MUVEnation

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Muvenation


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Description

MUVEnation 2008 is a one year online postgraduate program for teachers on how to integrate multi-user virtual environments (MUVE) into the K-12 compulsory school system and post-compulsory instruction. The initiative is sponsored by the European Commission.

200 educators & researchers from all over the world are involved with this peer-to-peer learning course, arranged into 5 groups according to educational strands and levels of expertise in Second Life. Though most communication takes place in English, Spanish and Italian specific groups and forums have also been devised. The program lasts 31 weeks and participants are expected to develop a project after the first 2 introductory months.

Purpose

MUVEnation 2008 is part of an ongoing e-learning initiative (2007-2013) designed to encourage teachers to develop new pedagogical methods to increase pupil motivation.

Resources

Second Life Curriculum

Global Kids’ Second Life Curriculum is composed of nine sequential “levels.” Each level is composed of modules which, in turn, are composed of individual lesson plans or “missions”.

Personal Reflections

Please add your blog to the list:

MUVEnation

Programme objectives

  • MUVEnation will help teachers acquire the necessary competencies to integrate massively multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) into their teaching practice ; by exploring the links between : virtual worlds, learning and motivation, active learning and pedagogical approaches that include socio-constructivism, situated learning, project based learning, learning by doing, game based learning, simulations and role-playing.
  • The programme is designed to foster teachers’ professional judgement in evaluating and adopting technologies which are appropriate to the learning context. Context and purpose are two key elements in our approach. One of the key aspects of the project will help them to build innovative solutions in key fields of common interest in European education including :
    • participation of girls in mathematics, science and technology
    • improvement of boys’ reading literacy
    • the fight against drop outs;
    • cross-fertilisation between informal and formal learning environments;
    • smooth and successful transition between school and work.

Structure and activities of the programme

  • The participants in this programme will learn about MUVEs in education in two ways :
    • Through a process of participation in learning activities that are designed to help them develop their skills as users of and learners in MUVEs
    • Through a process of research that focuses on teacher needs, good practice in the use of MUVEs in education, and the derivation of appropriate learning patterns.
    • In parallel to this, participants will learn by developing a MUVE based learning activity that is appropriate for their own teaching context.
  • There will be a range of different activities proposed for the programme, having in common the active involvement of participants. The objective is to learn by doing, principally within Virtual Worlds (Second Life, Open Sim, Active Worlds, etc.), although tools for interaction and support will be used. The first module will be of a more "managed" nature, with activities in which participants are guided as they develop their skills and knowledge of the environment. The other modules will propose wider ranging exploratory activities in which the participants will have the freedom to define, with the aid of mentors, the scope of their activity.

Pre-week 1 activities

  • Self-assessment diagnostic test to determine the level at which participants will enter the programme.
  • Remedial activities to address the lack of technical skills associated with the programme.

Week 1-8 activities: Module 1

  • At the end of this introductory module, participants will have developed the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to take part as learners in a range of activities in MUVEs.
    • Synchronous workshop (either F2F or distance) addressing core competencies that participants will need to use MUVEs, and also the description of the different environments that they will use during the course (Moodle, blogs, wiki …)
    • 5 distance learning activities aiming to enable participants to explore the use of MUVEs for education.
  • After the introductory module, the body of the course involves peer to peer and individual learning processes in which participants will explore further the educational potential of MUVEs, to a large extent defining their own agenda in order to ensure that the learning process fits the needs and requirements of each participants particular context. This will involve two modules running concurrently:

Week 9-33 : Module 2

This module is dedicated to individual learning: the choice of project work is made by the learner in conversation with the course mentors. It will be a personalised project where participants will design and develop an educational activity.

Week 9-33 : Module 3

This module involves group learning in which participants collaborate with their peers, and the agenda is negotiated between the learners and the course mentors within an open framework that focuses on key issues such as user needs, good practice and development of learning patterns for teaching and learning in MUVEs

Learning support

Participants will be organised in 8 groups by institutions participating in the programme. Groups are 10 participants each, with the exception of Italy and the UK with 20 participants each. National groups will be supported in their official language by a tutor. Each group of 10 teachers will benefit from 12 hours of support per week. Support may include decentralised discussion in blogs, centralised discussions in the forum in Moodle, individual and group emails, individual and group audio-meetings via Skype, online conferencing in Elluminate and virtual meetings in Second Life.

Duration

face-to-face and distance modalities

The total duration of the course is 100 hours, from November 2008 to June 2009:

  • Module 2 lasts from week 8 to week 31 , 19/12/2008 - 5/6/2009
  • Module 1 lasts from week 1 to week 7, 3/11/2008 - 19/12/2008
  • Module 3 lasts from week 9 to week 31 , 19/12/2008 - 5/6/2009

Location

The entire programme programme takes place online. The initial session of module 1, is a workshop for participants in UK, BE, FR, IT, ES, DE that will take place either online or as face-to-face workshop. 6 weeks of online activities will follow to complete module 1. Module 2 and 3 and run in parallel, over 33weeks. The estimated time required for participation in these activities is three hours a week, on average, though this may vary from week to week.

Resources

Programme technologies and links

The principal technologies that will be used for this course will involve four basic components:

Tagging Resources

  • Don't forget to tag all your resources about the programme with 'MVN08'. This is the MUVEnation tag. You can use it to tag your blog posts, to identify the posts that belong to the programme, to tag your photos in Flickr, your links in del.icio.us and your videos on youtube, just to name a few!
  • We have also a Twitter profile: http://www.twitter.com/MUVEnation. You can also follow the Twitter feed for comments about the programme by other participants like you. Just use the tag 'MVN08' preceded by a hash (#) - to include twitter posts in this feed.
  • Other tools may be introduced according to need during the course of the year.

Individual Blogs

All participants in the programme will use their own blog, tagging the pertinent content with the MUVEnation tag: mvn08. If you don't have already a blog, you will have to create one. There are a variety of blogging tools at your disposal. Some of them are : http://www.wordpress.com , http://edublogs.org/ and http://www.blogger.com/ .

Evaluation and Assessments

Participants’ assignments and evaluation

  • Assessment will be continuous, focussing both on the quality of participation in the activities, and the results that the different activities generate. Certification of participation of the course will be provided by the participating institutions in each country.
  • Participants will complete the following activities during the course:
    • Weekly reflections on blog (used as an ePortfolio),
    • Participation in forums and commenting on blogs by peer learners in the programme,
    • Participation in collaborative activities in wiki : users' needs analysis, collection of good practices and learning patterns design,
    • Individual project : instructional design of a teaching experienced adapted to the participant context.

Entry competencies

Participants' profile

  • This course is aimed at school teachers across Europe. The course suits in-service teachers, trainee teachers and others with an interest in the sector. Applicants must be either teachers in active service of primary or secondary schools or graduate applicants who wish to become future teachers.

Entry competencies

  • Applicants are expected to satisfy a minimum set of information technology competencies before entering the programme. Participants should be comfortable with:
    • using the Internet as a research and information tool,
    • preparing documents with a word processing software package such as Open Office or Microsoft Word,
    • downloading and installing software on a local computer,
    • basic image/photo manipulation (crop, resize, adjust colours, choose export format) using a photo editing application such as The Gimp or Adobe Photoshop.

Other Pre-Requisites

Other recommended but not essential pre-requisites include: the use of web-based tools that facilitate communication, collaboration and community-building: applications such as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking (del.icio.us or similar) and social network sites (Facebook or similar).

Equipment

  • Applicants must have access to a computer with a higher graphics card and be able to access the internet via a fast connection such as broadband. Computers must meet the minimum specifications for accessing Second Life. See minimum and recommended requirements here : http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php
  • Please note that in the public institutions (e.g. Universities) there may be restrictions, for example a firewall, that prevent access toSecond Life.

Language

  • If the level cannot be certified by a recognized institution/diploma, an audio-meeting, a chat or a written piece may be requested to check the language level.

Learning providers

  • These universities will be hosting the programme:
    • University of Macerata (IT), (20 participants in Italy)
    • Institute for Innovation in Learning (FIM NewLearning), University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (DE), (10 participants in Germany)
    • Florida Centre de Formacio (ES), (10 participants in Spain)
  • Additional research institutions:
    • The MENON Network EEIG (BE) (10 participants in Belgium and across Europe working either in English or in French)
    • Scienter Italia (IT) (supporting the University of Macerata)
    • Agence Départementale du Numérique, (FR) (10 participants in France)

Tutors

  • Belgium : Margarita Pérez-García
  • Germany: Melanie Rubenbauer
  • France: Benoit Lacherez
  • Italy: Pier Giuseppe Rossi, Laura Fedeli, Gigliola Paviotti, Aina Chabert
  • Spain: Nick Kearney, Erena León, Louise Drakley
  • United Kingdom: Steven Warburton, Edwin Porter-Daniels, Shirley Williams, Karsten Oster Lundqvist.
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