Constructing a 3D Collaborative Virtual Environment for Creativity Support

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good morning! My name is Mikhail Fominykh. I am a PhD-candidate at NTNU and I study the use of 3D virtual environments for learning. Today I’d like to present you our paper “ Constructing a 3D Collaborative Virtual Environment for Creativity Support ” .
• #4: However creativity is not a spontaneous process and it needs to be promoted with novel solutions. And 3D CVEs are known to be very promising in creativity support. 1. CVEs provide learners an environment for active and collaborative work with 3D content , which allows to apply ‘constructionism’ ( Harel & Papert, 1991 ). 2. 3D visualization is a powerful tool for supporting understanding and memorizing complex concepts already widely used in educational contexts ( Börner, 2001 ). 3. CVEs potential for supporting cross-cultural understandings is another important motivation behind the choice of this technology ( Wyeld & Prasolova-Førland, 2006 ). 4. Finally, an important reason is an opportunity for participants to interact in a way that conveys a sense of presence , lacking in other media ( Kelton, 2007 ; Park, Hwang, & Choi, 2009 ). 5. Ability of this technology to support informal socialization is also acknowledged by existing research ( Börner, 2001 ; Minochaa & Reevesa, 2010 ; Prasolova-Førland & Divitini, 2003 ). 6. These opportunities result in a number of benefits for establishing and supporting learning communities ( Bronack et al., 2008 ).
• #5: In this paper, we present the requirements and design for a 3D CVE that will be used in CoCreat project. The purpose of the paper is to outline a general methodology for facilitating collaborative creative activities in 3D CVEs.
• #7: In case study Creative curriculum visualization , we explored advantages and disadvantages of 3D CVEs for collaborative creative elaboration and visualization of educational content. We asked students to build a creative visualized presentation of one of the topics covered in the Cooperation Technology course in Active Worlds ( Prasolova-Førland, 2007 ). Their work was evaluated based on the analysis of the constructions and on the discussion in group essays. Settings: Constructing visualizations of the major curriculum concepts in a 3D collaborative virtual environment, the students spent a significant effort on elaborating on educational content and their understanding was on several occasions improved, as followed from their feedbacks. The students acknowledged that the technology provides a creative atmosphere and a set of means for self-expression. Input: During this case study we explored the support for the different phases of the creative collaborative process ( Schneiderman, 2002 ) and also the typology of the 3D content and visualization means in 3D CVEs, which will serve as an input for the CoCreat case study, especially the requirements.
• #8: ‘ Awareness’ as a ‘3D cartoon’, student project
• #9: Museum of communication means, student project
• #10: In the case study Research projects visualization , we asked students to build a creative visualized presentation of a research project and present it at a joint session by role-playing within the Cooperation Technology course in Second Life. Settings: Having a great degree of freedom, the students expressed their creativity in a number of ways, selecting diverse and interesting projects, applying different metaphors and using different types of content presentation technics. Their work was evaluated based on the analysis of the constructions and on the discussion in group essays. Input: In this case study, we gain additional experience in conducting creative collaborative activities on 3D content and further developed the typology of the 3D content and visualization means in 3D CVEs. In addition, the structure of the requirements for the CoCreat virtual environment is taken from the results of this study.
• #11: Museum of communication means, student project text
• #12: Museum of communication means, student project In addition to the student group work, we studied the possibilities of 3D CVEs for research project visualizations in other settings. Developing a framework called Virtual Research Arena, we constructed a Virtual Science Fair in Second Life to explore an alternative and creative way for presenting research. The Virtual Science Fair has 8 pavilions, each presenting a research project.
• #13: “ Designing e-learning” course aims at familiarizing students with the key concepts, competing theories and approaches of designing TEL. In collaboration with international students, they will develop practical skills of setting up, implementing and evaluating the use of distributed set of integrated TEL systems and tools, and they will design a prototype of an advanced TEL course. The course will be taught in the spring semester 2012. However, we will conduct the preparatory study already in the autumn 2011 within the course on Cooperation Technology at NTNU. This preparatory will serve as ‘a proof of concept’ for the main course, but, at the same time, the result of the students’ work will be actively used in the later “Designing e-learning” course as examples of 3D educational visualizations and associated infrastructure. Moreover, the preparatory case study in the autumn will allow us to get additional insights on supporting collaborative creative processes in a 3D CVE.
• #14: The main idea of the preparatory study is to give the students some basic information on the “Designing e-learning” course and ask them to come up with a design for the technological infrastructure in the 3D CVE with the focus on supporting cooperation among students (information sharing, coordination, synchronous and asynchronous communication, etc.). Norwegian students will work in groups and create small ‘educational modules’ or practical tutorials in Second Life, illustrating different concepts within the course such as coordination, information sharing, awareness and so on. Working on this task, the students will have the following plan: Developing a web-based educational module (an extended blog post) on a certain topic/course concept (1 week); Writing a plan for a 3D visualization/a 3D CVE infrastructure element on the topic chosen (1 week); Creating a group construction in the NTNU Virtual Campus according to the plan (4 weeks); Preparing a role-play presentation of the 3D construction (1 week); Analyzing and reflecting on their activities by blogging during the whole semester and presenting a summary in an essay by the end of the course; Discussing their activities, design ideas and final results as well as receiving feedbacks during a virtual “Summer School”. This summer school will include a number of virtual seminars with participation of students, teachers and researchers from European and other countries, including CoCreat partners, partners from other EU-funded projects and visitors from other institutions. International students in the spring semester will be able to explore visualizations (‘educational modules’) prepared by the Norwegian students. Any visitor will be able to learn about cooperative technologies in general and get some ideas on how educational content can be presented in a 3D CVE. Blogs of the Norwegian students will be linked to the virtual environment and available to the visitors/CoCreat participants, providing a source for inspiration and discussion.
• #15: Schneiderman identifies the following main phases in a collaborative creative process (Schneiderman, 2002): collect (searching for material and visualizing it), relate (consulting with peers), create (trying out solutions, creating associations, composing artifacts) and finally donate (disseminating results).
• #16: Content level (basic methods for facilitating 3D construction process and elaborating on 3D content in CVEs).
• #17: To facilitate the Collect phase of the creative collaborative process, it is necessary to provide similar projects or examples from previous student generations. A library of pre-made objects and tools will assist learners with searching for material and visualizing it. To facilitate the Create phase of the creative collaborative process, the environment should provide basic and advanced tutorials and a workplace, allowing the participants to try out different solutions, with minimized time/effort investment and a required degree of flexibility, in collaboration with peers. To facilitate creation and appropriate use of virtual exhibits of different kinds, the environment should provide explicit examples of their use for presenting different types of information. To facilitate elaborating aesthetics, functionality and expressed meaning of the visual shell, it is necessary to provide explicit explanation and examples of visual shells for different contexts. There should be created a set of tools and aids for supporting development of dynamic content.
• #18: The environment should provide basic and advanced (specific domain oriented) tutorials , always available at hand. Additional materials and links to external resources should also be provided. The environment should provide basic building resources , allowing the participants to start early composing structures from ready-to-use blocks.
• #19: Collaborative facilities, such as seminar rooms, community spaces, and annotation and feedback facilities, should be available to provide support for consultations with peers during the Relate phase of the collaborative creative process. Community repository (CVW virtual gallery) should be available to allow learners to share and disseminate their projects, supporting the Donate phase of the collaborative creative process. The environment should support “creative communities”, taking advantage of the mutual “symmetry of ignorance” ( Fischer, 2000 ; Rittel, 1984 ), allowing social creativity to be unleashed at the boundaries of different domains. This can be realized by providing tools for social activities and collaborative work, facilitating interactions between stakeholders from different domains. The environment should comprise ideas, insights and practices that are to be shared in the community at the early phase (domain), such as collaborative technologies and educational visualizations.
• #20: Dedicated community spaces should be present in the environment, such as group rooms and meeting places with corresponding initial community events (tutorials, discussions and seminars). In these spaces, connections between different communities should be supported, such as students and teachers, external experts and the general public by facilitating a series of community events. Initial boundary objects should be created, providing shared understanding and vocabulary among community members in the situation of “symmetry of ignorance” ( Fischer, 2000 ; Rittel, 1984 ). Shared artifacts should be introduced as catalysts of collaboration, such as an infrastructure supporting interactive communication and ‘points of focus’ around which the interaction and collaboration will be structured ( Thompson, 2005 ). The environment should have a Community repository ( Wenger, et al., 2002 ), such as a virtual gallery, exhibiting the results of the activities of community members (reification).