Not all academic conferences include sessions on the Nintendo Wii, but an upcoming UQ event is happy to explore new boundaries in the name of better teaching.
Taking place on June 18 at St Lucia, the Blended Learning Conference will link researchers from Australia and abroad to discuss innovative approaches to education.
Among the participants are Caroline Steel and Dr Helen Farley – two UQ researchers who are helping establish virtual learning environments in the realm of Second Life.
Dr Farley, who holds joint appointments with UQ’s Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology (CEIT) and the School of Philosophy, Religion and Classics, said the applications of virtual learning were endless.
“What I love about virtual worlds is that anything is possible,” Dr Farley said.
“You can be a red blood cell and travel through an artery or a heart. You can be the curator of a museum with lots of valuable art pieces and sculptures. You can make giant molecules and look at how they are structured or you can run a virtual business and sell virtual clothes.
“Second Life allows you to collaborate in new and exciting ways with all sorts of people.”
Ms Steel works at UQ’s Teaching and Educational Development Institute (TEDI) and became interested in online learning more than a decade ago.
“At that time, this concept of a virtual world was exhilarating to me. The graphics (though a bit slow at that stage) and interactive features got me really excited,” Ms Steel said.
“I could immediately imagine huge potential for education – particularly immersive, experiential learning.”
For the past year the two researchers have worked together to help UQ staff build Second Life content into their classes.
“We have done virtual field trips for a group of UQ teachers, as well as for a Masters of Education course I am teaching called ‘Creating Classrooms of the Future with Educational Technology’ for primary and secondary teachers,” Ms Steel said.
Another successful project is the “Religion Bazaar”, a Second Life space which Dr Farley created after winning a UQ teaching grant in 2007. In this world students can visit places of worship and participate in rituals that they wouldn’t be able to in real life.
Ms Steel and Dr Farley will present “The Wiis and Wherefores of 3D motion: Using Nintendo consoles in education” at the Blended Learning Conference on June 18.
Their project explores the educational potential the Nintendo Wii remote control could have in disciplines as diverse as medicine and music.
Attended by approximately 240 delegates, the conference will feature keynote addresses from the University of Melbourne, and from Harvard University and the University of Hertfordshire via teleconference.
To view the full conference program, visit www.tedi.uq.edu.au/blendedlearning
Media: Dr Farley (07 3365 7336, h.farley@uq.edu.au), Ms Steel (07 3365 2890, c.steel@uq.edu.au) or Cameron Pegg at UQ Communications (07 3365 2049, c.pegg@uq.edu.au)
