2021 #VWEDU Make learning in a virtual world usefully social. Practice collaboration. A DTA as guide on the side.

Make learning in a virtual world usefully social.  

Practice collaboration.  

A DTA as guide on the side.  

Virtual worlds are inherently social.  Planning can make the social activity educationally valuable.

Team planning in a virtual world

Practice collaboration in school?

• How do they do that?
• PBL with teams.
• When are they old enough to work in teams?
• Ask a Little League coach.

How do you teach collaboration?

• Create a situation in which students have an incentive to collaborate.
• Start with a team and a project.
• One or two people will wind up doing most of the work?
• Only if you leave all the management to the team.
• Add a DTA as coach and use it to track individual effort.
• The Digital Teaching Assistant (DTA) for MUVES (virtual worlds): Summary with JIT learning design

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A DTA has time

• For detailed prompting and tracking.
• For reminding the team of what they need to be doing.
• And keeping track of what each team member is doing.
• The teacher then has time to supervise the DTA

How can the DTA coach?

• The requirements for effective teamwork are well known:
• Develop a plan and schedule.
• Assign action items.
• Track progress on each action item.
• Resolve problems as they appear.

Plan and Schedule

• The DTA provides the team with a planning form.
• The form may be partly completed for students with little experience.
• The form calls for a list of action items fitted to a class schedule.

Action items

• Each action item is assigned to a specific student.
• Each action item has specific delivery requirements (checklist)
• Above contents may be specified by teacher or team, depending on student skills.
• Progress is monitored by the teacher.

Action items:  Inquiry and report PBL

• Inquiry-based learning
• Identify resources: Depending on grade level, the plan might recommend resources.
• Specify questions: Give the questions you think you can answer.
• Use a worksheet to tie each statement of fact to a source and a student.
• The DTA can keep track of each student's productivity on fact sourcing.
• (That productivity may affect the student's grade.)

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Visit me on the web

• Drop by my web offices Weekdays: 12:-12:30 pm Central time (US)
• I am available for free consulting on any topic in this blog.
• Cybalounge and 3DWebWorldz (Orientation room)
• I will be in both places, so you may need to speak to get my attention.
• Web-worlds, 3D virtual worlds running in a browser. Summary
• And we can visit the Writer's Workshop on the Web
• Don't register -- enter as guest.  
• Due to medical issues, I cannot promise to be there.  But I will try.

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• Selby Evans in Kitely and Hypergrid, Thinkerer Melville in Second Life.