Immersive, Collaborative Simulations and Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Education

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Immersive, Collaborative Simulations
andNeomillennial Learning StylesImplications
for Education
Chris Dede Harvard University Chris_Dede_at_harvard.e
du www.gse.harvard.edu/dedech
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The Evolution of Education

• shifts in the knowledge and skills society
  values
• development of new methods of teaching and
  learning
• changes in the characteristics of learners
• emerging information technologiesare reshaping
  each of these

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Learning Styles

• Sensory-based
• Visual, auditory
• Personality-based
• Myers-Briggs
• Aptitude-based
• Multiple Intelligences
• Media-based

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Media Shape Their Participants Regardless of
AgeMillennial Learning Styles

1. Web rewards comparing multiple sources of
   information, individually incomplete and
   collectively inconsistent(mindlessly
   accumulating orseeking, sieving, synthesizing)
2. Digital media and interfacesencourage
   multi-tasking(superficial, easily distracted
   data gathering ora sophisticated form of
   synthesizing new insights)

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Jenkins Framework for New Literacies

• Play the capacity to experiment with ones
  surroundings as a form of problem-solving
• Performance the ability to adopt alternative
  identities for the purpose of improvisation and
  discovery
• Simulation the ability to interpret and
  construct dynamic models of real-world processes
• Appropriation the ability to meaningfully
  sample and remix media content
• Multitasking the ability to scan ones
  environment and shift focus as needed to salient
  details
• Distributed Cognition the ability to interact
  meaningfully with tools that expand mental
  capacities
• Collective Intelligence the ability to pool
  knowledge and compare notes with others toward a
  common goal
• Judgment the ability to evaluate the
  reliability and credibility of different
  information sources
• Transmedia Navigation the ability to follow the
  flow of stories and information across multiple
  modalities
• Networking the ability to search for,
  synthesize, and disseminate information
• Negotiation the ability to travel across
  diverse communities, discerning and respecting
  multiple perspectives, and grasping and following
  alternative norms

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Leus Characteristics of New Literacies

• Emerging ICT tools, applications, media, and
  environments require novel skills, strategies,
  and dispositions for their effective use.
• New literacies are central to full
  economic,civic, and personal participationin a
  globalized society.
• New literacies constantly evolve astheir
  defining ICT continuouslyare renewed through
  innovation.
• New literacies are multiple, multimodel,and
  multifaceted.

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The Rapid Advance ofInformation Technologies

• Device (cell phone, HDTV,personal digital
  assistant)
• Application (word processors, intelligent
  tutoring systems, educational simulations)
• Medium (shared virtual environments, interactive
  television, worldwide web)
• Infrastructure (Internet, telephone system, cable
  and broadcast television, cyberspace)

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Evolving towardDistributed Learning

• Sophisticated Methods of Learning and Teaching
• Guided learning by doing
• Apprenticeships, mentoring
• Learning communities
• Orchestrated across classrooms, homes,
  workplaces, community settings
• On demand, just-in-time
• Collaborative
• distributed across space, time, media

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Next Generation Interfacesfor Distributed
Learning

• World to the DesktopAccessing distant experts
  and archives forknowledge creation, sharing, and
  mastery
• Multi-User Virtual EnvironmentsImmersion in
  virtual contexts withdigital artifacts and
  avatar-based identities
• Ubiquitous ComputingWearable wireless devices
  coupled tosmart objects for augmented reality

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Why Ubiquitous Computing?

• One-to-one student to tool ratio
• Wireless Mobile Devices (WMD) offer great ratio
  of power to cost
• Wireless mobile computing instant on, anytime,
  everywhere, and in the hand of the user
• Equity and Effectiveness via Ubiquity
• Animistic environments for learning
• Smart objects and intelligent contextsenable
  augmented realities

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Handheld Augmented Reality Project (HARP)
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Project Goal

• To design and study engaging and effective
  augmented reality learning environments using
  wireless handheld computers equipped with global
  positioning system (GPS) receivers

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Reality
The games are played in the physical environment.
The GPS tracks your location as you explore the
game space.
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Reality
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Augmented Reality

• Students physical location
• Characters items the student encounters

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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Augmented Reality
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Exploring Augmented Reality
As students come within approximately 20 feet of
these GPS points, they
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Place Independent

• We can superimpose our simulations and games onto
  any school on the globe.

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Powerful Pedagogical Models

• guided inquiry learning withactive construction
  of knowledge
• apprenticeship/mentoring relationships
• collaborative learningsocial exploration of
  multiple perspectives
• How People Learn (National Academy Press, 1999)
• http//www.nap.edu/books/0309070368/html

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Situated Learning

• constellations of architectural, social,
  organizational, and material vectors that aid in
  learning culturally based practices
• apprenticeship (the process of moving from novice
  to expert within a given set of practices)
• legitimate peripheral participation (tacit
  learning similar to that involved in internships
  or residencies)

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Learning Community

• A culture of learning, in which everyone is
  involved in a collective effort of understanding
• Shares and develops a repertoire of resources
  experiences, tools, stories,ways of addressing
  recurring problems
• Allows a close connectionbetween learning and
  doing
• Addresses the informal and tacit aspectsof
  knowledge creation and sharing

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Distributed-Learning Communities

• Range of participants skills and interestsgoes
  beyond geographic boundaries
• Asynchronous media enable convenient
  participation and deeper reflection
• Emotional and social dimensions intensifiedby
  synchronous virtual interchanges
• Broader range of participants engagein dialogue
• Mediated, Situated Immersion

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1976
2006
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2015
2006
?
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Next Generation Interfacesfor Distributed
Learning

• World to the DesktopAccessing distant experts
  and archives forknowledge creation, sharing, and
  mastery
• Multi-User Virtual EnvironmentsImmersion in
  virtual contexts withdigital artifacts and
  avatar-based identities
• Ubiquitous ComputingWearable wireless devices
  coupled tosmart objects for augmented reality

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River CityInterface
Toolbar Space
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A Different Model of Pedagogy

• Experiences central, rather thaninformation as
  pre-digested experience(for assimilation or
  synthesis)
• Knowledge is situated in a contextand
  distributed across a community(rather than
  located within an individualwith vs. from)
• Reputation, experiences, and accomplishments as
  measures of quality(rather than tests, papers)

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The Other Halfof Our Talent-Pool

• Assumptions about Learning
• Sleeping -------- Eating -------- Bonding
• simple complex

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Neomillennial Learning Styles

• Fluency in multiple media, valuing each for the
  types of communication, activities, and
  expressions it empowersThis goes beyond
  millennial learning styles, which center on
  working within a single medium best suited to
  ones styleand preferences

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My Distributed Learning Course

• http//my.gse.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?coursegse-t5
  02
• face-to-face interaction
• videoconferencing
• wireless, handheld devices
• small group collaboration via groupware
• synchronous interaction in virtual environment
• asynchronous, threaded discussion
• informal website-based learning experiences
• shells for course authoring
• New Forms of Rhetoric

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Neomillennial Learning Styles

• Learning based on collectively seeking, sieving,
  and synthesizing experience, rather than
  individually locating and absorbing information
  from some single best source This goes beyond
  millennial learning styles in preferring
  reflective, communal learning via diverse, tacit,
  situated experiencesover solo integration of
  divergent, explicitinformation sources

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Implications for Professional Development

• Co-DesignDeveloping learning experiencesstudent
  s can personalize
• Co-InstructionUtilizing knowledge sharing among
  studentsas a major source of content and
  pedagogy
• Guided Social Constructivism and Situated
  Learning Infusing case-based participatory
  simulationsinto presentational/assimilative
  instruction
• Assessment Beyond Tests and PapersUsing
  peer-developed and peer-ratedforms of assessment

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Professional DevelopmentCommunities of
Unlearning

• Developing fluency in usingemerging interactive
  media
• Complementing presentational instructionwith
  collaborative inquiry-based learning
• Unlearning almost unconscious assumptions and
  beliefs and values about the natureof teaching,
  learning, and schooling
• Crucial issue for professional development

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Beyond McLuhan

• Media shape their messages
• Media shape their participants
• Infrastructures shape civilization

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