VWPBE - workshop

Summary

Last section I missed the opportunity to prepare and teach a workshop. This year’s Virtual Worlds Best Practises on Education conference gave me a chance to mend that. As I had been commenting effusively on a few aspects in the workshops I did attend during the previous section, now was the time to put my theories into practice.

Situation

Working on an idea I had for knowledge transfer, I conferred with Peter Jacobs. He helped me out with scripting and creation of HUD’s. I also followed his workshop on HUD’s, last month.
Muvenation wanted to organise workshops for the conference on best practices in organizing education in virtual worlds, so Peter planned to prepare one. He suggested we do this together. As the WS was to run on (more or less) parallel lines with his workshop on Muvenation Island, I concentrated on bringing “the message”, to unknown people, with unknown expectancies, with unknown before-knowledge.

Task

I am a man of the written word. I can not pride myself on being the descendant of a people with such a tradition, but I feel rather more at ease with the subtleties of lingual expression than with the power of visual communication.
As we did not plan a big setting for the workshop, I had free play in preparing the text for my contribution in the workshop. The SpeakEasy HUD would be my tool. Improvising explanations could not cover all aspects of the subject and “writing lasts whereas spoken words are volatile”. I prepared meticulously the notecard the HUD would be playing. I kept in mind my own advice:

• The text was to be applicable in most situations, as I did no want to contradict too often on what the SpeakEasy HUD declared.


• The text lines needed to be short and easily chewable. No complicated sentences were to cloud quick understanding.


• Number of details on the subject had to fit the situation: a first impression of using (and developping) the HUD tool.

Actions

At the start of a lesson with unknown adults, unknown expectancies, unknown before-knowledge, there is always a certain unease. That was quickly helped out by everybody introducing himself. I fired away the first sentence of my notecard. It felt all right.
I did not have to interupt too often in my Speakeasy’s speech, though at times I did add a pertinent remark. I was happy to have left some open space in the (argument of the) text so I could almost seamlessly intervene. There were only a few things people wanted to know more about.

Results

I had the impression we both did all right. People where contented. We promised we’d answer later-on questions by IM. Nobody has complained yet.

Lessons learned

Weaving loosely your notecard text, is important. Walking the thin line between a rigidly prepared outset and an imperfect (not complete) argument is difficult. It’s most important to leave space to mend on that, in the course of your lesson.
The feedback you get from your class, is important. As we were teaching on HUD’s, we did not see any results. We did not leave evaluation forms. Therefore, I do miss the students’ confirmation that they did well. No (oral?) reactions is no guarantee for success, of course: adults do not often (bother to) give negative remarks. Positive remarks could have helped, though. You can learn from positive remarks as well.