16 September 14:15   Room D109

Creating a 3D Virtual Teaching Lab (VTL) in the Arts

  • Ann Clements Penn State University
  • Chris Stubbs Penn State University

Digital engagement has become prevalent in numerous aspects of modern teaching and learning. While many formalized technology-based learning projects have explored the themes of content distribution, social collaboration, media use, and curricular construction and assessment, few, if any, have fully explore how modern technology, especially virtual reality, can assist in the training arts teachers for improved instruction, engagement and interaction with students.

This presentation will focus on a 3D virtual teaching laboratory in the arts that is currently being built at Penn State. Blending the best elements of games and simulations, including feedback, repetition, narrative, and safe spaces to fail, this lab will allow pre-service teachers an opportunity to practice common teaching skills such as the use of proximity, gesture, engagement, and classroom management in a simulated virtual environment. This virtual environment also provides the opportunity for young teachers to hone the inherently social experience of teaching into an independently contrived and controlled - anytime, anywhere opportunity. This flexibility creates unlimited opportunities for practice, including the ability to experience difficult ethical, moral, of behavioral situation multiple times in a row and to explore making different decisions about how best to handle these teaching and learning situations.

This project is funded by Penn State Educational Technology Services and is based on the winning submission of the Penn State 2015 Open Innovation Challenge.

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A Cross-University Collaborative DOCC: Outcomes of a Pilot Study in Collaborative Learning

  • Ann Clements Penn State University
  • Bart Pursel Penn State University
  • Chris Stubbs Penn State University

A Cross-University Collaborative DOCC: Outcomes of a Pilot Study in Collaborative Learning This presentation will highlight the pilot study outcomes of a newly created multi-university Distributed Open Collaborative Course (DOCC). Partnering with 31 music education faculty members from 14 different universities, 41 curricular learning modules were created. These modules were combined on a website (musicedseries.org) that contained elements of social media, allowing for cross-university dialogue within each module, and digital badges, allowing for cross-university certification.*

The website has been used in variety of ways as a portion of introductory music education courses at each participating institution. The research surrounding this pilot sought to explore:

  1. the degree to which students and faculty interact across institutional boundaries within a cross-university experience;
  2. the educational experience of participants within a DOCC model; and
  3. the potential advantages and disadvantages of a collaborative yet limited or “walled” experience.

* A description of this project was presented at the 2014 DeL conference, but the site was not operational and we had no outcomes at that point to share.

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Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives Happy Together – developing rewarding pedagogy in our digital environment.

  • Cyril Shing Chelsea College of Arts, University of Arts London

The term digital native was coined and popularized by education consultant, Marc Prensky in his 2001 article entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in which he applies a term digital natives to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments referring to the young generation as” native speakers” of the digital language of computers and social media etc.1

Jeff DegGraff describe the digital natives is the generation of people born during or after the rise of digital technologies (after 1980) and grown up in the digital world. For the digital immigrants are people born before the advent of digital technology doesn't actually have to do with technology. The real issue is that the two worldviews that they represent are so different.2

This paper based on the idea of Marc Prensky Digital Native Digital Immigrant to study the challenges in nowadays design pedagogy in digital age. Digital natives and digital immigrants are both from different generation. They have completely different understanding of the digital environment and the use of it in acquiring their knowledge. Question is ‘When more digital natives are increasing in our teaching and learning environment, can our pedagogy provide a “common ground” to embrace those differences? How can we make the best use of these differences to gain the reward in our teaching and learning experience?’ Is our current educational system fit for this digital century? Is it pointing us to a new paradigm in our design pedagogy we need to adopt? The paper presents a number of cases study in an undergraduate design studio where highly adopt digital process in their design and pedagogy. By evaluating the experience from both tutors and learners, the discovery is inspiring and there are lessons to learn in our teaching practice.

1. Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, (From On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)) http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/PrenskyDigitalNativesDigitalImmigrantsPart1.pdf.

2. Jeff DeGraff, Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants

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