In my last post, I wrote about my life vision for holistic learning. I wrote that holistic learning should engage the mind to think creatively, it should incite the body to activity, and it should transform the soul and establish a voice. My own research in social media and virtual worlds leads me to be convinced that these tools offer an opportunity for holistic learning that hasn’t existed in mainstream education, and the productive use of these tools will transform both educators and students.
The first aspect of holistic learning is to engage the mind. Who hasn’t immersed themselves in a well-written novel that seems to jump off the page and makes us part of the story? While the enjoyment of reading as advanced through audiobooks and now electronic means such as Kindle and the iPad, interactive media can engage the mind in ways that traditional books cannot. Research done by Bartle, Castronova, Turkle, Gee, and McGonigal (among others) have proven that social media, virtual worlds, and whatever come after them have the capacity to change human behavior because the mind tends to believe what it can see. When we create a customized 3D avatar and develop an alternative life, we believe that alternate life is just as valid as our physical life. Technology has afforded educators tools that can engage the mind in ways not available previously. Rather than keep these tools out of the classroom, we should enthusiastically embrace them.
The second aspect of holistic learning is to incite activity. This has roots in Activity Theory (Vygotsky, Luria, Leont’ev) and Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb, Zull, and others). Before there was an Xbox Kinnect, students learned through a system of apprenticeship or other on-the-job training. If I wanted to become a baker, then I apprenticed under a master baker, either through a colonial system of payment for room, board, and training, or through a more modern apprenticeship program. It was through iterative activity that a student adopted the identity of the goal. Vygotsky’s work with children was in the observation of play and the child’s use of available tools to assist in making play more real. In adults, this iterative activity forms the basis for vocational training. What technology enables us to do, and do better than any other method, is FAIL. If anyone has joined the Angry Birds craze on their mobile device, it is clear that there are a large number of failures before a success. Why do we continue? Because it is playful, there is no risk in failing, and oddly enough we reduce stress in the activity. I recently bought an Xbox Kinnect; this takes interactive activity to entirely new level.
Lastly, holistic learning should transform the soul and establish a voice. If engaging the mind and inciting activity can be considered inputs, then transformation might be considered an output or product. My own dissertation study looked at transformation as an output of virtual world activity. I observed virtually performing musicians who live using streaming audio and video from his or her physical home into the virtual world of Second Life. Through repeated activity (the performance) and interactions with fans over time, the performers reported an emboldened voice on social issues, better stage presence (if they performed outside of virtual worlds), and physical sales of their music. At the Virtual Human Interaction lab at Stanford, Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee studied what they called the Proteus Effect: The ability for someone to migrate positive social aspects of a virtual identity into their physical personality. This same effect was apparent in the graduate level course in entrepreneurship I developed and taught in Second Life. Students who had never been in a virtual world become entrepreneurs by determining a market, developing and launching a product, and marketing that product, using tools available in Second Life and through social media. The result? Students said the class was more “real” than any other class they had taken, because they “felt” more like true entrepreneurs than anything they had experienced in a traditional classroom. They holistically experienced the role of entrepreneur in an environment that engaged their minds, incited low-risk activity, and transformed them as learners.
Technology has enabled educators to simulate experiences and activities that previously were either impossible, or involved high costs or risk. Social media, virtual worlds, and whatever comes after them can make education easily scalable, easily distributable, and can dissolve what was once considered cultural or geographic barriers to learning. I am fortunate to have an understanding of how this type of learning can be designed, delivered, and measured to prove its effectiveness.
