media station

MEDIA STATION

Media Station Project Overview [poster presentation] [milestone overview]

This project is a feasibility study that will explore the possibilities and potentials of the use of ACID - AURAN Citadel platform to assist learning. It does this by proposing a learning environment called the Media Station. The Media Station would be a virtual reality learning environment for the creation and distribution of art, entertainment and information in media-rich forms. It is a creativity playground that includes tools and materials for creating and distributing media content. It would be a multi-player world and have shared and individual 'spaces' with tools to design, build, and decorate those spaces. The Media Station would include production studios, individual work spaces, facilities for broadcast, narrowcast, exhibition and download, and spaces for meeting and socialising. Product created at the Media Station would be distributed amongst those who log-in to the space and to others beyond the environment over the internet and through traditional cultural and media outlets. Organisationally, it would have a production agenda and distribution/exhibition schedule, with associated management roles and responsibilities. The Media Station 'company' would be a cooperative venture, run and directed by students and teachers involved in the online community. This project will establish the parameters for building and operating the media station including

• the contribution to the Citadel design specification,
• creation of three 'visions' of how the Media Station concept can be used in education settings
• developing examples on existing software platforms and documenting their use, to assist in securing further partners and funding, and
• refining a research agenda with a view to a full ACID project proposal in round 3.

The value and importance of this project is that it will identify those factors which characterise the interactions, engagements and encounters of multi-user game environments that can enhance teaching and learning. Of specific interest will be the modeling of different ways of enabling the relationship between learning participants that does not replicate existing institutional practice, but rather takes advantage of virtual communities, knowledge construction and content creation. The media Station concept provides an learning space different from flat online media (the web, online teaching, blackboard, moodle etc) because rather than the affordances provided by the environment being added to the surface of the platform, they are embedded within the background. The Media Station is based on an immersive game concept that can enable a very different form of pedagogy and interaction to other online environments, in that the player is immersed in a role, is confronted with authentic tasks that are interesting and relevant, and the media station provides access to the full range of constructive tools within the environment itself.

Overall research aims and objects [RAO]

1. Better understand and articulate how media rich (3D visual and audio) multi-user environments can enhance learning.
2. Better understand the implications of media rich, multi-user environments for pedagogy and curriculum development.
3. Develop and refine methods for the design, development, use and evaluation of multi-user learning environments.
4. Investigate ways to integrate online and offline learning opportunities with multi-user environments.

Visions:

overall ACID coordinator: andrew brown
media station / educational project coord for ACID: michael docherty

Milestones: [milestone pages] finalised August 2005

• 23rd December 2004
• 31st March 2005
• 31st June 2005
• 31st August 2005

Milestone Details - full details from project order [html] [doc]

Summary Reports to April 2005

In brief:

overview dec 23 milestone

Deliverables dec 04

• research groups now established after some admin issues
• collaborative blog established for across the three visions
• archive and document storage site established
• RAO and vision specific questions clarified

overview march 31 milestone

deliverables march 05

• primary implementation of protype environments and / or research events
• research data being collected
• data analysis underway
• publishing outcomes underway