ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Summer 2016 Programs

ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Summer 2016 Programs

  

ACRL-VWIG May 2016 Program

Joint session with ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries MIG

 Sunday May 15^th 2016  12-1:30 pm SLT - CVL Auditorium

The Virtual Pioneers: Andrew Wheelock

 

For its’ first program of the summer, Spiff Whitfield met with the ACRL-VWIG to discuss immersive learning environments in Second Life.  Specifically he presented on the activities of the “Virtual Pioneers”.  This group of educators who explore virtual worlds seeking out immersive learning opportunities.  

 

The Virtual Pioneers started as small group of Social Studies educators in 2007.  From there it has branched out to include history minded people from around the world.  The presentation by Andrew Wheelock highlighted the journey of the Virtual Pioneers from its humble beginnings to its present day incarnation of tours and meetings aimed at understanding history and culture from around the world.  The presentation also showcased some of the work that Virtual Pioneer educators have done in the K-12 realm.

The Three Faces of Andrew Wheelock

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ACRL-VWIG June 2016 Program

Joint session with ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries MIG

Sunday June 19, 2016  12-1:30 SLT – CVL Auditorium

Inworldz & Kitely: Librarianship in Alternative Virtual Worlds : Marie Vans

For the June program, Marie Vans shared a presentation on virtual worlds beyond Second Life, “Inworldz & Kitely: Librarianship in Alternative Virtual Worlds”. Marie Vans (Amvans Lapis in Second Life) is the director of the Community Virtual Library in Inworldz and owner of STEM4Girls island Kitely.   Marie has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Colorado State University. Marie talked about  her work in the virtual worlds Inworldz and Kitely.  She presented her experiences using STEM island in Kitely as examples of cheaper alternatives to Second Life for providing library and educational services. The presentation compared these virtual worlds to Second Life in terms of cost, prims, and other important features.

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ACRL-VWIG July 2016 Program

Joint session with ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries MIG

Sunday July  17, 2016  12-1:30 SLT – CVL Auditorium

“Supporting a Course with a Virtual World Library” with Dr. Nancy Zingrone

Nancy Zingrone of the AZIRE Library & Learning Center

 

July’s program was presented by Nancy Zingorne (Maggie Laraimore in Second Life).  Nancy has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and she talked about her experience designing, implementing and running a virtual world library for the Alvardo Zingrone Institute for Research and Education within the Chilbo Community/region of Second Life.  The AZIRE Library and Learning Center was designed  to support a MOOC on research in Parapsychology she and her husband are doing online.  She described their experience setting up a learning center in world the purpose of which was to show that real scientific research is being done about Parapsychology.

Slides on the program can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/NanZingrone/supporting-a-course-with-a-virtual-library-the-paramooc-series

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Thanks to Val Librarian Gregg for her help putting this together.

 ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
April 17, 2016
 CVL Auditorium in Second Life 12:00pm SLT
Pat Franks of San Jose State University presents
 A preview of
"The 7th Annual VCARA Library Conference 2016"



Dr. Patricia C. Franks is the Program Coordinator for the Master's Degree in Archives and Records Administration at San Jose State University. Her work in virtual worlds has resulted in the creation of the Virtual Center for Archives and Records Administration (VCARA) on the iSchool Island which is one part of San Jose State University's iSchool Island site within Second Life.  She met with the ACRL-VWIG to talk about VCARA and its' involvement in the conference.

Dr. Franks helped to create VCARA to counter the sense of isolation she perceived in online instruction.  The goals of VCARA include providing space for faculty and students in online courses a place where they can meet and interact.  Students are at the heart of VCARA and it exists in part to counter this sense of isolation.  It provides classroom and open spaces for presentations as a way for them to do professional networking and showcase their work. 

Online classes have been taught there since 2013.  VCARA serves as a space for students to do presentations on virtual worlds, museums and immersive learning.  The center sponsors guest speakers, virtual colloquia and virtual fieldtrips to supplement course work.

 ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
March 20, 2016

CVL Auditorium in Second Life 12:00pm SLT

A Book Discussion of

"Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age"

By Sherry Turkle.  Penguin Press, October 2015.

Discussion leader: Dr. Valerie Hill, (Valibrarian Gregg, in Second Life)

Valibrarian Gregg presented the basic premises of Sherry Turkle's book, "Reclaiming Conversation" and led a discussion of librarians and educators as we examined communication in the digital age.  In her book Turkle makes the case that reliance on digital technology has led to people feeling less empathy and less a sense of connection with others.  She examined conversation and communication amongst digital natives and conducted interviews with them.  She suggests that much of what makes us human is lost because we've replaced face-to-face conversation with digital, electronic communication.

Val reviewed some of the things Turkle suggests has led to this state of affairs. 

People are constantly bombarded by information today.  The media, especially television, has instilled a sense of our being in a constant state of emergency with "breaking news alerts", news scrolls and distracting special effects that interrupt normal, daily processing of information.  Today's students have grown up in this state of constant distraction and interruptions, a "culture of catastrophe". This constant state has led us to a place where we consider nonstop interruptions  the norm.  Though people adopted new technologies in order to have greater control over their time and effort, increasingly  Turkle found, people are feeling controlled by them.  People escape having true conversations by texting, escaping into their news feeds, checking facts and emails, and communicating in 140 character bits.  

Turkle suggests that the demise of face-to-face conversation has eroded our ability to contemplate our true feelings and express ourselves authentically.  The reliance on digital means of expression and connection to others has, she suggests, led to an atrophying of basic human capacities like empathy and true self-reflection. She says it's only when you speak to people in person that you recognize their full humanity, which is where true empathy begins.

Turkle points out that all social media is based on the idea that "to perform is to be".   She believes students lack empathy for others because their constant connectivity in digital spaces reduces connections to others to a "performance" rather than a relationship. This leads to further disconnection, shallow relationships and  even more inauthenticity. Our "performance" of life becomes the reality of  our lives.  More and more, we give up or ignore privacy for the illusion of having an adoring audience.  The result of this is we become less authentic and even more isolated. 

Everyone is an information manager now, and we purposefully seek out people who share similar beliefs and think the same way we do.  Rather than engaging people in activities and communication which challenges our own ideas,  we have become more narrow minded, seeking out those whose beliefs and opinions reflect our own.   

Turkle, a clinical psychologist, has been writing about human relationships in the digital age for a while now. She is a technology insider (she holds an endowed chair at M.I.T.), who has changed her mind about the role technology should play in people's lives.  She presents her findings as a call to arms that it's time for people to reassert themselves and put technology back in it's proper perspective. She makes a good case for setting limits on digital technology and taking a look at the value of face-to-face conversations and real human contact.

The conversation and discussion at this program was lively and engaging.  Participants made very good observations about the nature of authentic communication and the ways people converse and connect within a virtual world. The irony of having such an in-depth discourse in a virtual world was not lost on any of those avatars present at this meeting.

 ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
December 13,  2015
CVL Auditorium in Second Life 12:00pm SLT

"Assessing Varied Instruction Approaches in the Instruction of Online Graduate Students"

By Mary Frances.  Library and Information Research. 2014; 38(119):3-12

Available at http://www.lirgjournal.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/642/657

 

Joint meeting with InfoLit Journal Club

 

Discussion leader: Pancha Enzyme (Marshall Dozier) from the University of Edinburgh.

 

 

 

 

Pancha/Marshall, an academic subject librarian, Medicine, at the University of Edinburgh selected this paper for this months discussion as she works extensively with online distance learners at the graduate level.

 

This article assessed the outcomes of two separate interventions designed to develop students’ information literacy in an academic context at a small public university in the United States.  Students in 2 different courses in an online program at the Masters level, 31 students in a Research Methods course and 8 students in an Introduction to Distance Education course.  Two before and after comparison studies: students in the Research Methods course had a pre- and post-test linked to a tutorial activity and differences in scores were measured.  Students in the Introduction group had assignment grades compared to grades from a prior course.

 

 

There were two wholly separate interventions, one for each group: Research Methods had an online asynchronous 3-week course with various learning activities in information literacy; the Introduction intervention was 1-to-1 advice (mostly by email) on selecting and evaluating journal articles.

 

 Research Methods group: 30 out of 31 students maintained or improved their test scores, but no correlation could be found between the various activities and scores, ‘time taken to complete the tutorial varied widely in relation to the scores on the pre-test, worksheet quiz, and post-test. For the Introduction group, the number of contacts from each student ranged from 1 to 7, each email took between 15 and 40 minutes to answer. The main issues that students needed to become more aware of in selecting articles were: currency, identifying peer-reviewed sources, and narrowing the topic sufficiently for the assignment. The students in the Introductory class developed a deeper relationship with faculty members’ as outcome, linked to value placed on collaborative and integrated approach to information literacy.

 

The groups' discussion focused on design elements of the study; questions about the actual "learning" that took place between pre-post tests and concerns about the small number of participants in the study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program

October 11, 2015

"What Makes a Library: A Tour of Libraries in Second Life"

Presented by
Beth O’Connell, (Beth Ghostraven in Second Life) 

CVL Auditorium in Second Life 12:00pm SLT

Beth Ghostraven

Inspired by Allie Vanyar's survey of Second Life Libraries, our guest speaker, Beth Ghostraven took the audience on a tour of some notable libraries of Second Life.  There was a large turnout of 21 librarians/educators, for this event.   

We started at the Community Virtual Library, which also serves as host to our monthly ACRL-VWIG meetings. 

The group of 21 librarians and educators of Second Life gathers outside the CVL Reference area

The CVL is one of the earliest and longest lived of libraries in Second Life. In its' present incarnation, it features both a Reference area and a main library, both of which function  as information portals for those seeking information about library/education related events taking place in Second Life.  Included too are reading resources such as links to daily newspapers from all over the world in English and 12 other languages, book reviews of current books.  In addition to providing information about community group and library related events, the main CVL library contains a large collection of facsimile editions of classic books available via Project Gutenberg and over 60 up-to-date online guides to various world literature. 

Valibrarian Gregg, Joe Cupola and Ilene Pratt survey the CVL Reference area

Reference at CVL

The Main Library at CVL

The Next stop on the tour was the Bracken Library on the Ball State University Campus in Second Life.  This library has attempted to replicate the look and feel of the "real" BSU library.

Exterior Ball State University's Bracken Library in Second Life

The "Real" Bracken Library at Ball State University on the campus of BSU

This library closely resembles the real library.  It features live Reference assistance several days a week, and links to BSU's library information services portal.  At this library, currently enrolled BSU students may search their library's catalog and databases, search course reserves and view over 20,000 digitized photographs on the history of BSU.

Interior Bracken Library at BSU in Second Life

In addition to digital resources the library features meeting areas, a white board for use during presentations and a large theater used to show digital media exhibits and films.  Information kiosks set up in the Middletown Studies Archives within the library, feature videos, slideshows and notecards.  These kiosks provide a means of highlighting special library exhibits and collections on specialized topics.

Information kiosks provide videos and info on special topics

The next library on the tour was the H.G. Wells Memorial Library, one of the Caledon branch libraries.

The H.G. Wells Memorial Branch, one of the Caledon Libraries

This library, one of several operating in the Caledon sims, focuses on both real and imaginary voyages.  Visitors here have access to a large collection of facsimile editions of books on travel available via Project Gutenberg.  This library also serves as an information hub which provides information on upcoming events and links to other areas in the extensive Caledon region.

Interior HG Wells Memorial Library

Next on the tour was Expedition Central at Chilbo.  

While technically an "explorers' club" and not a library, Expedition Central provides scores of links to educational and cultural places found in Second Life.  It consists of a constantly updated library of 130 links/teleports to in-world locations grouped by category.  If you click the link it will give you a landmark so that you may visit that location in Second Life.  It covers almost all subject areas with a focus on historical recreations and educational sims, the Arts, Science and History.  It includes links to such famous Second Life locations as Inspire Space Park, the Chakryn Forest, Roma. Blakes Deep, Mont St. Michel, Genome Island, the Exploratorium, Svaraga, and the Paleozoic Museum.

The final stop on the tour was the Library of Babel at the University of Worchester sim.

The immense spire of the Library of Babel

This is an example of a fantasy library, something not quite possible in the real world.  It is part performance and part virtual building project.  It was really more of an art installation and based on the works of Borges.  One of the librarians present said it might represent how new users sometimes feel about our real life libraries.

Visitors to this library are led by avatar performers through the space.  As a visitor climbs to the top of the library, a tower full of words, he encounters impossible stories 

re-imagined for the virtual world.

Participants next gathered at Beth's Second Life Pub, The Book & Tankard to share observations and hold a brief discussion about the nature of Second Life libraries.  

Post-tour discussion

Joe Cupola

In the beginning, many libraries were trying to recreate their physical space and functions in Second Life.  Today, after some years of experience seeing what works and what doesn't, libraries aren't so bound by the need to recreate themselves in virtual worlds.

Ilene Pratt, Amvans Lapis, Riven Homewood

Libraries in Second Life, like libraries in real life serve a lot of different functions but they have some commonalities; information sharing, access to resources and access to librarians.  With the looming advent of Oculus Rift and the inevitable focus that will bring on virtual worlds, everyone agreed that more librarians need to try (or retry) using virtual worlds.

Alexandria Knight, Valibrarian Gregg, Igard

Having a space that at least looks something like a library works as a kind of visual metaphor for people.  It provides them with a familiar context and helps to make things interesting and comfortable for them.  

Hannah Bluemood, Mimsey Borogove, Dulcie Mills & Bill Friis

However, increasingly there was a sense that in order for libraries to function or even be useful in virtual worlds, they need to accept that there's power to be gained from something not experienced physically.  The very things which make virtual worlds feel so real; their powerful immersive qualities, the enriched sense of space and self they can provide, all serve to add a very powerful dimension which encourages interaction and collaboration.  These two elements, which are so often missing from online learning environments, are among the defining hallmarks of virtual worlds.

 ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
September 20, 2015

"User Experience Game Design in Virtual Worlds"

Presented by Bruce R. Maxim, (BruceRobert Mizin in Second Life) 

University of Michigan: Dearborn,
Department of Computer and Information Science
at the
CVL Auditorium in Second Life 12:00pm SLT

Bruce R. Maxim

Bruce Maxim of the University of Michigan, Dearborn, Department of Computer and Information Science  presented a program "User Experience Design" as it relates to game design and virtual environment development.

16 attendees, making this one of the best attended of the ACRL-VWIG programs

Bruce reviewed the "User Experience Design" process which is one of the techniques game/software designers can use when they are creating a new game. User experience design goes beyond just making things look nice for the user. The software/game must also be easy to learn and easy to use in order to attract users.  If it's too complicated or poorly designed, users will quit and try one of your competitors products.  User experience designers focus on creating computer interfaces that allow users to accomplish their goals efficiently and pleasantly.

The key to user centered design is to involve the user in the process early in the design as part of the design team.  Utilizing UCD techniques also means the engineer must understand the tasks/goals that users are trying to accomplish.  Bruce pointed out that software engineers are trained to watch the task they are trying to automate.  Their goal is to add in the missing details, pick out the "user story" i.e. the users goals and develop a prototype.  The next step in the design is to let the user tell you what's wrong.  Then the designer goes back and revises it using the input from the users.  The process is interactive and repeats until BOTH the designer and the user are satisfied.

Good design should consider how to move the user to the next stage of attaining their goal. The process should flow easily to the next step and give continuous feedback to the user.  Letting them know they are on the right path to attaining their goal.

Bruce offered some very useful suggestions about designing for virtual worlds.  He suggested that designers should: 

-design for the avatar NOT for the human

-do walk-throughs often to experience the simulation the way you're user would

-do fly-throughs too because avatars in SL CAN fly too

Good designs should always make it very clear to avatars:

-where they are

-what they can do there

-where they can go from there

-where they have been 

At the Q&A at the end of the session Bruce summed up what he thought Linden Labs got right in designing Second Life- 

"They allowed people to build and customize as much as they want, making for a more interesting and complex experience for the user."

The thing he felt they should continue to work on was that "Second Life doesn't cater to new users. It's complex and has a difficult and sometimes extended learning curve."