Web3D Exchange Project
In June 2007, CDDU partnered with a team at USQ to receive a Carrick Institute grant for a project titled "The seamless integration of Web3D technologies with university curricula to engage the changing student cohort".
What that means is that we're trying to figure out how CQU teaching staff can make use of immersive 3D environments (like Second Life and many others) to effectively improve the learning experience of CQU students. This is going to be done by actively helping a small group of volunteers do this.
The Web3Dx project site contains more information about the project. The technology being used in the project is described in more detail in de Byl and Taylor (2007).
On November 2 CDDU staff gave a presentation (slides including audio) about the project and how it might run.
The aim of the presentation is to identify those CQU academics who are keen to integrate some aspect of immersive 3D environments into their learning and teaching in 2008.
Current Status
April 1, 2008. The CQU Learning island in Second Life is now open to public access. It has been for a few days. There's nothing all that exciting there but am hoping that things may grow.
Late Jan, 2008. Work has begun on the machinima project for the course ACCT19064 - Auditing & Professional Practice. As an overview, CDDU in conjunction with Jenny Kofoed are using the CQU Second Life Island to act out a case study on professional ethics. The students instead of reading the case from the text and answering the questions, will follow the animation while completing exercises as they go. It is hoped that this approach will be much more engaging for students and immersive - having students think as an auditor by observing one struggling with an ethical dilemma. What should the auditor do? Visit the ACCT19064 Machinima Project page which documents the goings on in this project.
Late Jan, 2008. This web page gives an overview of the early status of the CQU Learning island in Second Life. If you are a CQU staff member and would like to visit the island follow these instructions.
January, 2008. The CQU Learning island has been created by the folk at Second Life. We're still in the process of getting it ready, it's currently a bare island. This means that most folk won't be able to access the island. We're hoping this will change by the close of January, and hopefully a lot earlier. We are also starting to discuss Ideas for the CQU Learning island.
December, 2007. A group of about 20 CQU academic staff have joined a mailing list. This mailing list is being used for some general discussions about possibilities and aims. Visit the mailing list web page for information on how to join the list.
We have purchased an Island in Second Life for use in Learning and Teaching. Darren de Warren from Noosa is going to be using the island for his CQU L&T grant project titled: "Second Life and Social Work: Student evaluations and comparisons of collaborative learning using multiple-user virtual environments and Blackboard.". Jenny Kofoed from Mackay (with some assistance from DTLS) will be using the island to create some machinima that will be used to add some "colour" to case studies.
Resources
We have a small, but hopefully growing, collection of resources. Most are hosted on this website, which is a Wiki which means you can add your input to any of these pages.
The current resources include:
- Examples of using Second Life in L&T
- Online Resources Around Using SL
- Some ideas and discussion about how to use the CQU Second Life island.
- A mailing list for CQU staff to discuss issues around getting started with Web3D.
- A collection of general resources around using Web3D in L&T.
- Resources associated with different environments.
- Questions (and some answers) you may have when getting started with Web3D in learning and teaching.
- Second Life Student Workshop
Other Discussion
Participants in the Carrick project are using blogs and forums to discuss various aspects of the project. The following provides a representation of the various RSS feeds from those forums.
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Discussion forum Posted by on 24 August 2007 From what you have seen on Web3D thus far and the work being done in the ALIVE project [1] what ideas do you have for integrating 3D into your e-Learning?
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CQU blogs Posted by davidtjones on 9 January 2009 I’ve been a fan of Dave Snowden and his work for a couple of years. In this blog post from last year Dave shares 7 principles for “rendering knowledge”. For me, these 7 principles have direct connection with the tasks I’m currently involved with e-learning, curriculum design and helping improve the quality of learning and [...] Content, redirects and impact on Google ranking Posted by davidtjones on 7 January 2009 Late last year I wrote that this blog was currently ranked #12 by Google (US-based search) for a search on “david jones”.
Over the Xmas break I spent a fair bit of time copying content from my old website to this blog and putting in place permanent redirects from the old site to the new content. [...] Reflections and Implications from Webfuse - Domain languages Posted by davidtjones on 7 January 2009 As I am currently writing up the PhD I have banned myself from working on any new papers. However, as I work through the PhD I will get ideas for papers so rather than waste time writing them in full and even worse forget about them I’m going to try and write about them on [...] Implementing the rotating banner image Posted by davidtjones on 6 January 2009 I’ve mentioned some plans to implement a rotating banner image on this blog. As you may have picked up from this post, if you’re looking at the site, that such a rotating banner image has been implemented. Here’s the story. It’s one of pragmatism. The plan of not using an external server, after a minimum [...] Webfuse usage statistics - Online assignment submission Posted by davidtjones on 5 January 2009 Online assignment submission is one of the more used features of Webfuse and is explained in part in a few publications like this one. Number of students and courses
Year
% of All students
2001 1646 7.5% 18 3915
2002 4005 17.4% 28 13468
2003 3805 16.5% 48 14792
2004 5709 23.3% 65 23273
2005 8134 29.1% 79 26781
2006 7109 25.5% 92 29132
2007 6328 27.3% 97 25317
2008 6571 31.9% 124 24081
Posted in thesis, webfuse Webfuse statistics - Staff Portal Posted by davidtjones on 5 January 2009 Webfuse provides a “staff portal” called Staff MyCQU. It is essentially a web-based application that provides a single interface to most of the tools/services staff require while teaching a course.
The following (as yet incomplete) table shows the # of unique staff using the staff portal and the average [...] Webfuse usage statistics - Quizzes Posted by davidtjones on 5 January 2009 As part of my PhD thesis I’ll be generating some statistics about the usage of the Webfuse e-learning system that has been in use at CQU since 1996. I plan to post those statistics to my blog to share the data but also to encourage discussion and suggestions around the causes and contributing factors behind these [...] Operating Systems animations and other resources Posted by davidtjones on 30 December 2008 Back in 1998/1999 I supervised a couple of project students (who have gone onto bigger and brighter things) in the development of some multimedia resources to support a course in operating systems. The most recent version of the course is available here. I taught the course from about 1995 through 1999. I seem to [...] Plans for implementing rotating banner image Posted by davidtjones on 28 December 2008 Problem: Implement a rotating banner image on this blog which is hosted by WordPress.com. This means I cannot install any WordPress themes that automatically support bnner rotation (e.g. the Mandigo theme suggested by Will Taylor.
There is a known approach that relies upon you having some disk space on a server that will let you run [...] Rotating banner images in WordPress - the last missing puzzle piece Posted by davidtjones on 28 December 2008 When I moved by website from my long-term personal server to WordPress.com the one bit of functionality that I lost was the rotating banner image.
The image of the sunrise just north of Kaikoura in the banner above is static. It’s always the same. Back on the original website I had a collection of 40+ [...]
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Main project blog Where have I been all this time? Posted by on 27 September 2007 I had good intentions of posting sooner, much sooner, but wanted to have something to say. That meant doing at least some preliminary exploration of the Web3D space, especially the AliveX3D site. Posted by on 12 September 2007 If only real life in 3D graphics programming were simple. Some graphics code is software processed which depends on the operating system and some on the graphics card. I've had OpenGL programs that have worked fine on one laptop and not another (both with windows). And having the source (which is highly complex) does not mean that it can be compiled on one platform and then transfered and compiled on another. These games engines have literally millions of lines of code and its not a matter of just getting the code and recompiling. The real location for blog posts on the Web3D project Posted by on 30 August 2007 G'day, Carrick Project Management Workshop Posted by on 22 August 2007
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