The following is a bibliography and selected quotes from:
Dieterle, E., & Clark, J. (2005). Multi-user virtual environments for teaching and learning. M. Pagani (Ed.), Encyclopedia of multimedia technology and networking (2nd ed.). Hershey, PA:: Idea Group, Inc.
[AJ’s Note: I don’t have the actual copy of this chapter. The copy I have is pre-press and does not indicate page numbers so the page numbers listed below are based on the total pages of the copy I had)
Selected Quotes:
- “This article will discuss how MUVEs can be used to support the situated and distributed nature of cognition within an immersive, psychosocial context” (p. 1)
- “all MUVEs enable multiple simultaneous participants to (a) access virtual contexts, (b) interact with digital artifacts, (c) represent themselves through “avatars” (in some cases graphical and in others, text-based), (d) communicate with other participants (in some cases also with computer-based agents), and (e) take part in experiences incorporating modeling and mentoring about problems similar to those in real world contexts (Dede, Nelson, Ketelhut, Clarke, & Bowman, 2004)” (p. 1)
- “consider the situated and distributed nature of cognition as applied to thinking, learning, and doing in workplace and community settings (Chaiklin & Lave, 1993; Engeström & Middleton, 1996; Hutchins, 1995; Wenger, 1998)” (p. 3)
- “When a student works with her notebook to prepare a portfolio of her work, “the notebook is both an arena of thinking and a container of learning” (Perkins, 1992, p. 135). The notes, assignments, and essays represent a physical distribution of learning, reasoning, and memory between the author and her notebook. The cognition neither resides solely in her head nor in her book, but instead is distributed between the two entities” (p. 4)
- “Through the collaborative experiences of teaching and learning from other students and virtual agents in the world, students distribute cognition socially” (p. 4)
- “As Turkle (1995) observed, participation in such environments provides the user with the ability to create one or multiple online identities, which allows him or her to explore how an individual is recognized or known” (p. 5).
- “Concepts are not considered independent entities, void of the activities and cultures in which they exist (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989)” (p. 5).
- “understanding. Knowing, as Barab and Duffy (2000) argue from the situated perspective, is (a) an activity, not a thing; (b) always contextualized, not an abstraction; (c) reciprocally constructed between an individual and his or her environment, not as an interaction defined objectively or created subjectively; and (d) a functional stance based on interaction and situation, not a “truth” (p. 5-6).
- “In addition to creating experiences that take advantage of the situated and distributed nature of cognition, MUVEs also allow for the design of situations that are not possible or practical in the real world. Through the affordances of a MUVE, researchers and designers can create scenarios with real-world verisimilitude that are safe, cost effective, and directly target learning goals” (p. 7).
- “The River City simulation’s connection to databases enables the system to capture and record every action made in the River City simulation” (p. 7).
- “In the three decades since the first text-based MUDs were conceptualized on college campuses, their successors have become a major force, shaping how we communicate, participate, learn, and identify ourselves. Despite the MUVE interface and its influence on how people learn outside of classrooms, teaching practices have not changed to embrace such technologies” (P. 7)
- “MUVEs open up a new world of possibilities for creating learning experiences that not only are authentic, situated, and distributed, but also provide a context to change our standards by which student achievements are judged and the methods by which students’ accomplishments are assessed (Sheingold & Frederiksen, op. cit.)” (p. 8).
Future Reading
- Dede, C., Nelson, B., Ketelhut, D., Clarke, J., & Bowman, C. (2004). Design-based research strategies for studying situated learning in a multi-user virtual environment. Paper presented at the 2004 International Conference on Learning Sciences, Mahweh, NJ.
- Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
- Ketelhut, D., Dede, C., Clarke, J., Nelson, B., & Bowman, C. (in press). Studying situated learning in a multi-user virtual environment. In E. Baker, J. Dickieson, W. Wulfeck & H. O’Neil (Eds.), Assessment of problem solving using simulations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Sheingold, K., & Frederiksen, J. (1994). Using technology to support innovative assessment. In B. Means (Ed.), Technology and education reform: The reality behind the promise (pp. 111–132). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Key Terms and Their Definitions
- Avatar –– the dynamic, virtual embodiment of a user while he or she is within a virtual space
- Distributed Cognition –– the scientific study of cognition as it is distributed across internal human minds, external cognitive artifacts, groups of people, and space and time
- MUD –– a virtual environment that supports the simultaneous participation of multiple users in a text-based game
- MUVE –– multi-user virtual environments that enable multiple simultaneous participants to (a) access virtual contexts, (b) interact with digital artifacts, (c) represent themselves through “avatars”, (d) communicate with other participants, and (e) take part in experiences incorporating modeling and mentoring about problems similar to those in real world contexts
- Physical Distribution of Cognition –– a distribution of learning, reasoning, and memory between an individual and his or her tools, objects, and surround Situated Cognition –– the scientific study of cognition as a phenomenon that occurs in the course of participation in social contexts
- Social Distribution of Cognition –– distribution of cognition through teaching and learning among individuals in collaborative environments
- Symbolic Distribution of Cognition –– distribution of cognition through symbol systems such as mathematical equations, the specialized vocabulary having to do with a field of work, and representational diagrams
- Virtual Agents –– a program, often represented as a person or animal, whose automated interactions provide the semblance dialogue