RSC MASHe

Last week saw he return of the JISC conference. As with other similar events the organisers explored a number of ways to allow delegates to experience the conference virtually as well in person. The main avenues were video streaming some of the sessions live across the web; the inclusion of a Ning social network (I’m guessing they won’t be doing this again next year. See Mashable’s Ning: Failures, Lessons and Six Alternatives); and advertising the #jisc10 hashtag for use on twitter, blogs etc. I would recommend Brian Kelly’s Privatisation and Centralisation Themes at JISC 10 Conference post which presents some analysis and discussion on the effectiveness of each of these channels.

It is apparent that the JISC conference mirrors a wider emerging trend to allow dispersed audiences to view, comment and contribute to live events. A recent example is that of the #leadersdebate broadcast on ITV, which as well as having over 9.7 million views generated over 184,000 tweets (from tweetminster.com) and numerous other real-time comments on blogs and other social network sites.

I didn’t have a chance to attend the conference myself and other things meant I was unable to see the live video streams, although I was able to keep an eye on the twitter stream. Fortunately the conference organisers have made thevideos of the keynote speeches by Martin Bean and Bill St. Arnaud available. It is however difficult to replay the video with the real-time backchannel discussion. Cue the twitter subtitle generator, which I’ve been exploring through various posts. So if you would like to experience the live video/twitter experience some I’ve embedded the videos below.

Opening Keynote: Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor, The Open University

Subtitle content provided by | Download the XML subtitle file

Closing Keynote: Bill St. Arnaud, P. Eng. President, St. Arnaud-Walker and Associates Inc.

Subtitle content provided by | Download the XML subtitle file

Here are Martin Bean’s and Bill St. Arnaud’s biographies and keynote slides. Both of the video’s were produced by JISC and distributed under Creative Commons.

Just a quick couple of words on the subtitle file generation. I had planned to use the archive of tweets provided by Twapper Keeper for both keynotes, but there was a 45 minute hole in the archive between 08:44 and 09:27GMT for the first session, which is being investigated, so I used the Twitter Search instead. As the session was early in the morning and twitter limits searches to 1500 tweets I had to modify the query to ‘#jisc10 -RT’, which removes retweets, to get results for all of Martin Bean’s presentation (he still has a healthy 372 original tweets during the course of his presentation. [There is perhaps an interesting way to visualise RT's in the subtitle file to indicate consensus tweets - for another day]

If you are planning to run your own event and would like to create a twitter video archive here are some basic tips:

1. Make sure you advertise a hashtag for your event
2. Before the event create a hashtag notebook on twitter archive service Twapper Keeper – there are other archive services but currently the subtitle tool only integrates with this one
3. Make sure video is captured in a reusable format. The video above is played back with the JW Flash Video Player which supports FLV, H.264/MPEG-4, MP3 and YouTube Videos. Generated subtitle files can also be used directly in YouTube (if you own the video). I’ve also experimented with Vimeo for longer videos.

If you would also like a ‘at the scene’ report of the keynotes and some of the plenary sessions you should read this post by my colleague Lis Parcell at RSC Wales – Technology at the heart of education and research: JISC10 conference report

A couple of weeks ago our RSC was involved in the Virtual Worlds 2008 event at the University of Stirling. As part of this I was tasked with facilitating a hands-on session being given by David Burden, MD at Daden Ltd (here’s Daden’s YouTube playlist). David was highlighting his work with University of Coventry and St. George’s Hospital, London on the JISC funded PREVIEW project.

The PREVIEW project have been exploring the use of virtual worlds, Second Life in particular, as an environment for problem-based learning (PBL) for care professionals and paramedic students. The care professionals are using open-ended PBL scenarios using a chatbot engine to create characters who can guide, act out eDramas and interact with students within Second Life. Paramedic students are using fixed-ended PBL scenarios which require them to conduct patient assessment and treatment on virtual patients in Second Life. The project is best summarised by the video below:

It was the paramedic scenarios which interested me the most, and in particular the Medbiquitous Virtual Patient (MVP) XML standard used to code them. This is an existing scripting language used to create virtual patients. The format is very similar to that found in ‘Fighting Fantasy’ books (i.e. a paragraph containing plot point followed by go to page x to do A, go to page y to do B, go to page z to do C). You can find examples of these on the University of Edinburgh’s Labyrinths site.

MVP Model (click to enlarge)

A virtual patient example is available here. The MVP standard uses a node model. For each page rendered there is an activity node which includes related assets: data availability, virtual patient data and media. The screenshot shows you how a page is rendered from the XML model. One of the limitations of the MVP model is that each node has a limited number of options, meaning there is a closed path, potentially inadvertently leading the students to the correct answer.

By using Second Life, PREVIEW have been able to take existing MVP scenarios and make them open ended. So instead of having a limited number of options, it is entirely up to the student as to how they proceed using only their existing medical training to guide them through the scenario.

The most important thing for me is that Second Life is only being used as a medium to interface the MVP scenario, consequently the scenarios can be exported to any other platform which supports MVP. The diagram below shows how this model works.

Diagram showing the flow of information between the XML, MVP Player and Second Life

To date the PREVIEW team at St. George’s have created 4 paramedic training scenarios. A short YouTube clip explaining these is here. I’ve made my own video so you can see what one of the scenarios looks likes from start to finish:

The crucial thing to remember is that Second Life is only being used to interface the MVP data. So when you click on a IV canella data is being read from the separate server hosting the MVP data. If you wanted to create a different paramedic scenario, the majority of information would be coded using the MVP standard.

It doesn’t have to stop at medical scenarios. The MVP standard is flexible enough to be adapted to other discipline areas which rely on problem-based learning. So theoretically this technology could be used for forensics, mechanical engineering, the list can go on.

To create problem-based learning scenarios for other disciplines would require scripting the scenario using the MVP standard, then creating the objects in Second Life you would like students to use to interface with the MVP. For example, if you wanted to create a scenario for forensic students you could create an SL object called ‘swab’. Then in the MVP you would create an activity node ‘swab’, which is linked to a data availability node with the associated actions/text (additional information could be coded using the virtual patient data or media assets).

And all this is going to be made open-source! Yes, PREVIEW will be making the code and the Second Life assets FREELY available in the next couple of months. Which I’m sure you’ll agree is fantastic!

If you would like to try the scenarios yourself you can by registering on the PREVIEW site. You can also take a peak by going to the St. Georges Island in Second Life.

Related
• BBC News – Saving lives in a virtual world

"Content is king, community is sovereign" these were the words left ringing in my ears from a keynote given by Stephen Heppell back in 2002. At that time one of the most well known community sites Wikipedia was in its infancy. Since then Wikipedia has flourished and with over 2.5 million articles (in English) making the job or door-to-door encyclopedia sales increasingly difficult. A similar concept is being used in the WikiVet project, designed to be the most comprehensive knowledge base for veterinary students.

UPDATE: The quote should be “Content is no longer king, but community may be sovereign”. Stephen has kindly corrected me, see comments.

WikiVet, a partnership between the Higher Education Academy, JISC and UK veterinary schools, plans to cover the entire vet curriculum from pathology to physiology. They already have a wealth of information including images, videos, case simulators, interactive PowerPoints, flashcards and more. Unlike Wikipedia, content is peer reviewed by subject specialists and access to view or edit is restricted to the vet community.

Interestingly the current contents of the site has not only been generated by academics at different vet schools but also by students. This project, while only officially launched today (9th October), has already received commitment from other European veterinary schools and interest from schools in the US.

Will the vet community continue to add to this resource. If Wikipedia’s predecessor Nupedia is anything to go by which had a similar peer review process it might be a challenge. However, considering the existing content in WikiVet it already looks a valuable resource.

WikiVet is available for general review for one month. Login ‘launch’ and password ‘press’.

Click here for the official press release on WikiVet.