Case Story: Sara Jones's Diary

Summary	Exploring augmented reality - using 'synthetic' blogs as an experiment in e-learning
Group / workshop	Digital Identities	Status	seed
Project details...	The case study describes one strand of the Assipa project which was a 2 year Grundtvig project to help adult education teachers introduce self evaluation methods to their courses and to help them to help their students learn the skills and techniques of self evaluation.

Situation

What was the setting in which this case study occurred?

One outcome of the Assipa project was to develop a 3 day face-to-face training course for adult education teachers on self evaluation skills and to develop a handbook and materials that would enable trainers to deliver it.

A second outcome was to “develop an e-version of the course for adult education teachers”

Task

What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

We considered several obvious possibilities. One was synchronous e-learning using on-line workshops, skype etc but we rejected this as the requirement was that there had to be a permanent product with a shelf life longer than the project funding period. The other possibility was an asynchronous course, web-based or available on CD ROM. We rejected this too, on the grounds that it was likely to end up as primarily text based with limited opportunity for interaction and fairly boring. Another constraint was that the project team were from 5 countries and they all were expected to contribute so a lot of time would be spent on editing etc.

The challenge was to try and find an innovative and fun e-learning solution which had to stand alone after the end of the project period but still provided a high level of interaction.

Actions

What was done to fulfil the task?

I designed and ran the ‘live’ programme in real time using the project group as a pilot. The whole lot was filmed.

Then we invented an imaginary student called Sara Jones. She taught Experimenting with European Cookery for adult education students at an Adult Ed Centre in Wales. When the course was ‘virtually’ rolled out to the partner countries, she enrolled for the course in Wales – run for one evening a week over 10 weeks. Sara kept a blog about her experiences on the course. She made a blog entry each Monday after the course then another one on Wednesday after she came back from teaching her own cookery class.

She talked about what she was learning, about other people on the course (the project team students) and of course about the teacher (me). She was actually quite rude about me a lot of the time.

Sarah was not only able a keep a blog (it was a course requirement) but could add pictures of flip charts etc that ‘her ‘ group had produced on the live pilot.

Anyone accessing the web site could not only read the blog but could actually do the exercises themselves and record their results and share them with other on-line students. They could ‘enrol’ as real students and click on the text to see edited videos clips of the ‘real’ sessions that Sara had experienced. Graham also contributed as a person who had attended the ‘real’ course and posed questions about what Sara was saying.

Results

What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?

It worked well - Sara even had an e-mail at her email address from someone in the Far East who wondered if she was the same Sara Jones she had been at university with.

There were technical problems. E.g The blogs were all written in advance and had to be released on dates corresponding with the story line – and they had to appear with the oldest at the top so that the learning sequence was consistent for new students following her diary.

The diary format works because of people’s curiosity – they are hooked on the trivia and are as interested in knowing whether she gets in together with the German tutor (who was on the ‘real’ course) as in the learning content.

The most interesting thing was that I was being ‘Sara’ writing a blog about her perceptions of a real event she was not actually at. At times I was writing about her perceptions of me – and answering her. Initially it was hard to keep the style of her writing, her sense of humour and her personality constant without making her a stereotype. The blog had to be funny and interesting in its own right and also not lose sight of the fact that it was an e-learning programme.

I will post the url of Sara's diary soon if anyone wants to see it - it is now on a different server so I need to check.

Lessons Learned

What did you learn from the experience?

It was amazing how quickly Sara took on an identity of her own and as soon as I logged on as her I began to think and write differently. Sometimes she even wrote things I really didn’t want her to write.

It was strange wandering between different levels of reality. I was me teaching on the ‘real’ course, me teaching on the ‘virtual’ course, me being a ‘virtual’ student who was on a ‘real’ course that was actually a ‘virtual’ course or sometimes I was (in the videos) her being a ‘real’ student and also me being a real teacher on a ‘virtual’ course which of course was filmed in the ‘real’ course. Or something like that. Also those people who logged were on a real course based on a virtual scenario based on a real event. I was also describing other real people who also had identities in both real and virtual contexts.

To start with I was trying hard to keep these levels clear in my head – clutching at reality. Or maybe clutching at virtuality. In the end it was easier just to relax, go with the flow and wander between the different identities and multiple realities.

I stopped finding the terms 'real' and 'virtual' useful - thanks to whoever coined the phrase 'augmented reality'

Graham was convinced I had lost it when I bumped into Sara in SL. I really didn’t want Sara to have an SL identity but she insisted…..I read it in her blog.

PS Since then I have had 5 other on line identities, mostly overlapping, some of whom know each other, some don’t…….

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.