I find this model so helpful in my own work situations and when supporting others who want to influence others – and most of us do at some time. In some ways it seems sad that we have to resort to advice from others rather than just naturally knowing how to engage with others and negotiate through our differences. The flip side is that I have found it so helpful to have a framework to guide me when I have got to the limit of what I can achieve  through my natural tendencies. Rather than giving up, this model gives me alternative strategies to work with to still achieve what I believe is helpful for the organisation.

My friend and I talked through the individuals she was frustrated by and I sought to understand from her what she believed their currencies were. We looked at page 70 of the article The influence model: Using reciprocity and exchange to get what you need.

It was interesting to talk about her currencies as well as their currencies and see how different they were. This possibly explained why she was not having as much influence as she wanted. She is driven more by inspiration currencies with a bit of reputation thrown in, trying to influence a very task-related currencies manager and position-related currencies colleague. Given that the whole theory is about reciprocity and giving to others in a way that they perceive to be a gift so that they then feel like giving back, this then raised the question of how my friend might work against her natural tendency to give in certain ways and give in ways that her colleagues value more.

With this currency thinking in my mind, I then applied it in another work setting where I am involved supporting a major change initiative. Team members are experiencing pain to varying degrees, as their colleagues, roles and ways of working change, and they feel less secure. One team member commented to the change leader that she believed team members needed to feel more valued. When I reflected on what I observed happening, I concluded that the change leader is more driven by inspiration and task-related currencies and less by relationship and personal-related currencies. I communicated to him that team members who are also driven by inspiration and task-related currencies may be feeling more positive about the changes than those for whom relationship and personal-related currencies are more important. All credit to him, as a result he is changing some of what he is doing to better cater for currencies which are not so important, and therefore less natural, to him.

Having observed others, I reflected again on what my own currencies are. I struggled with this, as I seem to have bits of all currencies – inspiration, task, reputation, relationship and personal. I think I readily influence others and wonder if this is because I can deal easily across a fuller range than some others do. In fact I can feel like a chamaeleon where I slip into one or the other. Or maybe I am not self-aware enough to see what I prefer. It does seem that it could be an advantage to naturally be able to operate in multiple currencies – like speaking many different languages.

I find this framework very helpful but I can see I still have much to learn about applying it in real live settings.

From what I can understand the key point Lankshear and Knobel are making in this paper is that it is more helpful to view digital literacy from a sociocultural than from a skills or technique perspective. Now, if you are anything like me, you will not have a clear view of what the difference is so here is how I make sense of it.

A skills and technique approach seeks to define digital literacy as an ‘it’ or ‘thing’ i.e. defined competencies or skills that can be taught and measured. Richard Lanham is quoted as saying

under contemporary conditions ‘literacy’ has extended its semantic reach from meaning ‘the ability to read and write’ to now meaning ‘the ability to understand information however presented

The value of digital literacy is that it makes us adept at suiting the medium we use to the kind of information we are presenting and to the audience we are presenting it to.

Gilster’s view is presented as digital literacy involves ‘mastering ideas, not keystrokes’ with four key competencies i.e. knowledge assembly, evaluating information content, searching the internet, and navigating hypertext.

Using Gilster’s work, Lankshear and Knoble introduce a competencies continuum with mastering keystrokes at one end and mastering ideas at the other. At the keystrokes end, they describe ‘standardised operationalisations’ of digital literacy, such as, computing fundamentals, key applications, and living online.

The Computing Fundamentals test items involve such tasks as asking learners to click on all the ‘output devices’ from a list containing items like joystick, monitor, speakers, keyboard, etc.; to choose among four items (one thousand, one million, one billion, one trillion) for the number of bytes in a megabyte; to create a new folder on the C drive within a simulated file manager, and to match ‘operating system’, ‘application’ and ‘utility program’ to three provided definitions. The items testing Key Applications use a range of simulations and ask learners to insert content from the clipboard at the designated insertion point, change the width of columns in a table without using click and drag, and exit Word without using the close box. The items assessing knowledge and skills related to Living Online include the use of simulations to have respondents enter a subject in an email message and send the message, go to a specified address on a web page, and locate the history of sites visited in a web browser.

Another framework at the keystrokes end of the continuum has seven competencies – define, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create and communicate. As an example, communicate comprises

The ability to communicate information properly in its context of use for ICT environments’ and includes ‘the ability to gear electronic information for a particular audience and to communicate knowledge in the appropriate venue. Examples of activities here include: ‘Formatting a word processing document’; ‘Recasting an e-mail’; ‘Adapting presentation slides’ and ‘Preparing a text message for a cell phone’.

Lankshear and Knoble claim that these approaches confine digitality to roles concerned with information, and being truthcentric i.e. ‘digital literacy is about interacting with information, and interacting with information is about assessing its ‘truth’ (or validity), ‘credibility’, ‘reliability’ and so on.’

A sociocultural view does not focus on competencies, considers more than information and recognises that mcuh of the digital activity on the internet is not concerned with ‘truth’. Rather, it views digital literacy as context specific, with a focus on the purpose and social environment and recognises that using the tool can be a relatively minor part of the overall experience.

The equivalent in traditional literacy could be students learning to decode letters to read print. However, having mastered this literacy individuals may interpret text differently (cf Lankshear and Knobel’s example of differing views of a biblical text) and may use the skills they have mastered quite differently when writing an academic essay, email or text message.

There will be multiple social practices and conceptions of searching, of navigating links, of evaluating credibility of sources, of ‘posting’, and so on. These will vary according to how people ‘identify’ themselves: according to the values they have, the social groups they relate to, the affinities they invest in and attach themselves to, the purposes they see themselves pursuing, the kinds of images they seek to project, and so on.

Lankshear and Knobel also comment that many learners have already developed digital literacy skills in informal contexts. They say ‘in the case of basic digital literacy ‘competencies’ the irony is that these are readily acquired in situ and (like print functionality) readily mystified when ‘taught’ out of context.’ More than that, they claim that ‘The experience of disjuncture on the part of learners who invest informally in ‘Web 2.0’ when faced with ‘Web 1.0’ within formal settings of compulsory learning is debilitating, confusing and, ultimately, destructive.’

Lankshear and Knobel do suggest some policy, education and research responses to taking a sociocultural perspective.

At the policy level, in New Zealand, our Digital Strategy recognises the importance of people for the strategy and defines digital literacy as  ’giving New Zealanders the skills and confidence to use digital technologies’. The same section recognises that ‘Mäori create digital content with unique mätauranga, tikanga and kaupapa’ – some sociocultural recognition. As a whole the strategy focuses on government’s role in providing the infrastructure and creating content or sharing information, rather than the people component.

The New Zealand government also has a major emphasis in its tertiary education policy to build literacy, language and numeracy skills. It has invested heavily in upskilling tertiary teachers to be able to embed literacy and numeracy in lower level programmes, but with no thought for digital literacy.

Recent changes to the curriculum for the compulsory sector identify five key competencies – thinking, using language, symbols and text, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing. The description under ‘using language, symbols and text’ recognises a sociocultural perspective.

Students who are competent users of language, symbols, and texts can interpret and use words, number, images, movement, metaphor, and technologies in a range of contexts. They recognise how choices of language, symbol, or text affect people’s understanding and the ways in which they respond to communications. They confidently use ICT (including, where appropriate, assistive technologies) to access and provide information and to communicate with others.

It is interesting for me to reflect on all this and what I believe is an appropriate response at national and institutional level.

As usual, I can see both sides of the argument. I do see value in trying to define what we are aiming to teach/develop in others. I find frameworks helpful. Also, as someone who tries to get different members of teams working together to achieve a common goal, I am convinced of the value of defining what our goal is whenever more than one person is involved in an activity. So, I find the definitions helpful to think about what digital literacy might be, and to feel that I could move forward in helping another become more capable, something I am doing with a team at the moment.

However, I have found the sociocultural perspective thought-provoking. I can see that just defining ‘it’ as skills risks missing the point, and limiting ourselves to things we can measure is even more risky. As Jane Davidson said

Approximate answers to the hard questions have more value than accurate answers to the easy ones.

Right now, I see the solution as being to try and define digital literacy in a way that helps me work with it, but recognises the many different end uses and contexts in which it will be relevant, and builds on any earlier experiences of learners outside the formal learning situation.  The big push in New Zealand at the moment is about embedding literacy and numeracy, rather than having it as a separate focus. I think this is another application of the sociocultural perspective i.e. have a purpose for using whatever tool, rather than promote learning about it for its own sake.

Interestingly enough, the emerging technologies course that started me reflecting here is this sort of developing digital literacy as a stand alone ‘thing’. But I and others chose to do it, so it has value too.

To help me know what I am trying to assist others with, I begin with Lapham’s emphasis on communicating in whatever medium is appropriate for the audience. So, my first cut at a definition is

Digital literacy is being able to communicate in a full range of digital options, being able to assess which medium is most appropriate given the message and the audience, and then being able to find and use a suitable tool to work within that medium to achieve the identified purpose.

How would you define digital literacy? Or would you not want to define it?

How did I get involved in this Second Life pilot?

I got involved because Clare Atkins approached me after a recommendation from my friend and colleague Dave Sturrock who works with her at NMIT. I worked with Clare and others on the proposal with some scepticisim but trying to keep an open mind. I am so glad I did.

What previous experience have you had with online teaching and learning?

I tripped into e-learning nine years ago at the Open Polytechnic in a project manager role and have worked in this area since. I have worked in a range of roles but they have all had a managing aspect. My key interest is strategy, organisational change necessary for e-learning, how to work effectively in teams and building the capability for e-learning across an organisation.

What previous experience have you had of online games and virtual worlds?

My previous experience was minimal. I had never been in Second Life, I had tried to play games with my kids but found it frustrating because all four of them are so much better than me. The only two I have enjoyed have been wii and singstar.

Please describe your role in the SLENZ project.

I am co-project leader with Clare. Once we got the funding I talked to everyone about their skills and what their role should be in the team. When Clare and I talked we found that we both thought we would lead the project. Clare came up with a suggested split that has worked well – Project Leader, Second Life for Clare, which recognises her experience in and passion for virtual worlds, and Project Leader Real Life for me, recognising my experience in (and passion for) budgets, milestones and reports. We both care about people and processes to enable teams to work well together, and I have become passionate about virtual worlds and web 3D’s potential to enhance adult education.

What have been the most challenging aspects of the work?

There have been a number of challenges for me in my role.

1. The team working well together. Most of the team did not know one another and I had never worked with any of them before. We have a number of strong characters in the team, as I suspect is common in innovation projects. We had to form, storm, and norm before we could perform. The team spreads from Dunedin to Whangarei, so we have had to work virtually most of the time and this has created challenges, particularly in communicating. At times, I might have been aware of issues earlier on and been able to resolve them earlier if we were, for example, in the same office or I could pop in on the team each morning for a quick chat. I have had weekly skype calls with each core team member, as well as our weekly meeting in world, and that has worked reasonably well. I have also brought others together in skype to discuss specific things when that seemed helpful in taking the project forward. Having Clare to talk with about how the team was going was great in the early stages, especially during our storming phase.

2. Being an innovation project none of us had done this before. I spent a lot of time at the beginning talking to the team and clarifying roles, which seem to have worked pretty well over the project. There have been some changes to roles but relatively minor. It was good to understand each person’s own perception of what they could offer and work with that. We had to design the best processes we could think of by which we would work. Then we had to design processes for capturing our thinking on those processes. And then we had to use them! We also wanted to refine them as we went and capture that. I don’t think we have done so well at the last part, because we came up with a pretty good first cut and because we have been so busy doing.

This is the most recent me in front of the foundation build

3. At a personal level, I have been on a steep learning curve in terms of understanding Second Life. I am actually reasonably confident in there now but still hesitate to promote that too much. I remember spending a Saturday night trying to come up with my in world name so I could create me. After several hours I had nothing to show for it. This shows I was up tight. Clare suggested I choose something similar to my own name and I thought of Tere straight away – it is Maori for ‘fast’ – not that I was then. Meeting in world each week was the key to building confidence for me. First, it was enough to arrive, sit down and talk. Then, especially once there were builds to look at, I had to get better at walking, going through doors, working my camera etc. Aaron particularly has been so supportive and patient. Also, I am not a developer, so it was great to have Clare lead that part of the work. However, this meant some things slipped between us. We worked them through but having two people involved introduces this risk.

4. Trying to work across the sector and working across institutions. I think we had a good process for selecting who to work with. One thing that was hard was that we really wanted to choose three but only had resources for two. The Project Steering Group helped here. They insisted we only choose two, even though the team had decided to try for three. Looking back I am so glad – just imagine … Initial proposals indicated a higher number of institutions would be involved in pilots than eventuated. This was because at different stages through the project it became clearer what was needed and individuals within partner institutions decided we were asking more than they could offer e.g. access to Second Life on campus, educator to lead internally, time to learn themselves, extra time to incorporate the experience into their teaching, time to orient students within a full curriculum.

5. This leads me to a fifth challenge – working with finite resources. This is life, but remember nobody had done this before, so it was harder to estimate how long things will take. I gave it a go, but my original estimate of hours for this or that tended to be inaccurate. Fortunately, some were lower and some were higher, so ti came out okay overall. We used a staged approach i.e. three separate stages, each of which would produce something usable, so that if we found we ran out of time or resources, we would still have something for the pilots with students. This has worked well. We got to the second stage for both midwifery and foundation.

What do you regard as your biggest successes?

1. Personally, that I have helped a virtual team of strong personalities from many institutions work effectively together and deliver what we promised plus some. Also, that I was willing to put aside my personal reservations about MUVEs and be willing to learn, and so have learned an incredible amount and have an exciting new tool in my repertoire of possible tools for learning.

Which world class build shall I fly to first?

2. As a team, that we have

• produced two world class builds with supporting resources for learners and teachers that the national and international adult education community can use, as they are or take them and customise them or make them even better
• been committed to learning. We have piloted use of these builds with over 100 students and are committed to sharing what we can learn from that – warts and all. We have openly shared our thinking and our ways of working so that others might learn from how we went, again – warts and all. We will work on this more over the last few months of the project.
• created a greater awareness of the potential for MUVEs in adult education and a fledgling community of educators with an interest in and some experience of Second Life. Again, we will work on this more over the last few months.

What barriers are there to using MUVEs in tertiary education? What has been done to overcome them?

See Barriers to using Second Life

How have intellectual property issues been addressed?

We have been committed to Creative Commons from the beginning. I think different members of the team have different reasons for this. Some are committed to this philosophically at all times. I am less sure about that. I think our challenge is to understand different models of IP and apply the right one at the right time. Easier said than done. Organisations and individuals need to make a living too. However, I believe strongly that projects, like this one, funded by the government of New Zealand should make their outputs available to all New Zealanders. I also believe that the high cost of developing builds to support effective learning experiences in Second Life mean that we really need to get our heads around collaborative design, development and use. Our commitment to Creative Commons has proven challenging at times e.g. we could have bought some objects to use for ourselves and saved time, we had to limit ourselves to full permission objects. We agreed some compromises, e.g. our developer added some of his plants, that he sells commercially in world, to our build that will not be available in the version to be copied. But they make our build look lovely – and New Zealand.

What are the key factors influencing the design of MUVE educational environments? How do you develop MUVEs to embrace various pedagogical approaches?

• I believe we still need to learn what MUVEs are good for. We came up with a list of half a dozen ideas but really only piloted role plays in our project. Maybe that is what they are best at but really good and that’s ok. The more experience we have in world the better we can assess that.
• We need to think about the learners and their access issues, but we still have to learn what that means, and of course they vary so much and we can’t ask them when they don’t know themselves – like asking me if I like Antarctica
• We tried to think about using the artifacts one can create from Second Life, to enable learners with no or limited access to still benefit. This also showed the potential of Second Life to be a cheap production environment for images and videos to support learning e.g. midwifery video about the birth unit. I think it is too expensive to build for that purpose but once they are built I think that is a valuable use e.g. seeing a 3D cell struck me as a biochemist who for years pictured cells as flat pancakes. The world is 3D but we learn about it 2D.

What do you think could have been done better in the design and development of the programme(s) in SL?

Two things stand out for me

• allowed more time – it was pretty stressful for those involved
• better sharing of knowledge between team members. As a team we have discussed this and have different views. My view is that it is not possible to expect the educators to immerse themselves in Second Life so that they become experts in how to use it. If we demand that, we will not be able to use it in all the ways it could add value across our institutions. We had one who fully immersed herself and one who didn’t as much. I think we did not make the most of the team members who were immersed in advising the educator who was not immersed. I believe this was exacerbated by working virtually, the number of people involved and that the team members with the experience wanted to be respectful and work with her ideas, which is a good thing.

What do you think was done well?

• commitment to working together even when it was difficult, reasonable acceptance of differences, compromises
• commitment to completing in time, above and beyond what might be expected, commitment and passion carried the team when nothing else would
• good processes, sincerely trying to apply the literature review
• ongoing learning and reflection
• great results, products and student experiences.

What do you see as the advantages of using MUVE environments in teaching and learning?

The main advantage that I see at the moment is fun and engagement and I don’t think you can believe it til you experience it (see Fun learning). I have been amazed at it for myself, such as feeling like I am in a Jetsons movie just because of beaming up into a room in a little space ship, or the power of interviewing students and feeling like I know whether or not I want to offer them the job. I see no comparison with role play in a real life setting. I am haunted by negative memories of role plays in real life, relatively recently. I would rush back to do the ones in Second Life again and I believe I learned more. I hope the project evaluation will add to my personal perspective.

What are the disadvantages?

• massive learning curve to get confident in the environment – for staff and students. The irony is that if we did lots of learning in there it would be worth it, but if we just do little pockets, it will not be
• closer to real than much of what we do, but some aspects give the pretend aspect away eg hand shake animation
• some strong resistance, but we make lectures ‘compulsory’ even though some students vote with their feet , and we know they are limited in their effectiveness, and we invest large sums of money in building spaces to support them.

What advice would you give another group wanting to produce an excellent MUVE educational experience?

• allow time to design and build
• meet in world to build your own skills
• allow time to build staff and student capability
• care about those with limited access but don’t let them drive all you do
• make sure you tap into the knowledge and experience of your immersed team members all the way through – push for it
• develop what you believe will meet the learning objectives and then promote it to others (internal or external) rather than expect them to understand beforehand; allow time for this in your plans
• take time to explore similar builds in world before you start, to not duplicate and to learn from those who have gone before. You may not need to build much at all
• feel the fear and do it anyway!

Jennifer, our resource person has found 15 resources that talk about how people in New Zealand and overseas are working in this way. The team is meeting tomorrow to think about our online workshop design and in preparation the rest of us each need to look at some resources. I decided to process my four resources in my blog.

Iridescent is an inspiring Los Angeles based model with a mission to foster curiosity, confidence and a love for science and engineering in underserved children. Families learning together uses a co-operative learning model. The school runs five two-hour evening sessions per science topic. The whole family is invited, and the school provides food and a Spanish translator. The format is 10 minutes direct instruction from a volunteer engineer, a facilitated experiment together and 20 minutes reflection at the end. One parent drove 100 miles every Wednesday to be involved. Their topics are relevant, interesting and wholistic too e.g. biomechanics of break-dancing or science of sporting equipment.

Volunteer engineers are crucial to the success of the programme. They benefit too. Through the training they receive and their experiences, they hone their public speaking skills and their ability to communicate with large, diverse audiences with limited education and English-speaking abilities. Undergraduates can receive credits towards their university studies and they receive support to do the job well e.g. lesson plan templates.

In just under three years, the programme has trained 185 engineers and helped over 4000 children and their families. They are working on a new aspect to the programme to build leadership skills in the parents so they can continue the programme in their own schools.

In New Plymouth, the Bell Block Community Action Group use a more informal approach to help families learn together about gardening and healthy eating. Since 2005, the Action Group have been working on creative ways to make Bell Block a healthier place for their families. The Action Group ran the gardening programme during the school holidays, with more families wanting to be involved than they could cope with. The programme, targeted at children and parents, modeled healthy food choices with the morning teas and lunches provided, ran cooking and practical gardening sessions and played games that families could play back home at minimal cost. There was no negative feedback from participants about the programme. Positive comments talked about children learning to cook, parents learning to cook healthier food and families having ongoing fun together. Key advice was to include a wide range of community groups and involve parents to encourage healthy interaction in families.

UK examples in Stockport and Hampshire aim to help parents, grandparents, children and carers learn and enjoy themselves together. Courses cover a range of topics e.g. gardening, reading writing, maths, gardening, computing (where the children help the adults), art, parenting and just having adventures together. The courses run at different locations e.g. schools, adult education centres in schools, community buildings, nurseries, libraries, shops and cafes.

Wow, there are so many wonderful things happening, and this is only four of the 15. Personally, I am most inspired by Iridescent. My science origins is part of that for sure. I love seeing science made accessible. But I also love seeing different groups working together effectively and efficiently, so the involvement of engineer experts for free in a win-win way impressed me too.

It is interesting that our government is reducing funding for ACE at the same time as establishing 3000 new places on school holiday programmes and pushing a literacy and numeracy focus across the tertiary sector. I wonder if any ACE providers will build on their community links to offer whanau programmes in the school holidays, as others have done in some of these examples.

What whanau learning do you know of? What stories are out there that we could share in our online community to inform, inspire and enable?

Erica is preparing for a keynote at at the upcoming 3DTLC conference, to be held on Sept. 23rd and 24th in San Jose, California. The title of the session is “Crossing the Chasm, One Implementation at a Time.” The interviews are a follow-up to work they did earlier that identified these barriers

So here I am reflecting before I talk to Erica.

Firstly, how did the barriers above impact on us. Anecdotally, we have had challenges with hardware for students wanting to access Second Life at home, although it is hard to know if that is hardware or another issue. One user tester spent the whole day trying to log in, we decided her graphics card was the problem, but she then identified that it was her firewall settings. Fortunately, she talked to a colleague with the same hardware who could access it fine. One of our lead educators had no sound in world last week. We think it was her sound card but it worked okay for another use just before, so maybe it was another issue …

In terms of how we try to overcome this, we are working with IT departments in the various institutions. We negotiated a Memorandum of Agreement early in the project that included IT support to give staff and students access during the pilot. This meant IT departments were included in the conversation early on and they have tried but they have other priorities, problems seem to come and go, and staff can find it a challenge to solve these little mysteries. At one institution, there has been an ongoing issue with voice not working. Team members work around this by accessing Second Life from home.

Corporate security restrictions have definitely been a challenge for us. We did a survey of approaches in New Zealand tertiary institutions. They use three approaches ie

• open access to Second Life
• access via a separate network, used to teach computing courses so not subject to the same security levels
• no access unless specifically given.

The third model impacted the project because one institution whose academic staff were keen to be involved in the foundation pilot decided it would just be too hard to work with IT to establish this new option.

While the IT security can be overcome through using the computing course network, this creates logistical challenges. The computing classes require use of the lab and the times it is free may not fit with when the staff or students for our pilots are available. Negotiation, flexibility and commitment from staff are important. Fortunately our tutor in this situation is willing to give lunch times and evenings, but this is not sustainable.

Getting users interested in the technology has been our biggest barrier and our biggest success. The interest of our two lead educators and some of their colleagues has been key to the success of the project.

The foundation pilot is offered face-to-face in computer labs, so student motivation has not been so important, as they have to do what they are told. However, our initial experience has been that their motivation is high, including some who are not usually at all motivated. We did create a promotional video to encourage educators to understand how they might use the foundation build.

The midwifery pilot is offered to distance students or students often off campus on clinical placements. We have had to think much more about how to motivate these students to participate. So far we have created promotional videos, sent emails, offered Elluminate sessions, been available in world at agreed times for support, shoulder tapped individuals, and run a synchronous session with a researcher talking in the midwifery build meeting room.

I do not believe that more effort than required to train the target audience to use Second Life has been a barrier for us. In fact, those trained have commented that it is not as onerous as they thought it might be. Similarly funding has not been an issue as we were funded by special project funding.

I think we have learned as we have gone about the challenges of building the necessary capability for an educator to work with others to design in world. Merle immersed herself early on and it was easier for her to work with Aaron to design something focused on learning but including games and more fantastical elements. Sarah immersed herself later on in the project and, by her own admission, might have come up with something different if she had done this earlier. Although, some differences are because of the different learning objectives.

I peronsally think it is unreasonable to have an educator totally immersed early on as Merle was – desirable yes, realistic no. In the same way that learning designers translate for teachers in e-learning, I suspect we needed our already immersed team members to be more opinionated. However, I acknowledge the tension between how much to impose one’s own ideas and how much to go with the person who knows the students and the content. I respect them for their respect for others. And this level of conversing takes time and we already asked so much, particularly of the educators. We have learned as we have gone.

The challenge we faced late in the piece that is partly reflected in these barriers is individual and institutional differences in teaching. This links to getting users interested but is a bit different. Our users were interested but in the end decided they could not work with the build that had been created. In two cases this was because the leanring outcomes were too different. Merle and I believe it could have worked but it would have required more effort. In another case, the time allocated to achieve the learning outcome was less, so adding in time for students to learn how to work in Second Life was perceived to be too great given the overall time allocated.

Finally, the barrier of money will influence use of MUVEs in New Zealand going foward. The project has been expensive and it is not clear who and how things will move forward. We are hoping to discuss this with others at eFest and ASCILITE. We want to get others’ ideas and through the conversations begin to build a wider community to build upon the momentum from the project. We will also share the outcomes of the formal evaluation. I hope this will demonstrate enough benefits for learners to bring some decision-makers and budget holders along with us as we try to move things forward.

Time will tell.

·

It is early days yet. I have worked with the steering group to clarify some of what is and is not in scope and agree other roles will be in the team, based largely on helpful resources from Nancy White’s site that we discussed together. As the overall programme manager and I talked, we agreed that it would increase the chances of success for the community if we had ACE practitioners in the team, even if they were less skilled initially. We decided we wanted to build capability in the sector in the hope that the community would continue beyond our finite project. We, therefore, invited expressions of interest to join the team stipulating being involved in ACE as our number one criterion. We now have a facilitator and resources person, and a tentative technology steward. We have also linked in the ACE Aotearoa communications team, because communicating as broadly and frequently and effectively as possible will be crucial if the project is to succeed.

I have also spent a month, intermittently, talking to various people across the ACE sector to try and understand this broad, diverse sector and what, if any, the value add of such a community might be.

The team meets for the first time tomorrow to plan what we will do. I have asked them to do two things

• look at my summary of what the various ACE practitioners I have talked to said about the possible value add, or not, of an online community
• look at Nancy’s site and identify three must haves for our online community.

As I sat down to do my homework, I decided to blog about my three must haves to force myself to think. Having looked at some of the resources I was struck by the folowing things

However (back to my homework), my list of three is

What would you list as the must haves when establishing an online community?

You can see me in labour here trying out various animations for Aaron the developer. I added extra value by showing what someone with limited Second Life experience would do.

On the bed with my trusty midwife nearby

Working hard in the ‘opium corner’

Trying out the birthing pool

When I reflected on why this was more fun than role plays I have experienced in real life, I concluded there were three factors

• I was not role playing in front of a room full of class mates. Sarah and I can talk in local chat when others can hear us, but we can also talk in private chat when nobody else is involved
• the second reason is that I could have a quite detailed story that told me my history and symptoms (in front of me on the screen but not taking up the whole thing). This means that when Sarah asked me questions I knew the answers. When I have done role plays in real life this has been harder because it is already difficult enough to suspend disbelief, without standing there holding notes on who I am
• finally I could see the ‘movie’ in front of me – the pregnant me, the phone ringing, the birth unit – that helped me to feel it was making sense. It also meant that the experience seemed linked to entertainment and fun in my brain.

So I really enjoyed it, and learned as I went about midwifery. (I was not focused on analysing how well the midwife was doing her job last time I was in a comparable situation!)

So I am taking time to reflect here on why this might be and what we can learn from it. Firstly, I know it is human nature to be more motivated by a real deadline than an imposed one. However, as project manager, I have not been able to impose deadlines as I usually do because this is an innovation project. None of us has done this before. We are having to working out our process as we go, so cannot be confident of how long the step that we only identified yesterday should take. We tried to think through our processes but have still needed to modify this as we go.

Each person in the team has part of the puzzle and has been involved in something like what they are doing for the project before. However, the specifics are different so individuals have not known their part well, especially how long it will take. On top of that team members have struggled to understand what others don’t understand. We have assumed others will know to do certain things and how to do them, or not understood what a big ask something has been for someone else, or had delays because they did not do it ‘right’ the first time e.g. taking a photo of an object to use as the basis of the in world build. Inadequate communication can, and often does, happen wherever more than one person is involved in something, but I believe it has been amplified by the innovation aspect of what we are doing. It also links to our tendency to undervalue what we know and assume others know it. Of course, we do not want to treat people as stupid by telling them what they do already know, but that is why we need a team. I think we often focus on what we ‘do’ in a team, rather than what we ‘know’ in a team.

If we all knew the whole lot it would be easier for just one person to get on with it. I think for another time, I would ask more questions. As my role is primarily one of  linking the team members, I would be more proactive in checking those assumptions to minimise the chances of things falling through the gaps. At times, I was talking to one person and brought another person in on the skype call to sort it immediately, or encouraged team members to talk to each other later. Looking back, I could have done that in a few more situations.

Working in teams creates almost as many issues as it solves. And that has been another challenge for us. We are a reasonably large team, because of the diverse skills and knowledge we need, and that gives us more places where gaps and misunderstandings can occur. Even in my role, I have been sharing it for the first time. Clare and I bring different experience and the project needs both, and we have worked hard at role clarification and tried to communicate everything at our weekly skype calls and other times when needed, but gaps still form that we then identify and fill.

Another challenge is that we had not worked together before. Now that I know the team members more, I would be more confident of where the gaps might exist and to make suggestions for filling them. Also, we are working virtually. However, I feel we have got to know one another pretty well through the in world weekly meetings and skype calls (weekly for me and on as needed basis for others), as well as occasional face-to-face meetings and emails. Working virtually does mean that we can see if others are around and ‘pop in’ on one another.

It is also human nature to underestimate how long things will take (one colleague and I joke that we need to estimate and then multiply by 3 to get to the actual). I have been skyping each team member weekly to check how they are going and understand from them how long they think their next task will take. One thing I would do differently next time is to take what they say with a grain of salt and add more time to their estimates. This is an example of me valuing others’ knowedge more and not trusting my own experience of the underestimation phenomenon. When an organisation has done something several times, they can use average times to plan. We had no such information to call on.

Another challenge for our team is that we are all part-time on the project. This means that we have competing priorities, and have not always been able to co-ordinate times to meet outside regular meeting times. This has been particularly true for those with teaching commitments. I am not sure of the answer to this, as the project did not need full-time people and did need the range of skills across different people. I have worked with staff to get release time for those teaching (not to be assumed in the ITP environment even when institutions are receiving money from the project) but learning for me is that this may need to be renegotiated each semester.

So I am not going to beat myself up too much. It is inherent in project teams and innovation projects that this will happen. However, I have learned some things to do differently, for the remaining design and development phase, and for next time …

For me that meant starting to blog, finally setting up a proper feed aggregator, tweeting and giving some time to LinkedIn. A number of factors influenced my decision – going on a month long trip during which I kept friends and family updated on Facebook (blogged and loved the connections), working on this website (at last), plucking up courage to ask a friend for help with RSS feeds after being too embarassed to admit I missed developing that skill, and hearing about TweetDeck as a tool that made Twitter manageable (third time lucky perhaps).

Several things make me quite excited about continuing. Firstly, I feel like I have so many stimulating inputs in my day. I felt overwhelmed at first, but have decided even if I only read one link a day I am ahead of where I was before I started.

Secondly I have two specific stories of connections. First story – I read, through a LinkedIn group I joined about a walk through the ThinkBalm Data Garden. I thought it sounded interesting but then realised it was at 3am NZ time. I tweeted (whinged) to that effect, and got a direct message back almost immediately from @EricaDriver. Erica then scheduled another walk through to fit Asia Pacific times. I and half a dozen others turned up. It would not have happened without my tweet!

Another story – I received a newsletter from the Change Management Toolbook, to which I have subscribed for a while, clicked on the link, and decided to follow @hnauheimerand some of his followers. Then I started getting tweets with the hash tag cj2 which I had to investigate. I iwsh I had sooner (lesson for next time). I finally worked out that there was a really interesting project going on where anyone could join a 24 hour joint writing of a book on change journey. So I followed instructions and joined a skype chat about it! I was too timid to contribute, not helped by coming in late and being asleep most of the time that others are awake (spot the theme).

But this is amazing. I can connect with international experts from my office at home that I would never ‘meet’ otherwise. And I am not special – anyone can do it. Our students can do it.

Finally, I feel like I can talk intelligently about what this is like – the pluses and the minuses. This also means that I understand that there is no alternative to getting in and giving it a go, to understand the good and the bad. I watched from the sideline for a while and understood some things, but now I feel it.

And I am already passing it on to someone I am mentoring. I am honest about being only one or two steps ahead, but she doesn’t mind. It probably makes me safer because I still remember what it is like not to know.

So I went to their website and contemplated going to the Social Innovation Camp in Wellington on 6 June, but opted to go and make a noise for the Pulse with my mother and daughter instead. However, I did sign up for news and joined the ning site – next time maybe.

I also skimmed the 2007 report Social Innovation: what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated which was fascinating reading. I prefer their definition of social innovation ‘new ideas that meet unmet needs’. One example from the report that particularly interested me was the creation of the Open University, and all the distance learning examples that have emanated since. I knew it has not always existed but I had not stopped to think what preceded the introduction of a new model that must have been radical in its day.

The most memorable story for me was that of Robert Owen, a Scottish textile mill owner. When he took over the mills, children from as young as five were working for 13 hours a day in the mills. He stopped employing children under ten and sent young children to newly built nursery and infant schools, while older children combined work and secondary school. He set up a crèche for working mothers, free medical care, and comprehensive education, including evening classes. There were concerts, dancing,
music-making and pleasant landscaped areas. Others came to see his model villages and took on board some of his ideas.

As well as inspiring stories, Mulgan and his colleagues analyse what conditions are barriers to social innovation and what helps social innovation flourish.

Barriers they identify are

• efficiency – change initially makes things worse
• peoples’ interests – the risks of change appear greater than the benefits of continuing and those who have something to lose are more likely to be in power in the present system
• peoples’ minds – assumptions, values and norms have been shaped by the existing system
• relationships – the relationships between the movers and shakers in the present system stabilise it.

The report claims that change happens when these barriers switch i.e. the existing system becomes less optimal, some people, often the more marginalised look at alternatives, mental models start changing and relationships come under pressure as some want to change and others resist change.

Social change depends on on alliances between the ‘bees’ and the ‘trees’. The bees are
the small organisations, individuals and groups who have the new ideas, and are mobile, quick and able to cross-pollinate. The trees are the big organisations – governments, companies or big NGOs – which are poor at creativity but generally good at mplementation, and which have the resilience, roots and scale to make things happen. Both need each other, and most social change comes from alliances between the
two, just as most change within organisations depends on alliances between leaders and groups well down the formal hierarchy.

The stages of social innovations are

• generating ideas by understanding needs and identifying potential solutions
• developing, prototyping and piloting ideas
• assessing then scaling up and diffusing the good ones
• learning and evolving.

Successful social innovations tend to be

• combinations of existing elements rather than totally new
• across existing organisations, sectors or disciplines
• based on strong connections between previously separate people
  and groups.

As someone who works in the world of change and is strongly driven by social improvement as a major driver in what I do, I found the report inspiring, informative and thought provoking. I just wish it was not quite so long.