Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?

Well done to both groups – each one made a very good presentation. The content was well researched, clearly written and coherently presented. Although the slide presenter didn’t work you were able to adapt to the low-tech replacement and it didn’t impede your delivery. One group did somewhat better with the illustration while the other group were clearer about their sources. Overall, a very good effort.

Your final assignment (as described last week) is to write a post to your blog giving a critique of your presentation. You should also include the text, references and images from your presentation.

Thank you for taking part in the module and for your excellent attendance and engagement. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and that you found it a useful introduction to online collaboration.

Enjoy the summer!

Class started with a discussion about the feedback on student blogs. We had some clarification on what ‘writing more reflectively and critically’ means. Earlier this month John suggested you read the advice given to a previous class: Blog posts and group work. If you haven’t already read it you should do so now.

John asked each group to provide an update on how the group project work is progressing. It seems that it hasn’t really gotten going properly yet. Nobody took the opportunity to meet in Second Life during last week’s class time. Some participants have been discussing the project in Facebook and both groups are planning to meet over the weekend to begin work. Following a discussion about the topic of the project where it became clear that students had not really considered the scope of the project John suggested that an extension of the presentation date by a week (from 12 May to 19 May) might be a good idea – it is justified on the basis that last week’s class was cancelled. It was agreed that students will post to Facebook on Monday giving their preference regarding the presentation date.

John also proposed that the presentations be delivered where we meet for class using the slide viewer there. Each group can use up to 10 slides in its presentation.

There was a general discussion on the topic of the project: what our workplaces are likely to look like in 2050. Using McLuhan’s suggestion that we consider how technology influences behaviour we pondered growth of online and virtual systems. History is always a good jumping off point. Would anyone in pre-industrial Europe have expected industrialisation to result in unemployment? It would probably have been inconceivable to people who starved if they didn’t work. The expectation that replacing workers with machines would lead to a golden age of leisure for all did not come to pass either. How likely is it that people will still be going to offices and factories for work by 2050? These questions should form the start of the project brainstorming exercise. Teams are expected to be asking the right questions rather than producing the right answers. Use the readings set throughout the module to inform your thinking and make sure you refer to it in your presentation.

John also reminded you of the importance of reflecting on your teamwork in the context of the talk on team work last month and writing up your thoughts in your blog.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE THE NEXT CLASS:

1. Meet: in your groups to plan your approach to the project, decide on what aspect of the project you will explore, identify the individual tasks and prepare an outline schedule (this work was to have been done for today’s class but wasn’t).
2. Write the ninth post: to your blog describing how your team considered the Form-Storm-Norm-Perform aspects of team work and how you addressed the various team roles.