Wk2 Publishing_Leadership project part 1 of 2: article or presentation

I have been going back and forth over the past two weeks on whether or not I wanted to write an article or make a presentation of my Action Research project.  I am not much on standing up in front of people and presenting, but I feel that the best way to really showcase my project to the education world is through a presentation. Since my Action Research is based on teaching social skills through the use of the MMORPG, Guild Wars, I do feel that a presentation would showcase the work much better than a paper could.  With that decision under my belt I have been looking at where I could make such a presentation. Stay tuned for the next post on that discussion.

Schoology Presentation on Guild Wars 101 Unit for LMO course

Cycle 1 complete

Friday finished up my first cycle of research for my Action Research project.  Now I am trying to sort through all of the data to measure whether the project was a success or failure.  Then hopefully I can tell what changes I need to make, so that I can begin cycle 2.  I know that there are things that will have to be done differently and perhaps even a whole different approach will be needed.  


I've had suggestions from participants that I should choose one person to be in the leadership role on a weekly basis versus a daily basis to get them more acclimated with the role, have them take a more in-depth look at the various primary and secondary professions before choosing, making sure that everyone has a microphone to be able to communicate verbally in the Ventrilo server, and having daily required discussions on the discussion boards.


I see many of these as very valid points.  It was hard to communicate with some participants when they only typed in the chat box versus verbally in the Ventrilo server.  It was also rough during the last couple of weeks of the project with one person in the group having to be the only healer on every quest/mission because the professions were not discussed and chosen before their creation by all participants. The discussion board suggestion is a hard one because I would have loved for them to communicate more in there, but I just couldn't seem to keep them interested or posting at all for that matter.  I don't know if requiring them to do it on a daily basis before playing or after playing would have helped or done more harm.  That is going to be a hard call.


Many if the participants would like to see the second cycle carried over into one of the other Guild Wars campaigns like Factions or Nightfalls instead of repeating Prophecies whole storyline again.  I can see the point of that as well because once you have completed it once you generally don't want to do it again.  There are many factors to consider and I will be deep in thought on what should be done to make this next cycle better.  If any of my critical friends or subscribers have any input or suggestions please let me know.

My first action research cycle is coming to a close

I wanted to take a minute to update my blog and copy over a post from my Action Research blog that updates where my research is currently at.  Next week will complete my journey using Guild Wars to teach social skills.  It hasn't exactly been what I expected, but then again when is any type of research exactly as you expect it to be?  During this journey I created a website and forums (http://virtuguild.com/).  I have been collecting data using pre & post surveys, weekly polls, forum discussions, as well as in game chat through the use of Ventrilo's voice communication program and in game text chat.  


The first week was kind of a get to know the other participants in the group and a chance to get everyone setup with their Guild Wars character as well as familiarize them with the game interface and quests.  I lost two participants during the first week because one felt she was too experienced with Guild Wars to be a part of the research and the male participant just vanished into thin air after answering all the first week challenges.  That brought us down to six participants, although during the second week we had another male who asked to join us in the research and was more than happy to catch up to where we all were. 

The second week began the quests and missions to play out the whole storyline of Guild Wars.  These continued up until Wednesday of this week when we completed the last mission of the storyline.  There are now five quests that will be completed to round out the storyline for everyone.  Every week I setup topics to post on in the forums and a weekly poll with a question for the participants to answer.  The hardest part has been to get everyone to answer the questions and polls in the forums.  They are generally eager to participate in the game itself, but not much on the writing or answering of questions.  They all did participate in the pre-survey I conducted before we began and I am hoping they will all answer the post-survey questions next week at the end of this project.  

What has been a surprise with your results?

There have been some unexpected twists and turns along the way needless to say.  Guild Wars only allows for 4 members to be in a party for most of the beginning quests and missions.  This forced the group to be divided up in order to accommodate everyone, which made it more difficult for me to see all of the interaction that was going on in each group at all times.  

The party size then moved up to 6 during week 3 and eventually to 8 members for weeks 4-6.  During the first day of six members allowed in a party I divided the groups up by their profession/class in the game trying to make the parties more effective.  This unfortunately backfired on my research in a way because it ended up being 4 guys in one party and 4 girls in the other party.  

The reason I say it backfired is because there was more communication during the 2 quests and mission completed between the guys that day then there had been in the past 2 weeks.  That was kind of a twist, although now that I think about it perhaps not completely unexpected that the guys would feel more comfortable communicating in Ventrilo and Guild Wars together than with the girls in the same group.  

The following day I split the groups up half and half to see the differences in the interactions.  It was somewhat better than before, but still did not work out as well as putting all the guys together.  The following week when we began working as a complete group of 8 it became a lot more difficult in some aspects.  I think this may have been due to the group size being too large for effective communication between all the members.  

I also found it difficult to get members to volunteer to lead the quests/missions.  Some were more eager than others, but I wanted everyone to have the opportunity in order to see the strengths/weaknesses of their leadership role and look for ways to improve upon it.  The teamwork has become better as we have progressed from week to week, but I feel it was still better in the smaller groups than when we merged everyone together into the group of 8.  

What tweaks are you making for your next cycle of research?

At this point I am somewhat at a loss as to what to do for my second cycle.  The whole point was to see if using Guild Wars could lead to teaching effective social skills like leadership and teamwork that are needed in todays workforce.  Yet I am seeing a pattern of the males being more comfortable working with other males instead of the females in the group and that the smaller groups actually work together more effectively than the larger groups do.  This is quite the conundrum for me and leaves me somewhat baffled as to where I should go from here.  Do I say it failed and try something else or should I perhaps try another approach?  As I am drawing near the end of my first cycle these are questions that I am asking myself, so that I can prepare for my next cycle.  

What is the overall participant’s response?

Since I am no quite to the end of my first cycle it is hard for me to get a definite picture of the overall response from my participants.  However, from the lack of posts in the forums I would say that they prefer to communicate more orally than in written form.  I feel that some of them tend to leave abruptly at the end of some of the missions/quests depending on who was the leader that night, especially if the participants died a lot and there wasn’t as much communication between members of the party.  I will know more about their overall feelings towards the project once it comes to an end next week and I have looked at all the data from the surveys and polls. 

Research in Guild Wars

I began my Action Research project in Guild Wars last week, but with the holidays we are a bit behind schedule and trying to get everyone situated.  We had some problems with participants and the Moodle interface I was trying to use, so I have setup a forums to use instead.  Last week we completed the pre-searing quests in Guild Wars getting everyone to about level 7, so that we were able to enter post-searing this week.  We are basically following the Guild Wars storyline completing the various quests and missions that lead us through them.  


Pre-searing only allowed us to work in groups of 2/2, then the first several quests/missions of post-searing only allowed for groups of 4/4, we have now entered an area where we can work in groups of 6/6 and will eventually come to the point where we can work in the max group of 8/8 that Guild Wars allows.  This causes us to have to split up in groups, but I feel this is a good test of leadership and teamwork skills because it allows different people to work together and share their skills with the group.  


I have noticed that so far there isn't a whole lot of teamwork going on as everyone is trying to adjust to the members in their group and excited about the various quests/missions.  There is more solo work going on within the groups than actual teamwork, which unfortunately results in several deaths/revives that would be necessary if they worked together.  My goal with this project is that they will eventually realize that they can accomplish more when working well together than they could alone or by running ahead without their team members.  We are coming to the close of week 2, so we shall see how it turns out.

VirtuGuild.com/forums

PE6_PBworks

Okay, it has been a blast learning how to put together my wiki site on PBworks. It is fairly easy and user friendly once you get the hang of it. I continued my learning in this last session by learning how to add assignments to my wiki. I went in to create a new page and used the template they already had setup for assignments to lay out the work for week one. It was as easy as 1, 2, 3...

I also added a resource section in my sidebar that was just links to external sites that were needed for the assignments I posted.

I then learned how to set the security on my wiki by watching a video they had under the support section.

Setting Page Security from PBworks Support on Vimeo.

The only thing I didn't like was not being able to lock certain pages to only be edited by the administrator without having to pay the $99 subscription fee. I am still going to try it and see if it works out, but I am leery of not having that feature in the free version.  

I also would have rather had an option for a blog or discussion forum, but I did not see that as a feature in the PBworks wiki. I supposed that I can still put an external link in my resources section to one elsewhere. I just prefer having it all in one place for easy access.

Now all I have to do is invite my users to join and I will be on my way to having a collaborative workspace.

PE5_PBworks

Wow, editing was a bit more difficult then I first expected it to be. However, once I figured out how to upload images to the wiki it wasn't quite as bad. I began by working on the front page of my wiki. I went into editing mode where typing the text and formatting was basically like any other word processing application. I then figured out to get the images into the wiki that you had to drag them over into it. After I got that down it was pretty easy from there to edit it.

I then looked at how I could make it easier for people coming to my wiki to find their way around. There is a sidebar feature that you can edit with the links to each page to make navigating your site easier. I loved the fact that you could add headings above each section of links to make it better organized.

I now have the beginnings of my wiki and I am on to setting up additional pages and assignments. Stay tuned for more on how to do that.

PE4_PBworks

Well I have been hearing a lot about wiki's over the past couple of weeks and I decided that I would check it out this week by exploring it further to see what all it is capable of. Join me on this journey as I view online tutorials and videos to learn all about PBworks. 

I started out by choosing the basic account and an address to create my wiki site. Since I am considering using it for my Action Research project I named it VirtuGuild. You are welcome to click on the link to follow me along as I progress through putting together this wiki.

 

Above is what your starter page looks like when you sign-up. Now I am off to watch tutorials and see what I can do. 

BP9_Moodle

I decided to try something new this week that I have heard a lot about, but since I haven’t been in the classroom I haven’t had the opportunity to use, Moodle. According to the website, Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a FREE web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.

I decided to download the software and install it on one of my websites, VirtuGuild.com. For someone who is used to working with websites and setting up MySQL databases, it is fairly easy to walk-through the setup process. Even if you are not used to doing all of that there are a lot of helpful resources online that can help you get it all setup. I used Moodle’s: Getting Started for Teachers and Moodle Essential Training for Teachers on Lynda.com. 2 Minute Moodles is also a great resource and has videos you can view to help you get started. 

After I got Moodle installed on my web server I decided to setup a course. Creating the course was pretty easy after following the tutorials above and a lot of it was self explanatory.

I loved the various features that were available for you to add under your course management. You have two choices: add resource or add activity. Under each of those choices is a list of different resources or activities that you can add.

The resource section allows you to compose a text page or web page, link to a file or web site, etc…

Under activities you can add assignment, chat, forums, lessons, quizzes, surveys, wikis and more.

I went through and setup up week 1 of my course by adding resources consisting of links to other websites that I wanted to be read or items to be downloaded as well as a survey. Then under activities I added assignments and forums for discussion posts. 

I love the wide range of choices making it easy to allow for collaboration and reflection, so that learners can help contribute to their own education versus it just being instructor based. You can use it as a standalone or as a supplement to your current teaching. Even if you don’t have Moodle at your school or your own website to install it on, you can still visit Moodle’s demonstration site to check it out. So far I am really enjoying all it has to offer and I am thinking of using it as the interface for my Action Research project cycles. Check it out!