The official part of the first intense day of the DIRN workshop is now over, and I’m trying to collect my thoughts before I take off for the workshop dinner. It has been a great day with many interesting conversations, and I’m looking forward to more of that in a little while as well as tomorrow. One of today’s presentations felt especially pertinent in relation to my research: TL Taylor’s talk on emergence in online computer games like World of Warcraft. TL discussed the notion of emergence and wanted to remind us that unexpected behaviour doesn’t always have to be something positive, but that the design of the computer game influences emergent culture also in a number of ways which are not part of the traditional utopian view of interaction in virtual environments. For example, hierarchies do develop in these environments, and your status is often related to how well you know the most efficient ways to modify the game interface for your own purposes, or whether you know the unwritten rules, or conventions, concerning for instance language use.

In the DIRN wiki you can find links to other blog posts from the workshop.

We are having some discussions at the department concerning how to best design our net based courses to meet the needs of our students. Knowing that many of them appreciate the almost complete flexibility in time and space that our courses now offer them, it is important to consider whether adding compulsory real-time activities would be worth it. Of course, the possibility to practice oral interaction skills would be valuable, as would the potentially increased sense of belonging and co-presence. Even though I’m a promoter of real-time interaction, I have to admit I feel a bit torn. Offering both options would of course be the most flexible solution, but I wonder if that would work in practice. Does anyone have any comments on this, or know of someone who’s written about these issues?

I now realize that I have blogged on this topic before as well…

On Monday, August 21, the DIRN workshop begins. Around 25 doctoral students from all over Sweden and around Europe will meet here in Umea to discuss issues to do with their broadly defined common research topic: Interaction in digital environments.

Whereas Day 2 is closed for workshop participants who will discuss work-in-progress, Day 1 consists of four very interesting-looking presentations in HUMlab open to all interested:

10:45 “Stepping Up: Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences”
Patrik Svensson, HUMlab, Umea universitet

13:30 “Reconsidering Emergence”
TL Taylor, Center for Computer Games Research, IT-Universitetet i Kopenhamn

14:30 “Pedagogical Reflections on Cyborg Construction”
Patrik Hernwall, Institutionen for Kommunikation, Teknik och Design, Sodertorns Hogskola

16:00 “Feral Textuality – Blogs and Other Undomesticated Hypertexts”
Jill Walker, Humanistisk informatikk, Universitetet i Bergen

It’s so exciting when these things happen on your own turf!

Over the last ten months or so, I’ve been involved with a group planning for a virtual strand in connection with the EUROCALL conference in Granada, September 4-7. After numerous Skype sessions and email exchanges we are now ready to announce this year’s small scale virtual strand, which is open to all free of charge. Remember to sign up, so we can get some idea of how many participants there are, and distribute necessary information. More information will follow in due time.

Here is the formal invitation:

Eurocall 2006 – VIRTUAL STRAND

Can’t come to EuroCALL in Granada this year but would like to get the “conference experience”?

Why not take part in the VIRTUAL STRAND? It’s for people like you who can’t come to Granada or who’d like to know more about the EuroCALL conference.

Can come to EuroCALL in Granada but would like to communicate with people who can’t make it?

The VIRTUAL STRAND is for you, too. You can log in from the conference site to read and comment on the conference blog as well as chat to or exchange
messages with colleagues who are logging in from anywhere in the world.

This is the first time you’ll be able to join the conference from wherever you are. Since we’re still finding out about the best way to give you the ‘virtual conference experience’, the virtual strand this year will be limited to the following activities:

The PLENARY SESSIONS are going to be video-recorded and you’ll be able to watch them online at any time during the conference. If you’re a member of EuroCALL, you’ll also be able to watch them after the conference because they’ll be archived.

There’ll be a CONFERENCE BLOG written by people who are at the conference. They’ll be telling you about the presentations they’ve been to, the social activities and even about the venue itself, and you’ll be able to join in the discussion by posting comments and questions to the conference blog.

As well as this, there’ll be a BLOBBER that will allow you to talk (in real time text and probably also in voice) with people at the conference and others who are attending virtually.

Want to know more? Why not come to the PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP for the virtual strand? You’ll have the opportunity to find out how to use blogs and the blobber and you’ll be able to try out some activities using them. You may even get some ideas about how you could use this sort of tool in your own classes! The workshop is FREE! That’s right, you don’t have to pay anything to take part in this workshop.

Because it’s all online, you can join the workshop from wherever you are in the world. Anyone who’s in Granada can come to a computer room for the workshop, but if you login from home or work while the workshop’s running, you’ll get exactly the same information and practice AND you’ll be able to chat with people who are experiencing the face-to-face conference and find out more about what it’s like.

We WILL need to know if you’re going to join us for the workshop and/or the virtual strand, so that we can make sure you get all the information you need in time for the pre-conference workshop, so we’d like you to let us know by filling in the form you find at http://www.eurocall2006.com/virtual.htm.

The virtual strand promises to be an exciting and fun experience – do join us! We’re looking forward to meeting you!!

When reading this report by Jutta Balldin (in Swedish) concerning distance education in Sweden, I was again reminded of the concept of ‘transactional distance’, which seems quite useful. During my visit to the Open University, I met a PhD student from the Institute of Educational Technology, Ruslan Ramanau, who came to the talk I gave at the INTELLECT seminar, since he had read in the invitation that I was working on presence. His research deals with similar topics, and we had an interesting discussion over coffee. In his PhD project, Ruslan is applying Moore’s theory of ‘transactional distance’ to compare different methods for distance education. This theory seems very relevant to what I’m doing. Ruslan also mentioned how one of Moore’s students, Shin, has written about ‘transactional presence’, which I also need to look into further. If anyone would like to read more on this, Ruslan recommended a thread on the topic in the DEOS-list archives.