Presence Pedagogy:
The use of 3D immersive virtual worlds to create learning environments for the digital age.
The paper starts of by explaining a scenario where the group of students are attending Computers in Educational Settings. The collaborate together in a virtual space. After awhile they run into a problem where they can not find the answer and require the help of a teacher. Amy, their teacher is not online at the moment but a teacher they have had in the past joins their conference. Students work and interact with others who may come across their vine and collaborate thoroughly through the use of graphs, gesture and information that they have on their data base.
This engagement explains the interaction of cross disciplinary interaction within groups of students in university through Virtually Real landscapes. The resource offers a hands on approach to learning and engagement with distance education.
Most schooling now includes an aspect of distance learning that relies heavily on the internet as means to research. However this environment lacks the face-to-face interaction that many students require to fully engage with the content and be critical with their peers with the relationship of the subject to their present time. Jonassen (2006) explains that these are aspects of in class learning that are important to keeping students, active, conversational, constructive and reflective to the context that they work in.
This makes distance styles of learning difficult in supporting the social presence of learning. This analysis suggests that VR provides a useful medium for some of these limitations to be cured.
A social context for learning:
Appalachian State University’s Reich College of Education has created a framework for for learning with a basis upon social constructivism. The framework includes:
- participation, learning through a community of like minded practitioners.
- knowledge, being constructed through a social nature
- mentors, learning from histories and studies of past experts and teachers.
- inclusion of ideas from a community of thinkers that reflect multiple attitudes and beliefs in a community of practice.
The development of their Virtual Learning Space was created with these principles in mind. Through this virtual space, social acts of engaging in discussion and broadening ones view are implemented. The reading explains when looking at learning as a social act, the agency gears towards, unity and collaboration from past and present students.
Presence Pedagogy
The AET Zone has seen in the last year 1 teacher grow to 6. The dialogue has been expanded. There is an understanding that within this space, all teachers are teachers of pupils from all discipline and all students are peers of all disciplines, this creates a space where discourse is made on overarching subjects and larger social issues.
The forum is inclusive and encourages the following interactions:
- asking of questions and correct misconceptions
- stimulate background knowledge
- capitalise on the shared knowledge of others
- share tools and resources
- support distributed cognition
- encourage exploration
- delineate context and goals to act upon
In traditional lecture theatres questions may be discouraged until the end of lectures and/or for selected times however a integral part of presence pedagogy is the act of responding to the information that is being presented. This engagement with the subject regarding the information is key to telling if the student is listening and engaging with the content. Presence is obvious and encouraged.
Stimulating Background Knowledge and Expertise.
Traditional learning sometimes refers to past theory offered by an expert other. This is explained to almost take the relationship to the subject far away and place it somewhere else. In Presence Pedagogy, creation of discussion around the implement of the discourse in the current time can happen more freely than in distance learning.
This makes me think that in the discourse of providing empathy, subversion of a subject into a space where they are to feel empathy may create the relationship of action in the real world that they will leave the experience to be in.
Encouraging Exploration and Discovery
Notions of exploration and discovery are key elements of constructivist teaching and learning. The discovery and exploration is these spaces are defined within the real-world organisational structures like desks and chairs that help to create cognitive links towards the matter that you are exploring. The visual cues work as metaphors to understand the virtual world as an extension and relationship to the actual world.
Bronack, Stephen, Robert Sanders, Amelia Cheney, Richard Riedl, John Tashner, and Nita Matzen. “Presence Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning in a 3D Virtual Immersive World,” n.d., 11.
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