Cognitive Apprenticeship and Computer Science Education in Cyberspace

The lens of appreciative inquiry, as seen through the eyes of educators, examines ten years of virtual learning at several institutions. The study reflects on the impact of presence, and explores how learning communities develop as students assume roles and learn using cognitive apprenticeship. The examples reinforce the value of deep immersion and identity in situated learning, even as the software design activities illustrate the benefits experienced when students assume ownership and structure their activities. Encouraged by self-reflection, the learners explore their shared values, form into groups, and make personal discoveries. The examples illustrate the power of design thinking during individual and group work. From early work with 400 8th graders through 50 higher education classes taught at two institutions, techniques emerged for applying cognitive apprenticeship and deep immersion that strengthened the experiences and provided insights for developing a sustainable educational program.

On the (Virtual) Road

In the US, travel writing and the travel novel have historically held important positions in the literary landscape –not only as self-help guides and conveyances for empirical information but also as vehicles for satire, social commentary and analyses of the human condition. John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat-Moon are just a few of the important 20th century authors who have made insightful use of this genre. Today, increasingly realistic virtual reality environments have been sculpted, imbued with creative content and populated with both artificial agents and real avatars on a scale that can be measured in hundreds of virtual square miles. In some cases, the content is thematic and designed; in others it has grown up spontaneously through the individual contributions and creativity of users and small groups. It is this spontaneous blossoming of art, culture and ideas sprawling across increasingly spacious and interconnected virtual landscapes that presents us with the opportunity to continue the tradition of the epic travel story across new virtual territory.

Digital Citizenship in Participatory Culture

Global participatory digital culture provides collaborative learning opportunities beyond physical walls and without time constraints. Learners connect across the planet in real time. The virtual representation of self requires understanding the personal responsibility for digital citizenship and information literacy. Both the presentation of self and evaluation of content in all formats are new challenges for learners of all ages, including the youngest students born into an age of sharing and connecting. Virtual learning environments may transform education and certainly provide both advantages and disadvantages for educators and learners. Understanding the personal responsibility for digital citizenship is imperative to identify the best practices of education in virtual spaces. This chapter focuses on digital citizenship and information literacy in virtual worlds, virtual reality, and immersive learning environments.

Character Strength Development of Leaders in Cyberspace

Leadership development in cyberspace presents new challenges within an abstract interactive environment. The flexibility and versatility of virtual spaces offers many freedoms from ordinary rules and restrictions. Examining relevant signature character strengths under the high six virtues of Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, and Transcendence (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) provide guidance for virtual leadership. Aspiring authentic transformational leaders must continue their awareness of selfhood and society in cyberspace milieus by opening their human apertures while leveraging their signature character strengths.

The Claim on Human Conviviality in Cyberspace

This chapter sets out by defining conviviality in a way that allows the term to be simultaneously applied to face-to-face and virtual experiences. The educational context is introduced as one of many that can benefit from both types of experience. Impairment of the components of a shared learning experience (self, others, teacher) does not have to occur if educators understand the unique combination produced by the content to be learned plus the markers of the type of learning experience selected. Matching the content to the medium produces the optimal results. The authors conclude that conviviality in a specific application is not only possible, but, potentially highly productive in cyberspace, minimizing the logistical, high-risk, and cognitive constraints identified by Calandra & Puvirajah (2014) that can impair other forms of communication and specifically non-cyber learning experiences. This chapter contributes to new era of human interaction literature in the age of virtuality.

Transformation of Self and Society with Virtual Learning

The transformation of human experiences with virtual learning enables unprecedented forms of communication, connection, interaction, and mobility supporting news forms of selfhood and society. The ways people perceive, think and interact across virtual and physical spaces are fundamentally changing the mind, identity, social interactions, intellectual boundaries, and ways of knowing and learning in society. This chapter introduces and explores philosophical claims for helping to interpret and shape the transformation of self and society with virtual learning.

The Pioneering Spirit in the Virtual Frontier

Dreaming of opportunities that were not possible in real life, educators visualized the potential of virtual worlds. They gathered to share their enthusiasm for this strange new landscape, to share their concerns, and to see if it offered the promise of novel approaches to address educational challenges. One challenge was the decline of learner motivation and engagement in the study of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This chapter explores the phenomenon of how selfhood and society were integral to the development of a vibrant educational community. At the heart of virtual world education is an ecosystem of institutions, groups, and conferences comprised of the early adopters and pioneers who stimulated their imagination and pooled their resources to encourage and strengthen the community, and cast their eye to the future.

Future Identities of the Self Among Learners Across Physical and Virtual Spaces

This chapter seeks to examine the future identities of the self among learners across physical and virtual spaces and attempts to explain how these roles could flourish across the tech-centric learning environments. The study discusses the origin of identities, how they relate to current and future models of education, and what future identities and roles are possible. Challenges mentioned include those associated with evaluation and assessment of the virtual spaces, as well as new ways of capturing the environment feedback by utilizing sensors and wearable technology. Highlights involve virtual environment design using gamification techniques and security aspects of the future identities. The conclusion summarizes factors and stakeholders that need consideration when creating adequate physical and virtual spaces for the future identities of self.

It Takes a Guild- Social Metacognition and Collaborative Creation of a Learning Organization

Educators need to understand how virtual learning has advanced outside of institutional learning management systems and how people think, interact and perceive themselves in virtual spaces that are not tied to traditional learning. This chapter is a case study of an educator's gaming guild that explored virtual learning when transitioning from a social guild, which participated in casual raiding to embarking on progressive raiding. Guild leaders and members approached this progressive raiding as an opportunity to use their knowledge of learning strategies to develop the group's social metacognition. If educators want to transcend the limitations of learning management systems in predominantly text based courses, they need to understand and appreciate the identity and roles taken on by learners in virtual environments and the networked presence that takes place in organizations such as guilds. Guilds function as a learning organization that fosters identity development among members especially as data analytics are reviewed during collective and individual debriefing after raids.

Musings on Co-designing Identity Aware Realities in Virtual Learning

Virtual learning in the third dimension presents many opportunities for meaningful learning to occur. Learning in which the learner's self and the collective self immerse in the co-creation of authentic experiences. The virtues of these 3D environments are best appreciated holistically through the visual and the spatial perspectives. For meaningful learning many variables interact; however, of great importance is the role selfhood plays. Today's computing power affords original and imaginative rich experiences in which the learner is at the center of the event. The following chapter presents an exploratory journey on the self and holistic design considerations for learning in virtual environments.