NMC Campus Observer

HASTAC Discussions on Campus

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Feb 24, 2007 11:22am

Yesterday we held another mixed Real Life/Second Life meeting on NMC Campus. HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) was holding a 3 day Integration conference at Wayne State University. As part of a roundtable discussion on “Remediating English Studies”, Steve Shaviro from Wayne State asked about holding part of the session in Second Life.

What follows is a quick summary of the session (A chat transcript is available as well).

So despite a same day email notice sent out to those on the NMC Campus lists, we were pleasantly surprised to have some 40 avatars show up at the Amphitheater on Learning:

And we appreciate that avatar Michael Wayne (lucky, they have a SL last name that matches!) was present to let us know when the RL audience was ready to join us. At around 11:30 am PST, Rebis Hokkigai (that is Steve) showed up and shared some of the discussion topics that were going on at their roundtable.

Anyway, we have been talking about how information and communication can be enhanced in SL. We have beeen talking about how these new sorts of interactions cannot be evaluated by traditional metrics. And my colleague Prof Jeff Rice has been talking about media collages and how they relate to shifting identities.

We had a lively, back and fore-channeling audience, which always makes for a better Sl event. Conversations started about the amount of “distractions” in Second Life, and some differences perhaps in how this is seen from young students. Rebis stated, “Well, the question is how distraction, and multitasking, as parts of our media environment can themselves become opportunities for thought and reflection.”

MLani Montgomery responded:

Current adults would refer to the digital world as being full of distractions, but younger people have established neuropathways we do not; for them it’s the norm, not “multitasking.”

Rebis explained the concept of remediation as “how contents change when they are moved from one medium into another… and how new media are always taking things from previous media and reworking them.”

There was more great discussion about interactions between teachers and students in Second Life, the barriers of access to the environment (seeing it as a Digital Divide), and more.

It was a great discussion for the maybe 20 minutes of time available. We have a full transcript of the session available. Thanks to HASTAC for bringing their session to NMC Campus!

Story filed under: Campus Headlines, Teaching and Learning

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