A teaching nightmare

June 16th, 2008 • MUVEs, Pourquoi ça n'arrive qu'à moi?

Ce post, le premier en anglais dans mon blog, a été écrit pour le blog du projet MUVEnation: “Active learning with Multi-Users Virtual Environments to increase pupils’ motivation and participation in education”.

So yesterday we have started the MUVEnation monthly series of “events”. We have agreed on this one month ago, moved by the idea of improving our project’s members SL competences and also creating opportunities for cooperation and group bonding. Most of us work closely together in real settings, but have few opportunities to spend time inworld.

An event can be everything: from a teaching experience, to a guided tour; from scuba dive party to a virtual barcamp.

From May 2008 and all throughout 2008, the partners of the project will organise an inworld activity for his/her fellows: 8 partners, 1 partner, 1 activity per month.

Someone has to start: that was me! This blogpost is the story of the first event that turned out to be a teaching nightmare!

One month ago, I planned to organise a ‘hand’s on workshop’ as a discovery of prim-hair making in second life: 1750-1795 in fashion: “Make wigs, make wigs, make wigs”. I decided to organise a hand’s-on workshop because i have been analysing the genre for 1 year, collecting cases and analysing good practices; although i have never given one as a teacher. But thought naively that my experience as a mentor and the results of my observations would be enough. Wrong!

It took me 20 hours to design and organise my 1 hour workshop. One full day for searching inspiration, selecting the theme, collecting resources, training myself to the task, designing the activity, preparing the description in the wiki and sending out invitations. Another 12 hours to prepare the teaching space, build the learning resources, search for inworld tools for delivering the instruction, chatting with Corwin Carillon (aka Nick Noakes), and testing the activity with Steven for final adjustments and ‘validation’.

Why I prepared a building workshop on making wigs? Because…

• I adore wigs. In my inventory I have at least 50 black, red and white wigs,
• I wanted to learn how to make prim-hair and I saw the workshop as a learning opportunity for myself,
• I wanted to test how well went a format insisting in only a few set of skills (making Torii, duplicating, basic texturising, linking) but giving freedom to students to play with size and position: freely shrinking and intensively aligning to death! i.e. giving them the opportunity to taste what building is, and not providing them with detailed instructions about size and rotation.

And the workshop started. And I was already trembling with excitation and stress. I needed one day more of work! And I am not a English native speaker. And I was with my new computer with an AZERTY keyboard mixing ‘a’ and ‘q’…

What happened?

• 6 people turned out and two could not join the location.
• Waiting for people and solving membership problems took us 15 minutes, so we started late,
• The space of the workshop, a square with avatars at 10 meters of distance from me in the centre, was too wide so they could hear me but avatars in the extremes could not use the main chat channel because they were at more than 20 meters of distance.
• We decided to use the group channel, but soon my messages were not getting in so I returned to the main channel and was dealing with Q&A either in the main channel or via.
• I experienced some problems relating to the workshop’s supplies: the pose stands in the area were locked so participants could not change the position to be more comfortable (I changed this after but again lose of time) and also the hair textures were no copy, so they did not came into the supplies folder.
• Although I have prepared images about each step that I delivered through a link to my Flickr account, participants were already too busy to open an extra window and consult them (as some of them told me). I have also made several wigs illustrating each state and asked them to wear, but they lacked of a visual and constant reference of the task.
• I had at least 3 different SL skills level from intermediate to very beginners, and the very beginners haven’t prepared the pre-required to the workshop and I haven’t prepare a back-up solution for this. With people struggling to rotate a torus and shrink and rotate within a limited space and in relation to their head, making a prim-hair workshop was a complete non-sense.
• I thought that giving room for freedom was an excellent idea, but participants turned out to be disrupted by instructions such as : “put the torus over your head, half inside, and modify it (CTRL+SHIFT) to follow the curve of your skull” (See: Follow the curve of your skull). Some kept me asking about the right dimensions for X, Y, Z, others kept the initial dimensions I have given, very few were comfortable with free modification.
• Participants did not stop asking questions, some repetitive, the same questions of their peers and i kept answering also in the main channel. I think this was very disruptive for all. Also it was for me impossible to manage different rhythms and some skilled avatars were stopped while waiting for the others. I did not have any back-up solution for this neither.
• Only two avatars out of six finished the task in 1 hour time (not counting the lose of time of the beginning), two left before finishing the task at 1:30 pressed by IRL commitments: i guess filled up with frustration because for one the rhythm was to slow, and the other had some problems visualizing the task and with rotation and positioning), two could not finish the task at 2:30 as they were newbies and had real difficulties with building and positioning. One reported me that her position in the grid was terrible to align objects on hear head, but it was too late to change position and accept the lose of the relative position of the wig, not already linked.
• It took me one hour to understand why to avatars could not link their wig: I discovered that instead of aligning the red nose to their body (See: Red nose), they have attached to their head.
• My English abandoned me several times: iIwas struggling to find the translation of “Glissez la souris autour de votre tête en sélectionant tous les objets”, “Aux extrémités du carré” or “Chignon!!!”.
• At the end, filled up with frustration as well, I finish the session with my neck, arm and little finger aching and I am not going to search for the translation for: “j’avais des fourmis plein les doigts”

Why on earth I did not listen to my inner teacher?

If I were in a F2F setting, i would have never carry on with the activity: I would have stopped, said to participants let’s change and tackle the basics. Or i would have split the session into two groups: guiding newbies step by step, provided intermediate participants with a self-paced tutorial and just giving feedback on demand.

I cannot turn back the clock, but i can tell what I will do the next time:

• Design a teaching space with pose stands free to modify ans ask participants to to work on a position they find comfortable. Instead of putting them all around a square putting them in a line or in several chess lines in front on the teacher. They will be all spread in a 20 meters diameter so they can listen to each other. And also this will facilitate my task on following them with the camera.
• Set policies for using the main communication channel and also for Q&A.
• Prepare a practical exercise to do before the workshop as an assessment of required skills. If the participants cannot go thought the task, then they cannot participate in the workshop: better to review the basics first.
• Prepare a mini task introductory to the main task, so participants understand the process that we will carry on. For example, building 3 boxes aligned vertically by duplication, texturising them, linking them making the middle as root, attaching to skull, rotating to horizontal, editing linked parts, taking back to inventory and wearing.
• Displaying big images of each step in front of the participants. So they can see them easily while they are working.
• Test the workshop long time before delivering, so as to have enough time to implement instructional changes.
• Prepare a back-up solution for fast learners so they can advance comfortably at their rhythm.
• Prepare the basic instructions in a chat giver so I can spend more time helping via IM and looking at participants’ wigs.
• Review my English vocabulary and namely the hair fashion one!
• And finally investigate more about posing stands and alignment issues when creating a wig. Interview an experienced hair builder?

By the way, I will implement these changes and offer the workshop as an SL educational events open to all. Never end with a frustration, always go ahead!

I would love that participants in the workshop put their comments here, so we can have a multi-voiced picture of the workshop

Tags: Apprentissage, MUVEs

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