 Computing in Econometrics I discovered that by using DyKnow Vision and Monitor, the projector went off the second day and was rarely used there after since the delivery was to everyone's screen. (Just like my favorite phrase in "24" when Jack or someone says just send it to my screen.) My guess, before reviewing the data is the successful problem based learning experience is in part due to the synergies created by the use of the Tablet PC and DyKnow Vision.

The classrooms need to accomodate collaboration and Gratez goes through the requirements including wall and furniture arrangement as well as class size. He discusses the use of DyKnow, clickers, Synchroneyes, virtual campuses such as Second Life and more.

I found the list of usability criteria he quotes quite interesting and aplicable to a variety of learning spaces and devices. Indeed this also applies to my Tablet PC experiment as well.

• "Learnability refers to the speed and ease with which a novice user can achieve proficiency with the system.


• Efficiency refers to the degree to which the system supports the performance of an experienced user in the shortest amount of time and with the fewest steps.


• Memorability refers to the degree to which a user, particularly an intermittent or casual user, can remember how to accomplish a task using the system, the steps of which were learned previously.


• Errors refer to the number of mistakes and missteps made by users.


• Satisfaction refers to the users' overall emotional experience when using the system. (this list is from Jakob Neilson, Usability Engineering (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman, 1993)."

"Careful, objective usability analyses of common digital environments should be conducted and problems should be addressed using similar decision-making processes and with the same sense of urgency that campuses apply when addressing poor conditions in brick-and-mortar classrooms."

Second Life emerging as home to more and more Universities.

Thanks for Bill Goffe for this link to the chronicle and a story on San Jose State Library and its link to the Second Life world. This includes a great video worth watching. Especially impressive how this video and narration presents the hierarchical organization of a web page and shows it crashing down and being replaced with areas and buildings in 3-D. They will begin using the Second Life space starting Summer 2007 to support its distance learning. The island is titled "SJSU SLIS" and you can see more at http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/sl.

Just today Case Western is the subject of using second life in The Wired Campus section of the chronicle.

SJSU's video is also on YouTube and is embedded here. You might want to review the other related videos listed on the YouTube page.

Virtual Worlds and the Teaching of Economics -- It's Real!

(updated February 11, 2007)
Click on the image to the right and read about Digital Game-Based Learning, and read on...

One game is Second Life is a virtual reality game that all can access and partake in. My wife and I have explored only the surface as we gain an avatar and customize it and begin to walk around this environment. Our University is discussing how we can bring gaming to the classroom for education and there are some examples out there. One of these is in the Athens News (1/29/2007) - "Virtual-reality software creates parallel campus, enhances education" and talks about a class held by Paul Shovlin inside Second Life. Read it it is pretty interesting with even a duplicate Ohio University inside Second Life. While Paul's class is in writing and other course are planned, a few notable persons in the lead are economists.

The number three most downloaded paper in the Social Science Research Library is "Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier" by Economist Edward Castronova, Indiana University Bloomington - Department of Telecommunications with 37,653 copies being downloaded ranking him as 15th among all authors. Clearly there is something here. He has 13 papers on virtual worlds and synthetic economies on his author page. No one is quite in the lead on discussions of the economies of virtual economies like he is. He even has his own wikipepia article. His blog TERRA NOVA is about virtual worlds and their implications. It has been in existance since September 2003. I highly recommend that you look around his Synthetic Worlds Institute at Indiana University (where he is director) and especially note their current project ARDEN: The World of William Shakespeare.

Jeff Sarbaum teaches a course in introductory economics in a on-line virtual world at UNC Greesboro. While he does not use second life he does use a virtual world. See "Aliens Teach University Economics Class" (by Nell Boyce, NPR) for some pictures and a description. Here is an article from the Duke Instructional Technology Showcase on Sarbaum's game: "Serious Games: Digital Game-Based Learning in Higher Education." An article in Campus Technology also reviews the game.