Contrary to most of the listserves I read, Second Life is not as terribly difficult for new folks to learn as it’s made out to be. At least that’s what the data said. Sure, there is a learning curve…doesn’t every new program have that. But only 1/4 of the research participants complained about it being too hard to learn. The rest of the group felt some frustration…made their share of mistakes…but overall described the process as challenging, but fun.
The dissertation study just completed involved 19 educators new to Second Life, participating in a three week immersion experience into the environment. The three groups very quickly self-identified into three attitude groups…but not based on the things you might expect: prior game experience, tech experience, age, gender…role in education…none of those. Four distinct themes emerged that helped identify how the participants grouped together, but there was one other element that “ruled them all”. The data revealed a “magic ring” that had the greatest impact on the overall experience of the educators in their immersion into the virtual environment. Want to take a guess what that one factor was?
Two guesses:
1) Curiosity – those who had the best experience exhibited a positive attitude toward trying something new; these individuals possess a natural interest in new experiences;
2) Confidence – those who had the best experience went into the exercise with the belief that they could execute it.
Am I close?
Pretty close…not a bad shot…
Most all described themselves as up for something new, “on the edge” kind of people, and all were pretty much fully stocked with the confidence thing.
The big issue was whether or not they were doing it primarily for work…or for some other personal motivation. Those in the ‘negative’ group described such reasons for participation as: “It might give me a new tool for teaching”, “others are using it so I probably should”, “my staff is using it so I figure I’d better keep up”, or “I’m a super techie and this is the next thing”.
Those in the positive group described their reasons for participating with the same comments, but each also added something like: “and it sounds like a heck of a lot of fun”, “I saw it at a conference and said ‘I gotta DO that”, or “it looks like something I could really get into”.
The difference was motivation…those who saw a personal value in participating, put forth the effort to endure the frustrations and difficulties, and while they still grumbled, saw the problems as even more evidence that this was worth learning. Externally motivated participants just saw it as work…and work of less value than the other things they had to do.
So, as we seek to introduce learners/trainees to these new technologies, instead of just focusing on the ‘training’ itself, it may pay us to explore how we can trigger that personal connection with the learning…how we can ‘hook’ the individual’s non-work interests. It may take a bit of additional time, but the results should be more than worth the investment….
-Bro
Could you share the citation for this study, please? I’m preparing my dissertation on SL educators and this would be wonderful to look at.
Catherine, the dissertation is just now in publication with ProQuest, and should be ‘cite-able’ in a couple of weeks. If you are interested, I’d be open to visiting about the research, and also hearing more about what you are doing.