Grant Potter asked a question on Mastodon, about how video games are being used for teaching and learning. I’ve done some work on this for my dissertation, and wanted to repurpose bits from a few chapters in response to Grant’s question. I’ll be writing more about my dissertation work, but am still in “pause and recover” mode after finishing it…

In the dissertation, I explored how the disciplines of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) intersect, using the specific ways in which we design, study, and evaluate video games as the point of integration. From this perspective, there are three categories that describe the use of video games to support teaching and learning:

I’m sick of ChatGPT posts, too. But I figured it was worth trying this out. I asked ChatGPT the Voight-Kampff test questions from Bladerunner. It answered some in interesting ways, but clearly failed the test overall. For now…

Prompt 1: Someone gives you a calfskin wallet for your birthday. How do you react?

I asked ChatGPT to describe the state of learning space research, and how to evaluate the design and use of learning spaces in a university context. I’ll provide my prompts and ChatGPT’s responses verbatim:

Robot classroom observation, by Stable Diffusion

Prompt:

Describe the current state of research into the design and use of learning spaces in universities. Provide examples and references.

Response

There is a growing body of research on the design and use of learning spaces in universities. Some key themes in this research include:

I don’t do resolutions. I mean, I sometimes make them, but they don’t seem to necessarily turn into anything after that. So, some intentions.

1. Get healthier. I’ve been working really hard to build up cardio and some strength, and that’s made a world of difference as I continue to recover from cancer and treatment. I want to keep going, to make sure I’m as strong as I can be when it comes back. I’ve also been trying to figure out a fun cardiac arrythmia thing, and have been cutting out every possible risk factor (no alcohol or coffee since June, 2022, and using a CPAP machine to prevent sleep apnea) - but I seem to have doubled-down on eating garbage comfort food and sweets. I need to rein that in a bit. I’ve gotten into better cardio shape, but have put on a bunch of weight since summer 2022 and I want to lose that again. So. Keep exercising daily, but eat better. I’m also planning to become more active in social groups like joining BCC and to stop finding excuses to join our merry band of nearly-geriatric cyclists. And to commit to riding in the Cancervive fundraiser again in 2023.
2. Don’t be cocky about the pandemic. It’s still going on. I had COVID twice in 2022, within 6 weeks. I was pretty sure I had it a third time over the holiday break, but tested negative several times so maybe it was just a really bad cold. But I got cocky. I wore masks less often than I should have. I waded into the campus food court to grab food (which is where I am 100% convinced I contracted COVID (at least) twice). I’ll be wearing masks more, and will be bringing my lunch more. My immune system is still kind of hot garbage, and I need to be more responsible.
3. Figure out a healthier approach to my work. I have had a pattern forever of trying to Solve The Problems, rather than just working on the parts of things that I actually have control over. It’s good to understand where things fit in the broader context, but I think this has been the root cause of burnout for a few years now - putting me into a Quixotic role of trying to change things that I am not responsible for and having no way to actually make the changes, while perhaps neglecting some of the things that I am able to change that might contribute to addressing the bigger challenges. So I carry the stress of Big Problems That Need Solving, and the frustration of not being able to solve them. Part of this pattern has been to take on tasks because “if not me, then who?” rather than “who is the most appropriate person to be doing this, and if we don’t know who, what does that tell us?”. I need to stop taking on tasks because that just papers over structural and systemic issues. I’m also hopeful that wrapping up 6 years worth of work on a PhD will leave me with some time and space to rethink this stuff.
4. Be a better partner, friend, and colleague. I’m hopeful that I’ll feel this after working through the other things on this list. But I know I’ve been distant and withdrawn from social and professional circles for at least the last couple of years. Yes, there have been extremely valid reasons/excuses, but I want to break out of this pattern too.
5. Make some art, dammit! I’ve been pouring everything into my research projects and writing the dissertation. Now that that’s wrapping up, I will have more time. Pick up the guitar and play it again. And explore photography again. And who knows what else?

I don’t know if they’re resolutions, but there are a few things I want to actively work on in 2023. That’s a start.

Thanks to a nudge from Alan, I jumped back into the 365photos project for 2022. I put together a quick video of the 365 photos - it’s kind of surprising just how much happened this year! I’ve been doing this project since 2007, but I’m not sure if I’ll keep it going in 2023.

The album for 2022 is available online (as well as albums for each year of the project). (the photo gallery script seems to be acting up. awesome. I’ll have to fix that when I have some time…)

I gave a graduate seminar to the Faculty of Science and Taylor Institute for Teaching & Learning today. It was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to talk about the dissertation research projects that make up my dissertation. I also got to share the framework that I developed to describe teaching and learning using concepts adapted from the formal analysis of video games.

The dissertation became a description of a way to integrate the disciplines of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching & Learning). I’ll be able to share the full dissertation after the oral exam in January and whatever embargo delay is required by the university. In the meantime, here’s a recording of my grad seminar, and the figure representing the framework.

I thought I’d try ChatGPT to see what it would do with my dissertation topic.¹ I gave it the prompt:

Explain the ways in which “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” and “Human-Computer Interaction” can be integrated using research methods adapted from the formal analysis of video games.

And it returned:

The scholarship of teaching and learning is an approach to education that focuses on studying and improving teaching and learning processes in order to enhance student learning. This can be done through a variety of research methods, such as classroom observations, student interviews, and surveys. Human-computer interaction, on the other hand, is a field that focuses on the design and evaluation of computer systems and technologies that are easy and effective for people to use.

I finally (finally) upgraded my phone from an old iPhone X to a new iPhone 14 Pro. I splurged, figuring I spend enough time using it… The phone’s nice, but the cameras and lenses are insane. 3 physical lenses and one cropping trick to make a fourth using optical lenses at 14mm, 24mm, 44mm, and 77mm focal lengths. On a phone. But what does that mean? Here are some sample photos at the extreme ends - 14mm ultrawide angle, and 77mm telephoto.

Justin posted a thing on listedtech, looking at historical “big booth” presenter data from the EDUCAUSE annual conference, with data from 2012-2022¹. It’s an interesting approach, but the charts he used didn’t make it easy to see if there was anything going on. Any trends? Shifts? Gaps? So, I took a couple of minutes to throw the data into Numbers and created the 2 visualizations I was looking for in the article. I didn’t adjust the categories from the article - how is conferencing different from conferencing/email? How is mobile different from mobile or networking? security vs. consulting? etc…

Back when I was first diagnosed, we joined Wellspring and started going to a weekly yoga class for people with cancer (and their families). It was really great, just being around people who were going through similar things but not being directly about “hey let’s talk about cancer because cancer cancer cancer”. We did that for over 2 years, as I went through treatment and began to recover. (and then COVID hit and yoga classes for people with compromised immune systems became impossible)

Stephen Downes just posted his list of top tools for learning. I’m thinking about the tools that I use in my practice, and they’re pretty different from Stephen’s. These are the tools that I use for working and learning.

1. Safari and Edge

Web browsers run most of what we do. Safari is my main browser because it’s so nicely connected to sync bookmarks etc. over all of the devices that I use, and does it without draining batteries more quickly than necessary. But not every website works well with it, still, in 2022, somehow. I just can’t make myself use Chrome. I use Firefox occasionally. But Edge has really come along, and provides the Chrome renderer without the Google-ness. Yes, it’s Microsoft, but it’s pretty good and if I have to let a company track what I do on the internet, I’d rather Microsoft than Google. D’Arcy from 2005 would be shocked to hear 2022 D’Arcy say that…

I’d previously written a bit about shifting to more agile/adaptable/flexible learning technologies, and I’ve been meaning to write something about our work to adapt spaces in the Taylor Institute as we try to enable some kind of remote- or hybrid- or mixed- or whatever modality thing we wind up calling this stuff. So… here goes…

When everything shifted online at the beginning of the whole COVID thing, the learning spaces at the Taylor Institute kind of got put on hold for awhile. We focused on online platforms for a year, and then slowly started dipping back into hybrid scenarios where some students are physically in the room and some are elsewhere, wherever.