Category Archives: Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds

E-Learn

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Immediately following ModSim, I found myself in Orlando, Florida, attending the E-Learn Conference. My first visit to E-Learn was in 2004 and at that time it left me with a good impression. I remembered a small group of military attendees and discussions about SCORM. There were numerous research findings pertaining to Distance Learning also….

So whatever then happen to E-Learn in 2010? I found very few research papers or empirical studies reported. Besides the keynotes and a few nicely written concept/theory papers, majority of what was presented ranged from ‘sales pitch’, to product talks, to ‘this is what our school dl programs looks like’…. There were so few sessions that intrigue my interests… particularly after a very fruitful ModSim. But what should I think when I started hearing from other participants about how they find the conference to be lacking in research presentation? (Ouch!) 8-O

I do remember a second call for paper… but was there a third? Should I have taken the cue for that to be a sign of ‘lack of participation’ from other fellow researchers, and that many lesser than par papers were accepted?

I don’t have the answer to that. (As a side note, I heard last year’s E-Learn at Vancouver was great, so is it Orlando, US, 2010 economy? Or what?)

Luckily, I did discover two gems from the conference, so maybe it is not so bad. (Am I correct, Mary?)

What’s more interesting is that both gems are making the same demand of me… and will in fact help create a new area in my current research. I look forward to that challenge. As usual, don’t want to talk about it yet, until things are well establish. So stay tune if you want to know.

virtual training

virtual training

MODSIM

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I have been wanting to attend the ModSim (Modelling and Simulation) World Conference for over 2 years now. But when I finally made my way there, I found myself surprised by what I found!

Besides the good stuff, planning, and the heavy concentration of right people… there are a few Good’s and Bad’s worthy of mention…

First the GOOD’s: The conference is populated by a lot of engineers (with good measure of software and computer engineers thrown in). Best of all they speak my lingo: ID (instructional design)! Not only do I understand exactly what they mean, they too, understand my research and why I pursue performance assessment with SG and VW.

So, once again, I have found validation and credence of my research among the homeland security, and defense folks. Why here and why not education (where I am housed)? Is it because of the need for en masse training? Is it because training/education is taken being seriously due to possibly life threatening situation by these groups (rather than the public education)? I wonder.

Next, the BAD’s: Where are the Instructional Designers and Instructional Technologists I knew? Are they too busy arguing if we should be called Learning Technologist or Instructional Technologist?

I am afraid our field will soon become irrelevant if people who are involved stop being creative, and quit inventing new and useful thing to benefit those around us. When was the last time IDT people fixed something together or report creating a new Learning System? What scares me is that over the last few years (as I review papers for conferences), I found extreme constructivist educators insisting we should hear from their students because “their students know so much more than them (or us)…” and higher institutes that boldly proclaim their PhD students “no longer do their own data analysis”… So no more Expert/Novice, no more doing your own work? Do PhD students farm out their data analysis work nowadays? No wonder ‘so few’ in education understand the need for analysis and performance assessment in ‘virtual learning’ using SG/VW.

When will the educators and instructional design technologists, wake up? Do people realize that software engineers are taking and owning instructional design, soon?

As for ModSim, I will be returning because it invigorate me. There are stuffs out there for me to learn and things I can teach others. Collaboration opportunity abound!

Habits developed through Virtual Training

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USA Today (Aug 31, 2010) has an article titled, “Simulator Training Flaws Tied to Airline Crashes” (original article):

Simulators revolutionized training starting in the 1970s by allowing airlines to train pilots almost exclusively on the ground. However, as realistic as they may seem, simulators are only as good as the data used to program them. Current simulators aren’t accurate when a plane goes out of control, which has prevented their use in training for the leading killer in commercial aviation…

More than half of the 522 fatalities in U.S. airline accidents since 2000 have been linked to problems with simulators, devices that are used nearly universally to train the nation’s airline pilots, the records show. Simulator training is credited with saving thousands of lives. But the problem, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) case files and safety experts, is that in rare but critical instances they can trick pilots into habits that lead to catastrophic mistakes. (emphasis mine)

Cockpit Simulator (Internet image)

I will be speaking about the same issue at the upcoming MODSIM World Conference, in Hampton, VA. While virtual training Environment (including the flight simulator) can certainly help organizations mitigate training costs, fatal errors could creep into the system, if the training process is not performed correctly – whether through the fault of the simulator (as said in the article by USA Today), an oversight of the trainer, or missed errors of the trainees. Once the habits set in (through many hours of virtual training), it will become even costlier for organizations to “retrain”, which will involve, first, the unlearning, and then new learning. This does not even take into consideration of changing “ingrained” habits (i.e., entrenchment).

An on-demand, ad hoc, action reporting system is thus very important. If there is a way to monitor what trainees are doing within the environment, the data collected could be subjected to further analysis. (Many current systems refer to virtual flight time, assume that more hours spent on simulators equate longer and better training. Few have an analysis or assessment engine built into the system.)

The data obtained from the assessment engine will provide various data visualization possibility to the trainers/trainees/administrator (anyone within the training-assessment line-up). Under trained eyes, a trainer could potentially pick up anomalies before the “mistakes” become entrenched. It is much cheaper to correct mistakes early than late.

The assessment system I have in mind? » Performance Trails (the framework) and Performance Tracer (the tool).

MSWord: Simulator Training Flaws Tied to Airline Crashes.docx

Military Training: 3D simulator

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In this article, CBS journalist David Martin reports:

Retired Army Sergeant Mark Covey runs what is undoubtedly the most high stakes video gaming center in the world. The videos are posted on a classified web site where soldiers bound for Iraq and Afghanistan practice against the latest enemy tactics. That’s just the beginning of what the Army has in mind: 3D battlefield simulations.

“This is next step in the serious gaming for training and that is to take a soldier and put him in the environment,” Covey said. “So in this case you know we’re in a humvee.”

The aim is to download the 3D simulations into a warehouse big enough to hold an entire platoon of soldiers learning to clear a village wherever the next war might be.

“We can rapidly change. We can go from an Afghan village to an Iraqi village to perhaps somewhere in the Philippines,” Covey said. “You’re only limited by your imagination.”

Military Training: 3D Simulator (Note the 3D glasses)

In the video segment, Sergeant Vane told Martin that since “3D monitors are prevalent in retail market…” with the 3D glasses, one can call up any file format (does he mean the 3D files?) and display in this type of “CAVE” to allow soldiers to get a feel of what it is like to be in the training environments (whether it is a Hum-V, a battle field, or a village…)

You can witness for yourself, how Martin flinched in real time (with sound effects), as he thought he was about to bump into the roof of a vehicle, or slam into a doorway… Of course, none of what he “saw” is real, but his reaction was very, very real! (This type of reactions argued for 3D simulation, hands down!)

A longer CBS coverage is also available on the YouTube:

Book Chapter Images

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Regina Kaplan-Rakowski and I have a new book chapter in press! The title of the chapter is Modding and Rezzing in Games and Virtual Environments for Education, and it has been accepted for publication in Y.K. Baek’s new book: Gaming for Classroom-Based Learning: Digital Role Playing as a Motivator of Study, to be published by IGI-Global, Hershey, PA.

Book publishers (such as IGI Global) are increasingly insisting authors to provide permission of use for screenshots (of Web pages, and video games). However, from my experience, it is near impossible to obtain written permission for such things, much less a signed release form! (I firmly believed game publishers simply ignore emails requests for permission of use.)

We decided to be creative about putting images in book chapters. Below are the two images (in full color) intended for our book chapter. (You can click on the image to see it in full resolution.)

Figure 1: Regina creating (rezzing) a simple chair outside a restaurant.

Figure 2: A Tea-Party held in World of Warcraft (WoW) to protest about the weak Warrior class. The dress code for the day was “gnomes in semi-nudity.”