Ok I am rather sheepishly bring my seeping epistimological wound into my own blog where I can lick it quietly.  Sorry I know that is gross but you know what I mean - we had enough fur and feathers flying in the forum, that even though everything has settled down nicely I feel a bit nervous about rubbing my hands together and saying...

 "So, epistemology eh?"

It began here:

Me:  But in this case, I just don't see this because, it is for the purposes of our current discussion unknowable - the nature of truth and reality. It seems like quibbling to discuss this when a certain functional acceptance of true and false is necessary to get simple tasks (like writing dissertations and cooking chickens) done. Especially as much of it seems like semantics. Truth like greek love and eskimo snow has many different forms, and one of us picks one and an other picks another and then we have a discussion - which is essentially meaningless because we are talking about different things.

Hamish:  In writing your dissertation you will be planning to come to some conclusions, I assume? It is really rather expected. De rigueur, you might say. So you will be making truth claims. That is the nature of it. You need to know then, what it is you are doing. You are not doing journalism. You need to understand what you are saying and, impostantly, what you are *not* say, or able to say. That is what we are about. And it is challenging.
 

This is the thing, and I fear I may have exaggerated my lack of understanding along the way somehow, but I get what Epistemology is, and how it differs from Ontonology.  (I have no idea why I am capitalising them, maybe I have a German ancestor, or possibly just giving them the respect of Very Important Words I Don't quite Feel I Can Relax Around.)  Anyway, the thing is I am not sure why we have to bother with them in order to do research. Lol, I could hear the collective gasp of horror from everyone who has every done research ever after I typed that. Shall I explain here that I have never done research ever or leave that for another blog post.  Ok, ABP.  I really want to be convinced, by the way - I am very much lawful good when I play dungeons and dragons.  I would love to conform, I just can't fake it.

Anyway, according to the whims of epistemology I need to get off the fence and have an opinion about knowledge.

When I make a truth claim about something either (and these are the main current contenders, not an exhaustive list, and assuming my research is good) the meaning I am offering up:

a) it is there, in stuff, and is therefore something I have discovered - and had I not discovered it, it would still be there

b) it is in my head when I 'look at' stuff and I inflict it on whatever I am assigning meaning to, but it is not inherent in the thing itself

c) it is constructed in the relationship between me and stuff

If I  believe the former I am an Objectivist, if I believe the one in the middle I am a Subjectivist and if I believe the latter I am a Constructivist which is apparently the coolest position to hold at the time of writing - and you can see why, it is like the democrat of the epistemological world.

I look at those 3 choices and think "no I don't want to be any of them because I can see that all are equally possible and equally unknowable" and if I am picking one, then it is because I have to, or because it comes with good research tools and therefore I will be an agnostic when it comes to knowledge kthanx.

What makes it worse is that you have to pick one (and I get it that you don't have to be 'it' forever, you can select a stance for a particular research interest) because the rest of anything to do with research is totally dependant on this issue.  If you don't have an epistemological stance you can't have a theoretical perspective, if you don't have a theoretical perspective you can't have a methodology, and yes... Crotty concedes rather magnanimously you can have methods because they are rather promiscuous critters who will hang out with anyone, but if you have a bunch of methods without the other parts then pretty much everyone is going to be tittering behind their hands when you hand in your dissertation.  

I feel like I am being told that in order to read a Bible I need to be a Christian, and if I fancy taking a peak at a Qur'an I must convert to Islam (but don't worry I can go back to being Christian when I have finished).  And when I wail "but I am agnostic" I feel like my inner voice says, "oh well then why not adopt a Buddhist Approach, because that is essentially agnostic, it is not like they believe in God, and then you can read  the Tripitaka, which is pretty cool, it has the fire sermon in it and everything.  Go on, be a Buddhist, it will make Hamish happy.

Apparently we have been recommended to keep a blog for Research Methods.  I feel like I have had so many blogs my MSc in E-learning, but in fact it has been 2 main ones, this for IDEL and a Wordpress blog for Digital Cultures.  I didn't know I could access either still until Damien mentioned Holyrood Park blogs and I went there hit a few links and found this old girl sitting here all neglected like Miss Havisham. 

Seems appropriate that my IDEL blog gets to be my Research Methods blog.  If I had my time again I would continue to keep a blog after IDEL through every course, as I think that would have been invaluable.  Just thought I would mention that in case there are any IDELers wandering past, lol.  

Anyway, Research Methods... yikes.   A month ago I was in the blissful state of just worrying about the maths, little did I know that that worry would be utterly subsumed by my need to worry about everything else.  I am currently in the zone where everything I say on the DB seems to be wrong, or off the mark somewhat - so it will be a relief to come here and mutter to myself in my inappropriately humorous, journalistic manner.  I have struggled with being insufficiently academic from the beginning - I bet there is a blog about it back there somewhere - and hoped that one day something would click and I would have access to an appropriate mode of discourse (whether this would be a new way of thinking or simply a new way of presenting my ideas I don't know), but now I am going to do myself the favour of not worrying about it.  Hopefully I will be able to muster enough faux gravitas for my dissertation but ultimately I accept it is not me.  I am not academic.  Nuff said.

That isn't to say I haven't loved it.  I fully appreciate every piece of wisdom that has gone in.  I just don't seem to have much control over how it comes out, lol.  And before I give the impression that 'this is the end my friend' it isn't... I have one more course after Research Methods before I can consider myself a Master *snort* oh yeah, and the small thing of the dissertation. 

Lolz.

 Anyway, as ever this blog will be public and comments are welcome from all and sundry, especially the sundry.

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First of all, I would like to thank all those who took part in this study by providing me with data without which this dissertation wouldn't have been possible.

Abstract

Jumping straight to the results, here's an adapted version of the project's abstract, which also sums up how the study was conducted (you can also jump straight to the paragraph about playfulness and happiness if you wish to):

The present study investigates the existence of a theoretical link between individuals' general level of playfulness and their “academic playfulness”, that is their learning motivational orientation in higher education.
A non-experimental fixed design was followed which involved an online questionnaire adapted from previous instruments as well as online semi-structured interviews in order to quantify that link and to try to identify mechanisms helping to explain it. Seventy undergraduate and Master's level students enrolled in one British and
several French universities answered the questionnaire and 5 students were interviewed.
A small correlation between playfulness and intrinsic motivation to learn was found (r=0.324; p=0.006). This correlation was stronger for males and learners enrolled in more qualitative courses (e.g. liberal arts and management are deemed more qualitative than economics and finance), even though the latter result is not statistically significant. Evidence suggests that playfulness is not related to either gender or age and that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation could be best understood as two separate but related constructs. Likely mechanisms playing a role in the influence of playfulness on intrinsic motivation to learn include the need for social relationships, creativity, active engagement and achievement. Evidence suggests that playfulness influences people's studies and occupations and that the reverse effect sometimes also occurs.
As a result, educators should consider encouraging playful approaches to learning for highly playful students because this can be seen as potentially supportive to their intrinsic motivation. This suggestion could be particularly relevant for male learners and students enrolled in qualitative courses, even though more research is needed to support these results.

Playfulness

Given that play and therefore playfulness are elusive concepts, it's important to note that the latter was understood in terms of Barnett's definition (2007):

"Playfulness is the predisposition to frame (or reframe) a situation in such a way as to provide oneself (and possibly others) with amusement, humor, and/or entertainment.
Individuals who have such a heightened predisposition are typically funny, humorous, spontaneous, unpredictable, impulsive, active, energetic, adventurous, sociable, outgoing, cheerful, and happy, and are likely to manifest playful behaviour by joking, teasing, clowning, and acting silly."

If you wish to learn more about this dissertation, please find it here. In particular, the Discussion (pp. 50-55) Interview results (pp. 45-49) sections are worthy of interest.

Beyond this study - Playfulness and happiness

I would like to say a few words about play, which is a fascinating and not well understood topic yet.

Play has many intrinsic benefits, including learning (this dissertation, among other works, proves it) and preparing us for the unexpected events of our world (Kane 2005).

Traditionally, play has been understood as the opposite of work but it is my belief (and that of many scholars) that play and work are much closer than we may think. In fact, according to the definition above, play can be brought to bear on any activity. For example, Gee has shown that play and formal learning can be extremely related (2003).

The misconception according to which play and work (or learning) are opposite is related to the fact that from primary school onwards, learning is formalised and compartmentalised from play (Barab et al 2005, p. 15) and thereby, an activity called "work" appears. But that doesn't mean one cannot learn in a playful way.

As Kane states, "play is an attitude before it is anything else" (2005, p. 48). Indeed, different people have different degrees of playfulness. And different people "play" in different ways. But I believe that playfulness is something that one can cultivate: I think that dedicating more time to our pastimes (reading, doing arts, sports, etc.) is one way of doing this. For instance, on a personal level, I have always found that my sense of humour was much better when I dedicated some of my free time to reading novels than when I did not.

We can all try to become more playful on our leisure time or at work. For example, writers who write books about "serious" and apparently not so fun topics (like statistics or programming for instance) can do so in a very dry and boring way or they can try and make it fun (to themselves and to their readers) by adding humour into it. I think Anglo-Americans are very good at doing that (by contrast with many French authors for instance). Playfulness really is an attitude and it can take multiple forms (not only the one cited in this example).

And beyond the scope of the study, I think we can all be much happier in life if we try hard to reframe any situations (especially our jobs) so as to make them more interesting to us (the definition of playfulness given above).

Thank you again for taking part in this study (and for having made it through to the end of this long speech )!

References:

Barab, S., A. Arici and C. Jackson (2005). Eat your vegetables and do your homework: A design-based investigation of enjoyment and meaning in learning. Educational Technology 45 (1): 15-20

Barnett, L.A. (2007). The nature of playfulness in young adults. Personality and Individual Differences 43(4): 949–958. 

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York,
Palgrave Macmillan.

Kane, P. (2005). A general theory of play. In The play ethic: a manifesto for a different way of living. London, Pan

For a few days, I've realised that when I was using a few words English in France with some of my friends, I was talking like old women. Actually, it was more like those cartoon style of voices, especially those I that enculturated me when I was developing the Lapin Malin educational CD-RM.

This is because I fear that my accent might not be good enough and, more likely, that others may find me a pretentious person by so doing. If French people enjoyed foreign languages and everyone was proud of their abilities, I would probably feel differently though.

Very interestingly, on the Understanding Learning in the Online Environment module, Hugh reported similar reactions about their own mother tongue, with his students being “extremely reluctant to pronounce clearly and properly” because “in the West Coast of Scotland, proper articulation - ie. beyond grunting - is viewed as effeminate”!

My cartooning moments and the role-playing they involve help me reduce my fear of others' judgement: indeed, the playful nature of the activity and the pleasure it gives me even prompts me into speaking.

That reminds me of the Ensemble c'est tout movie in which one of the characters has a speech impediment due to anxiety. Thanks to some form of music (singing) therapy, he gradually overcomes his impediment, through sessions where he speaks slowly and clearly in a slightly melodious fashion. Acting out (a form of play) this way probably shares similarities with theatre.

Likewise, it could be that to overcome the “taboos” (Papert 1996) involved in speaking a foreign language, students could be encouraged to act, by using voices like those of cartoon characters or real people. Such form of play which works very well with me out of the classroom could, hopefully, lead them to enjoy the lessons more and more.

Depending on their accent, the teacher may suggest them to take the role of a BBC reporter (for the good ones), Arsene Wenger (for the average students) or a French tourist not making much efforts to at least pronounce the “r” correctly (for the “worst” students). Perhaps this could even make up a curriculum in which learners would move through these various roles which would represent as many lessons. Theoretically, role-playing their own role may actually be quite effective.

I believe that having a good accent in a foreign language is correlated with being a good imitator (there comes the idea of the theatre again): the development of both skills involve admiration/attraction and identification and require observation and mimicry, which children are very good at whereas adults are much less so.

So, the problem is that I'm unsure whether those having a bad accent would easily enter the role-playing game.

But the good news is:

• I could be wrong

• Some may have found effective strategies to get students to actually play with that

References:

Papert, S. (1996). A word for learning. In Constructionism in practice : designing, thinking, and learning in a digital world. Y. B. Kafai and M. Resnick. Mahwah, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

In two of my previous posts (Emotions as a play ground and Play is part of any game), I tried to show how work always leaves room for play.

As Gee's Probing Principle suggests (2003), play and activity in general are also the processes through which learning occurs. Since the beginning of this course, I've always felt that happiness and pleasure played a part in this too as would suggest the title "Games, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness" (Yee 2004). In order to be happy, we would need to be active, that is, to work/play (which is the same anyway) and therefore, to learn. Let's now turn to a couple of quotes that seem to support that view:

"I remember feeling learning like seeing a huge mountain from its foothills when I was little (few years ago :P). Too chaotic to climb, with so many paths to begin from and follow later,but also exciting like having no choise but to start climbing and exploring immediately. It doesn't matter whether we like the path and decide to follow it without seeing the crown it leads to. Or whether we already see the crown we want to reach and decide which path to follow whether it is pleasant to climb, hard or even dangerous. Learning, like climbing, always provides surprises. Like a green valley full of flowers under the sun appearing in front of you right on time when you think you have taken the wrong path, or being exhausted from climbing, assuming that the climb didn't finally worth so much effort. The trip to the crown is often difficult, but it depents on how well prepared the climbing learner is and how proof against the weather the boots are. Reaching the crown is the best relief that a learner can get. Standing there with hands raised, seeing the difficult paths and gaps from top, smaller and insignificant that get quickly deleted from his head. Climbing never ends for a learner. There will always be crowns to reach the one after the other, each one with different kind of beauty, effort and glory."

Most of us found Flery's metaphor to be the best illustration of learning during the Understanding Learning in the Online Environment module. As I previously explained, MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft (2009) are interesting in that they make this metaphor explicit. However, given the importance of challenge in making a game successful (Malone 1980) and for which the mountain may again be the perfect metaphor, that idea may be extended to all kinds of games. So here we are with a likely link between learning and work/play. Let's now look at how this matches pleasure and happiness:

"Man did not invent play. But it is play and only play that makes man complete"

(Eigen and Winkler in Kane 2005, p. 57)

The idea of 'completeness' here seems to relate somehow to 'happiness'.

"The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression"

(Sutton-Smith in Kane 2005, p. 44)

"I think happiness is not to reach the top of the mountain but to climb it"

(Arthus-Bertrand 2009)

Picture: in the view linking playing/working and learning, we initially focus on the goal but we then realise that it's not reaching it that makes us happy but rather engaging in the climb to it. In short, the role of the goal is to motivate us.

Therefore, the mountain metaphor seems to represent a solid link between:

• learning
• activity, that is playing/learning (which seems to strengthen the link which I previously tried to show)
• pleasure and happiness

References:

Arthus-Bertrand, Y. (2009). Interview for his 6 Milliards D'Autres exhibition. In Tele Star, 1-8 May 2009 issue.

Gee, J. P. (2003). Situated meaning and learning. In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan: 73-112.

Kane, P. (2005). A general theory of play. The play ethic : a manifesto for a different way of living . London, Pan.
Introduction; Towards the Play Ethic

Malone, T.W. (1980). What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional
computer games. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC
symposium on Small systems table of contents. Palo Alto, California, United States.

World of Warcraft (2009). MMORPG game. Blizzard Entertainment.

Yee, N. (2004). Games, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. Daedalus Project.
Retrieved: 8 May 2009. http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000776.php

Druids and bears

As a Druid, one of my quests made me teleport to Moonglade to heed the Great Bear Spirit. That teleporting ability was really rewarding, even more so that it took me to a completely different place. Further, I have been browsing the web for information about the game over the past few weeks: I knew that Druids could change into bears and therefore, I found that quest quite motivating for me (in fact, I now remember reading about that in the game's book and that capability prompted me to make my character a Druid in the first place).

I just couldn't wait to learn how to do that... Well, actually I could... I mean I had to since that was only the first quest of a series which should lead me to learn that: a perfect implementation of the Achievement Principle since this fascinating ability needs to be deserved (Gee 2003).

Developing my character

Unlike with my Mage character, I haven't forgotten to go back to the master of Druids to learn new skills: this is the perfect answer to the killing boredom which I had been feeling for the last few playing days. I chose several spells that added variety to my capabilities and made me change my approaches to fighting. I also improved the spells I commonly used which helped me kill my opponents more easily (until, I suspect, I cross harder creatures on my way).

Learning how to properly use the mini-map tracking feature also helped me improve as a herborist and made me realise that my progress could be tracked via the Character Information panel.

More importantly, my choices with regards to the way I develop as a character in the game are a very important learning principle, very well explained by Gee's tripartite play of identity (2003, pp. 51-71).

Implications for educators

Too often, teachers want students to solve a problem their way or the one they deem the best. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the strategy that fits all students better and can potentially impede their progress in a dangerous way. On the other hand, helping students learn several strategies can strengthen their knowledge structures which I remember was very helpful when I was studying Physics and Chemistry: I could use the most appropriate strategy according to the specifics of the problem at hand and I was also more confident in my approaches since I could support my findings in several ways.

I think teachers shouldn't prevent students from using their preferred strategy or learning style but at the same time, they should still prompt them to learn better ones.

I believe assessment can play an important part into this: the use of the best approach (if any) could be awarded more marks while the use of a different one would be given less marks. Such a design illustrates Gee's Ongoing Learning and “Psychosocial Moratorium” Principles (2003) in that it would be less daunting for students than simply requiring them to quit using their preferred strategies for better ones but would still encourage them to do so.

When several strategies are available for a given task, students are usually taught the easiest ones first before learning more powerful and sophisticated ones. I remember instances of that in my scholarship when we were taught a more powerful formulae to solve a Physics problem or when we were allowed to start using scientific calculators to perform routine tasks such as drawing the graph of an equation to check our results against it. Just like my case, signs of boredom ("average boredom" among class students perhaps) may be an excellent indicator of the appropriate time to teach a new strategy.

References:

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan

After having experienced a number of games and related them to the course readings (especially to Gee 2003), the final stage of my proposed learning trajectory consisted in undertaking a superficial analysis of an authoring tool for creating 3 D learning environments.

Thinking Worlds is one of the tools that was suggested in the course discussions and I had downloaded and run version 2 until I downloaded version 3.0 a few days ago, for what was a disapointing journey

The tool consists of an authoring and a runtime environment.

I had tried the runtime environment of version 2 and it worked fine.

I was more interested in learning how to create environments from scratch and therefore tried the authoring part of the tool.

At first, it was nice to receive On-Demand and Just-in-Time information to guide me through the creation of a journey and scene. The tool proposes many environments and characters to begin with which greatly facilitates the design process (provided one of them fits our needs).

When I ran the environment as a player, I realised that my character wasn't walking but that it sort of floated above the ground instead (which didn't happen with the version 2).

After adding another character and a communication interaction with it, I received an error and couldn't run the environment as a player anymore:

Screenshot: a miserable start to 3 D authoring

Several attemps with other types of interactions didn't change thing.

Neither the videos available on tools' website nor the in-depth guides proved more useful (Thinking Worlds 2008) even though they gave me further information as to how to use the interaction editor.

I don't understand why I haven't been able to replicate the results of those tutorials.

Given the variety of interactions that the tool proposes, I'm sure it can be quite powerful if I can figure out the origin of my problem.

Unfortunately, it seems that there isn't any demo version of Mission Maker, another authoring tool Matthew tried successfully.

So for now, I'll wait for the Innovate's Online Simulations, Role Playing, and Virtual Worlds issue which will feature, among other things, information about "technologies used to create and manage virtual environments (tools, hardware, software)". If any tool stands out, I will invest more time in learning how to use it.

References:

Thinking Worlds (2008). In-depth guides.
http://www.thinkingworlds.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=78&Itemid=90