Dr Simon Bignell (Psychology, University of Derby)

DMU, 2013 @miltonbroome www.miltonbroome.com

3D Virtual Avatars and Machinima to Educate Students

about Sustainability

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Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)

• In 2009 updated their strategic statement and action plan – Sustainable Development in HE.

• “Sustainable development principles must lie at the core of the education system, such that schools, colleges and universities become show cases for sustainable development among the communities that they serve” Securing the future; delivering the UK’s sustainable development strategy.

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United Nations (UN)

• 2005-2014 the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

• Goal – to integrate the principles, values and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning.

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Who is doing what?

• Keele – 2011 opened a sustainability hub with £3.4 million funding.

• Gloucester – all students experience it, “Sustainability in their DNA”.

• Bradford - £3.1 million funding, achieving change through – curricula, volunteering, learning from corporate practice on campus.

• Plymouth – national and international impact via the Centre for Sustainable Futures. 4C approach: curriculum, campus change, community engagement and culture.

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Project webpage: http://previewpsych.org/

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“We worked as a team... this seemed much more valuable than just writing an essay or having a discussion.”“I was thinking more about the real life Psychology because the avatars represented real people with real psychological problems.”

“...the content was easy to access and the tasks very enjoyable.”

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Education for Sustainable Development

• Brundtland Commission: SD is – “…development that meets the

needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

• Education is the means through which sustainable development can be achieved. UNESCO

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• Two Sustainability / TEL Projects:– With Rosemary Horry (Environmental Sciences) funded by the Higher

Education Academy.– With Zaheer Hussain (Psychology) funded by the Higher Education Academy

Psychology Network.

• Evaluated different methods of embedding ESD in the curriculum.• Used Second Life to rate people’s pro-environmental behaviour and

attitudes to ‘green’ issues such as recycling, energy use and resources.

• Participants reported more pro-environmental behaviour a week after seeing the videos.

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• In the problem-based learning scenarios we used programmed avatar interactions to lead the students to ask the question of ‘what is Sustainability?’

• The scenarios had some concrete examples from a contemporary lifestyle perspective.

• We constructed a series of learning scenarios for staff and students that highlighted the motivational and behavioural factors that impact on sustainability (e.g. resources, recycling and energy efficiency).

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• Scenario 1. Resources: Small groups of students find out who has been using the most water in the virtual household and why, by interacting with the avatars and each other.

• Issues such as beliefs and behaviour about showers vs. bathing, washing the car and using the dishwasher were explored along with wider issues of sustainability of resources.

•

Example project video (3m20s):http://youtu.be/N_0FNyUX1Uo

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• Scenario 2. Recycling: Students are tasked to establish what the issues are with one particular member of the family who is refusing to engage in pro-environmental behaviour.

• Issues such as beliefs about recycling paper, card and metal were explored in an attempt to find out why they think recycling is a good idea but nevertheless fail to engage in these activities.

•

Project video (2m26s):http://youtu.be/i4FOB6Yf_HQ

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• Scenario 3. Energy Efficiency: Students worked in teams to answer questions about home energy use (e.g., leaving things on standby), replacing light bulbs with low wattage equivalents, whether using a microwave is better than the oven or the energy consumption of a washing machine at 30°C rather than 40°C.

Example project video (2m20s): http://youtu.be/EusqbduUejg

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Educational Visual Storylines – ‘Teaching Cartoons’

• Uses a virtual world to create educational cartoons for teaching and online learning.

• Rapidly develop and deploy to modules.

• Import straight into our virtual learning platform.

• Summaries: Not dumbed down.

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How to visit the University of Derby Second Life Islands: 1) Create and avatar: http://tinyurl.com/GETAN-AVATAR2) Install Second Life: http://tinyurl.com/Download-SL 3) Teleport to us: http://tinyurl.com/DERBYSECONDLIFE

Virtual Campus Flythrough (1m6s): http://youtu.be/GQnyb87Zj0o

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‘JISC - Moving into Virtual Worlds - Emerging Practice in a Digital Age’• With Aston University• JISC resources feature

commentary and reflection on pedagogical applications of virtual worlds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aTvE2OBQHc

Emerging Practice in a Digital Age JISC VIDEO http://www.jisc.ac.uk/emergeresource

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Download available here:

http://previewpsych.org/BPD2.0.pdf

Best Practices Document

Best Practices in Virtual Worlds Teaching: A guide to using problem-based learning in Second Life

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Using problem-based learning within 3D virtual worlds

– Published book chapter in with Dr Vanessa Parson (Sunderland University, Previously at Aston).

• Parson, V. & Bignell, S. (2011). in Hinrichs, R and Wankel, C (Eds), Transforming Virtual World Learning: Cutting-edge technologies in higher education, Vol. 4, pp. 245–265. Emerald Group Publishing Limited: Teynampet, India.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transforming-Learning-Cutting-edge-Technologies-Education/dp/1780520522

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Contact Dr Simon Bignell

Centre for Psychological Research University of Derby, UK

s.bignell@derby.ac.uk@miltonbroome www.MiltonBroome.com

www.PREVIEWPsych.org

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Second Life Video Playlisthttp://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX4ftfKp-z4EAKaTUO9ALkvbbjCTYJj0G