Site Purpose
The Instructional Design Resource Center is designed as a resource for individuals with varying levels of course design experience.
Individuals new to higher education can use this site to help design their first classroom based course integrating technology where appropriate.
Notice
This site replaces the Hitchhikers Guide to Course Development.
Experienced instructors, being encouraged to place materials within a learning management system, can use this site to decipher the differences between Web-Presence, Web-Enhanced, Web-Centric and Online courses and how to plan courses for online delivery.
Instructors of online courses, looking for new ideas and ways to improve their course, can use the site to improve content development by finding sources for pre-developed content and ideas to improve student centered learning.
Instructional Designers and Instructional Support Staff can use this site as a reference for themselves or as a resource for the faculty they support.
Accessing the Content
Materials can be accessed by clicking on the links under “Course Categories” on the left-hand-side of the screen. Some of the modules will allow you to visit them as a guest, but others require a valid user account. If the information on this site is of interest to you, please take a moment to create a user account by clicking on the “Create new account” link located on the left-hand-side of this screen.
The first time that you login to the site or access an open module as a guest the copyright statement will be displayed. Please review the statement. If you agree to the abide by the copyright guidelines click the [Yes] button – the materials that you requested will then be displayed. If you do not agree with the copyright guidelines click the [No] button – the system will then log you out.
Once the copyright agreement has been accepted by an account it will not be displayed again. If you wish to review the agreement again it can be accessed by the clicking on the “Copyright” text on any screen or the link located on the right-hand-side of this screen.
Other Resources
At the end of each module, wherever possible, there are links to additional Resources and Tools that apply to the topic covered on that section. The ancillary sections provide access to even more resources as well as background information on a number of learning management systems and about the site itself.
When selecting external (off-site) links it is important to note that the link will open in the same window as the Hitchhiker site as required to meet accessibility standards. Simply use the browser back button to return to this site or right click the link to open it in a new window.
News Feeds and other RSS Content
Throughout the site there are selected RSS feeds that will assist you in keeping abreast of what other educators have to say about teaching and learning. For example several feeds are listed on the right-hand-side of this screen.
Many of the tutorial sections within the guide also display feeds that complement the topic under discussion in that area. If you have a favorite blog, podcast site or wiki that you would like to share with this community please post a link and short description to the "Your Recommendations" forum.
Site Links
The Instructional Design Resource Center is fluid and new information will be added as it is developed. That being said, narrative such as list items not currently hyperlinked are areas where new content is under development.
Finally, we would appreciate it if you could complete the User Survey after you have explored the site. The responses we receive will help us make modifications to the site to better serve the needs of the intended audience. If you have any recommendations for content not currently covered within the guide, please feel free to contact the site designers through the "Suggestions" forum.
Thank you and enjoy the site.
| |
- Discuss class and status within SL. Are there separate and distinct classes of users within SL? Builders, chatters, international users, adult users, business people? Are class distinctions obvious right away, or is this something that a casual user might not necessarily notice right away? What are residents' views on class and status? How can a resident raise their status? What can a resident do to (intentionally or unintentionally) lower their status? How does group membership impact one's status? How closely are status and money linked? How closely are status and time spent in-world linked? Have students interview residents about their perceptions (be mindful of the research ethics statements from SL). Have students reflect on their own experiences in-world and compare to real-life experiences.
- Experience different subcultures within SL. SL has thriving "furry", "goth" and "dwarf" subcultures, and many others. Note an intersection with race issue: do furries or dwarfs comprise a separate "race" within SL? How can races be defined among avatars?
- How is religion experienced in SL? Sex, Politics, and Religion (http://newsinitiative.org/story/2007/07/31/this_revolution_will_be_televised) Also see Where Two Or More Are Gathered (http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/04/where_two_or_mo.html).
- Discuss marriage & relationships in-world. Some articles to start with are “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife” (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118670164592393622.html), ‘Second Life Affair Leads to Real Life Divorce” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/13/second-life-divorce), and “Watching the Detectives (http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2005/03/watching_the_de.html) . Are hiring private investigators in Second Life to spy on a spouse a "breach of privacy" issue? Weddings as in-world social events.
- Can you die in SL? Compare death and dying in the Snow Crash metaverse to SL (interesting essay topic). Explore SL Funerals.
- Are there race issues in Second Life? Experience Martin Luther King, Jr Day in Second Life.
- Explore gender issues in SL. Students are surprised to read about a difference in price in male and female avatars on the secondary market. Gender-bending. Are there Software-controlled behavior differences in male and female avatars in SL.
- Explore criminal justice: punishment, "criminal profiling". Send students to the SL police blotter. Define and discuss griefing (being "bad" just for the fun of it, or to ruin someone else's game). Early description of player types, including description of griefers. How does this remind students of the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator? There are HUGE controversies on these online games about how to punish offenders. There are even bigger controversies about how to even define "crimes", and whether "real world" laws can extend to a virtual world, and whether law enforcement should be by the company or by the real world police. See A Rape In Cyberspace (http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html) for a historical perspective.
- Terrorism. Department of Homeland Security and CIA simulation terror and using multiplayer games and notion of "griefing" to study terrorist groups.
- Explore avatars & personal identity. Fashion in Second Life, Avatars as alter-ego (Second Life mentioned). Avatar and Identity (general Internet). Tourism (general Internet).
- What are some legal issues in SL? Do avatars have rights?. Laws of virtual worlds. Intersection with real-world laws. Resources: The Alphaville Herald (http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/legal_issues/), Legal Issue in SL (http://muveforward.blogspot.com/2008/06/podcast-episode-3-legal-issues-in.html).
- Have ethnographic studies been done in SL? Researchers try to figure out demographics of SL (w/voluntary poll).
- SL and disability support groups. Wilde Cunningham is a group of 9 disabled adults in a group home. Live2Give is a group for people living with Cerebral Palsy. Brigadoon is a group for people living with Asperger's and Autism.
- Gambling. Gambling within SL.
- Psychology. Discussion of usefulness of SL to model things, mental illness, for example. Recreating the experience of schizophrenia in-world. Daedalus Project has overviews of many different psychology issues in the context of MMO game play.
- Political science. Can SL be used to explore the process of creating a government?
|
| |
- Simulating biological evolution. An experiment in scripted evolution.
- Math. The entire SL building process is based on the notion of a "prim", or a primitive geometric shape. In combination, these prims become hair, clothing, houses, cars, jetpacks, sailboats, fog, and animals.
- Programming. Second Life scripting is a simple programming language that can be learned easily by anyone with rudimentary programming knowledge. It will take a novice slightly longer to learn the language, but with time it is relatively easy to master.
- Physics of game design. As with all virtual reality or gaming environments, the physics of game design are important to creating a realistic experience. See Physics for Game Developers (http://fliiby.com/file/16881/octq6bnhgv.html, or www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/lim.pdf ), for example.
- Astronomy. SL has a sun and moon, night and day, but it does not follow the "normal" world clock and the sun can be overridden by users who know how to use the "debug" menus. Not sure if there's anything here for real research, but it is an interesting concept. You could re-create the solar system using prims within a sim or create a virtual planetarium.
|
| |
- Discussion of intersection of SL with real-world businesses. The Tringo phenomenon: from wildly popular in-world game to financially viable, real-world cellular phone game. Here’s a guy who uses SL to prototype his real-life gun designs. The DIY Treo Headphone adapter leash was designed in-world.
- Discussion of advertising & in-world marketing. Here’s some coverage of SL’s virtual advertising agency “MetaAdverse”. Discuss intersection with real-world marketing (i.e. ebay). SL began selling sponsored link placements on ebay during the Winter and Spring of 2005 in the Search tab formerly called “top picks”. You can also buy in-world goods on a real-world web site. Students may be interested in comparing the ease-of-use between purchasing items on this website versus finding and buying items in-world.
- Consider using SL for business simulation.
- Discuss virtual real estate. The articles “Virtual Gadgets Selling for Real Money in Tech News World, or “Second Life’s First Millionaire” in Business Week that covers the real-life job of making money selling SL real estate. And another one. “The Unreal Estate Boom” is an older classic article which covers Everquest real estate.
- Discuss intellectual property issues. Second Life residents own their digital creations. Why is this such a significant departure from the norm in MMO play, and how can we expand this difference for discussion in the classroom? Additional commentary on this issue. And more commentary here - this one also has a description / comparison of SL to another virtual world called “There”. How does this support our description of SL as a “sharing economy” or a “gift economy” above? Can SL be either, or, or both all at the same time? Julian Dibbel’s early take on Second Life copyright.
- Explore the business of gaming. MMORPGchart tracks the growth of MMO games. IT Conversations has an interview with Bill Gurley on the breakout success of the MMORPG game genre.
- Discuss the sweatshop issue - is it real? There has been some controversy for a while over the idea that there are game-playing “sweatshops” in developing nations. In these sweatshops, low-paid workers toil at playing MMO-style games making crafts or building up an avatar’s value so that the items built or gathered can be sold on the grey market. There is some debate over whether these sweatshops really exist. Some links Terra Nova Discussion, World Notes Discussion, and the original article on sweatshops .
|
