Dramatic Writing Utilising Virtual Worlds

This is a Teaching Fellowship Award project developed by Becky Freeman (Faculty of Arts Learning Technologist), Anthony Caleshu, (Programme Manager for English and Creative Writing, School of Humanities) and Mark Pannell (Learning Technologist, EdaLT).

Since English and Creative Writing as a subject is mostly page-bound, students often have difficulty imagining how to use and indeed write a 'physical setting'. This project therefore aimed to enable the Dramatic Writing modules to benefit from the most current research into using virtual worlds as an educational tool, to envision the possibilities of putting that character into a public space. The project also aimed to foster team work by asking students to bring characters together, thus creating a dynamic network of collaboration.

In early February 2009, we ran 2 workshops for students on the Engl233 Dramatic Writing module.
Students were asked to set up an account in Second Life and create an 'avatar' (a virtual character). They were given the opportunity to clothe and style their avatars as desired.

In small groups, students were then asked to 'explore' the world of Second Life, visiting places recommended to them as well as finding locations of their own choice, with the aim of using one as a setting in which to stage their plays. They then worked collaboratively to write a small play (3-5 mins duration) to be staged 'in world' at their chosen locations.
Some of the plays were filmed using real time video capturing software (Fraps) and later edited using Adobe After Effects.

View one of the student machinimas ('in world' video of the play),
'Hybrid Heroes at Sea':

To view all the machinimas made, follow these links:
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/lararoseb.wmv
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/loveatsecondsightb.wmv
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/giraffesb.wmv
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/siblingrivalryb.wmv
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/vespaharryb.wmv
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/wigglesb.wmv
http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/hybridheroesatseab.wmv

Anthony is still working on additional tasks with the students linked to this project and we also hope to gain some formal feedback from the students on the pros and cons of the workshop. As part of the Teaching Fellowship Award we will also be producing a report detailing our findings including both positive and negative outcomes.
We will have a poster displayed at the upcoming VC's Teaching and Learning Conference in July, and in addition, the following video (produced and edited by Jason Truscott, Research and Development Officer, CETL) showing the workshops, will be included in the rolling presentation at the conference: http://video.plymouth.ac.uk/eresources/Dramatic_Writing_Final.wmv

Midwifery E-Portfolio

This project was kindly given to me by Margaret Fisher, the ground work had been initially set by the Emily Team however due to the certain future of SharePoint as a VLE and Emily's future in question in relation to Health and Social work. The decision was made to transfer this project onto Tulip/SharePoint.

The idea behind this project is to create an Electronic version of Midwifery students paper portfolio. To bring this practice into the 21st century and to hopefully make the process of students showing their progress a simpler task. As stated initially this project was initially set up by The Emily team so initially the task was to simply copy what they had done but on Tulip instead. However this wasn't as simple as it seems as it involved software created by Microsoft!

The plan was to create a Tulip site which has html parts to guide students to different sections of their E-Portfolio and to use Tulip's Wiki software to enable students to create and update sections. e.g. their personal details or their Ongoing antenatal care. I managed to set up the site in this manor however one of the main functions of their E-Portfolio was for students to create hyperlinks between sections to indicate their learning, but the hyperlink editor within the Wiki editor wasn't as user friendly as desired. So another method was required.

E-Portfolio - Word Document edition
The solution found by myself and suggested by Sarah Barnes (Senior IT Training Officer) was to use Word documents for all areas which require to be edited by the user. This means the user can edit in a interface that their used to and use Words hyperlink editor which again is very simple and user friendly. As shown below:



This idea proved more popular with Margret Fisher (academic lead) so was decided to progress with. All was set and the project nearly finished until the term Pebble Pad Pilot was introduced! Pebble Pad is a new piece of software the University has bought it is a custom piece of software which is specifically designed to handle E-Portfolio needs. It has been created from the looks of it by using XML and Flash and is a very usable piece of software. Enfact maby its a tad overly user friendly as it became a tad annoying towards the end of developing this software.

Well to cut a long story short I developed this E-Portfolio using Pebble Pad with the Tulip version as a back up in case the Pepple Pad pilot didn't pull through. See below for a screen shot you can even add the portfolio to your assets store by copying it from the HSW gateway.



Well along came demo day for the Pebble Pad version and sadly it failed, and we used the back up of the Tulip version. The Pebble Pad version failed for a number of reasons:

• The hyperlink editor/evidence editor kept on failing!
• The methods for creating multiple forms was very long winded and not suitable for none technical minded students. (I'm sure there must have been a better method)
• The whole interface wasn't quite as guiding as the Tulip version.
• The whole reason we weren't using Emily was because of the uncertainty of it's future, with Pebble Pad being a pilot this would put the project in a similar setting.
  

So after all this we've decided to use Tulip. With thanks to Mark Horrocks and Sarah Barnes this project was able to be pushed out to students MySites as a subsite with all content etc. A copy of the E-Portfolio was also pushed out to my MySite and here's some very rubbish but worth a watch footage of it working: