3. Distance Learning via Live Video Technologies

While the above discussion focused on asynchronous distance learning technologies, the biggest drawback to their overall acceptance is the loss of real time interaction, instant direct feedback, and reading of the subtleties of voice and facial expressions. Both faculty and students have come to rely heavily on these features of classroom interaction, particularly in discussion and seminar courses. Synchronous distance learning attempts to preserve the learning atmosphere of the discussion classroom. As examples of such, we'll look at the options currently available for videoconferencing. These include videoconferencing via satellite, dedicated high speed phone lines, or POTS (plain old telephone service), and newly emerging Internet technologies. Video phones will be mentioned next week also, as they constitute another variant of live chat over the Net.

Traditional videoconference broadcasting requires expensive equipment, soundproof studios, considerable staff effort, and is highly time dependent. Internet-based systems can prove much less expensive because none of the above is required. However, high speed access to the Internet is a must for everyone participating in the online conference. Also, Internet-based videoconferencing is in its infancy and will, in all likelihood, improve dramatically over the next few years. For the immediate future, traditional videoconferencing technologies will continue to be employed by those who have already invested in them. Universities attempting to fully utilize the Internet for distance education and/or computer-assisted learning will likely move toward desktop videoconferencing models.

Older video broadcast and receiving systems typically were one-way video and two way audio. I used such a system to teach a course that combined "live in-class students" (is this an oxymoron?) and students located throughout prisons in Oklahoma. The only way the distance students could ask questions or make comments was to just start talking. Their voices would then be heard in the live classroom. As this was a course on the workings of the criminal justice system, as soon as I'd start to describe anything a voice would erupt in the room with "Oh, yea! Let me tell you how it really goes down." 

One variation of the satellite delivery method is the telecourse. These are packaged courses or seminars available through proprietary hardware, closed circuit TV or, in some cases, on cable television stations. Telecourses are available nationwide. Schedules for satellite broadcasts by universities and organizations, such as the American Law Network are available. The Law Enforcement Training Network offers a 24-hour satellite channel sending encrypted signals directly to subscribing police departments, plus pre and post tests. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has established the Emergency Education NETwork (EENET), a satellite-based distance learning system utilized to bring interactive training programs into virtually any community nationwide. This system provides fire and emergency management training on a regularly scheduled basis through EENET's "National Alert" monthly broadcasts, as well as a variety of "special" videoconferences, training courses and town hall meetings. 

The biggest drawback to the widespread use of satellite videoconferencing is its cost. Originating broadcast facilities often include multiple cameras and require soundproofing. A fully equipped video satellite broadcast studio can cost between 1.5 to 2 million dollars, including $500,000 for the uplink station. 

An editing suite including pre- and post-production facilities is part of this package. A videoconference system must have audio-visual equipment (monitor, camera, microphone, control pad, speakers, a roll-about cart and peripherals such as a document camera, VCR, PC. By adding a fully multi-media enabled computer to the system, the presenter can add PowerPoint-type graphics, animations, video clips, etc.) as well as a means of transmitting information between sites. A broadband satellite connection with studio-quality equipment produces an excellent full-motion video connection, but the equipment and transmission expense is great. In addition, satellite time, using Florida's current rates for education, is about $300 an hour. Commercial rates are around $1,000 an hour.

Unfortunately, less concern has been demonstrated for the remote facilities where students will gather. Typically, these are rather ordinary college classroom or facilities rented from junior colleges, high schools, or libraries. Creating an optimal environment for receiving video broadcasts is important. Failure to do so can lead to poor student ratings on the courses and retention problems. Plans for handling technical problems which might emerge during a live video session should be planned for in advance.

There are other alternatives to satellite broadcasting. These include ordinary phone line connections, high speed phone lines (ISDN, ADSL), or the Internet. Traditional phone lines (POTS) do not send signals fast enough for use as a video conduit, unless very low frame rates are acceptable. As a solution, dedicated phone lines (including multiple ISDN lines) and compressed video have been developed. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) phone lines run at speeds two to six times as fast as 56k modem connection. 

Pacific Bell is one of many phone companies offering  ISDN-based systems that can also support room-sized, dial-up videoconferencing. With this application, entire classrooms can exchange information, carry on discussions, and conduct research projects with other classrooms or institutions. Here's what's needed:

• A single ISDN line to provide video transport at up to 128 kbps.

• One to three lines of ISDN to enable video calls from 128 kbps to 384 kbps. Three lines of ISDN (384 kbps) provides a clearer picture than a single line of ISDN (128 kbps) because less video and audio compression takes place.

• Videoconferencing using more than one ISDN line requires a device called an inverse multiplexer.

• Schools and libraries must have inside wire -- a phone line and jack -- to connect to the outside world. Pacific Bell provides free inside wiring as part of the Education First offer.

• Schools and libraries must have the necessary videoconferencing equipment to complete the connection. This equipment includes a monitor, camera, microphone, control pad, speakers, a roll-about cart and peripherals such as a document camera, VCR, PC, etc. The videoconferencing system should meet the H.320 standard and provide multipoint capability. There are several vendors selling videoconferencing systems for use with ISDN.

The next advance over ISDN is ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines). ADSL will connect computers and televisions at speeds up to 9 megabits per second, 300 times faster than modems, 70 times faster than ISDN. ADSL uses existing phone lines, but requires that telephone companies update equipment to make ADSL service possible.  

With ADSL, multi-site videoconferencing will become a reality, with image quality comparable to current television standards of 30 frames per second. ADSL also will remove the last bottleneck to high speed access for the Internet, video on demand, video education, and myriad applications we can only imagine today. Current distance learning programs will be able to combine real time interaction with their existing low bandwidth asynchronous components.  

Internet and Web videoconferencing are already up and running, including versions that have been optimized for 56k modem connections. However, these have not been satisfying as image quality has been poor, only a few frames per second can be transmitted, multi-point conferencing is not feasible, and the size of the images has been criticized as postage stamp video.

Internet and Web versions of videoconferencing are often referred to as desktop videoconferencing because of their reliance of desktop PCs. Of course, if you attach a large monitor, projector or LCD panel to the computer the differences between Internet videoconferencing and other techniques become transparent to users. Desktop videoconferencing systems come in three basic types: those that operate over phone lines such as ISDN and POTS (plain old telephone service), those that operate over a LAN such as Ethernet, and dedicated systems that use special video cables between each connected computer. Ultimately, cable modems or ASDL are o provide the bandwidth required for Internet videoconferencing from home.

In the past, if two parties wanted to participate in a Web (H.320). Videoconferencing systems that support this standard can share not only video and audio, but white boards and other collaborative spaces (e.g. writing environments) as well. A turn key Internet-based group videoconferencing system can cost around $45,000 with desktop systems costing up to $8,000 per unit. There are a number of desktop videoconferencing systems now being marketed. 

Costs vary tremendously (the $8,000 price listed above is for a high end system). A cost effective alternative (under $150 for the addition items needed) for personal conferencing is a combination using the color Quickcam or other webcam and software such as Microsoft Netmeeting or CU-SeeMe. No additional computer components are needed to capture and process the video signals. High quality digital video cameras such be directly connected to a computer through a firewire port.

The next step in Internet videoconferencing is the embedding of the video images within a Web page format: live webcams. This allows additional class materials in HTML to be presented in the same computer screen space as the video interaction. Conference participants can share access to text, graphics, Java applets, etc., which have been prepared prior to the video conference, but remain available for review after the live session has disbanded. Examples include Vxtreme Web Theater.

Criminology courses and law enforcement academy training could include live field experiences as wireless modems permit instructor or student to broadcast or receive video images from remote locations. A researcher investigating alleged cases of police deviance planned to set up live Webcasts:

We will soon be broadcasting our investigations live to this web site. You will be able to watch our investigations of the police from the field. You can judge for yourself whether we are setting the cops up as many officers complain or do some police officers abuse their authority?

Distance education courses in the near future will be able to use all of these features, creating video rich multimedia, interactive learning environments. These experiments will be limited only by the imaginations of the faculty designing courses and the students interacting with the materials.

The Ultimate Distance Learning   A Harvard Law School lecture in Second Life. By CHRISTINE LAGORIO Published: January 7, 2007 Isaac Greenbaum, a continuing education student at New York University, remembers the day last semester when his media studies class was settling into a discussion of its next group project. Shortly after class began, a brawny, bare-chested figure bounded in wielding a crossbow. “This guy is shooting arrows, and if he hits you — of course, you can’t die — you get teleported to a different land. And he hit me! I got sent to, like, the Himalayas!” Sabotage can happen when your class is held in cyberspace, where a marauding avatar may just barge in and audit. Avatars are the virtual personas that users design and embellish (with anything from wings to, well, crossbows) to navigate the digital three-dimensional world called Second Life. Much of Second Life, now occupied by some two million users, mimics real life (R.L., in the vernacular): sun, sky, trees, waterways and anything users think to build. Were avatars the size of their human creators, the Second Life “grid” — a mainland and surrounding islands that users can buy with real money — would be the equivalent of more than 100 square miles. (Enter at www.secondlife.com.) Scores of colleges and universities have set up campuses on islands, where classes meet and students interact in real time. They can hold chat discussions and create multimedia presentations from virtual building blocks called prims. The laws of physics don’t necessarily apply. At Middletown Island (named for Ball State’s middle-American campus town, Muncie, Ind.), students hold after-class chats about their assignments while their avatars practice dance moves at the island tiki bar. They log in from their R.L. dorm rooms to decorate their avatars’ virtual dorm rooms. Instructors say the Second Life class experience is particularly enhanced for distance learners. In Second Life, classmates and instructor don’t just communicate in chat rooms; they can actually see one another — or, at least, digital alter egos — on screen. Bill Moseley, whose distance-learning course for Pepperdine University meets roughly every two weeks in Second Life, found an unexpected benefit: within the program’s lifelike graphic environment, his students had “a community online and the feeling of being together.” Nearly any time he logs on, he finds one or two tinkering with their project or exploring another area of the grid. For fun one day after class, everyone took a student’s new virtual dune buggy for a spin around Malibu Island (Pepperdine is in California, after all). Rebecca Nesson, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, brought her class at Harvard Extension School to Second Life last semester. “Normally, no matter how good a distance-learning class is, an inherent distance does still exist between you and your students,” she says. “Second Life has really bridged that gap. There is just more unofficial time that we spend together outside of the typical class session.” Linden Lab, the company that created and runs Second Life, has sold more than 100 islands for educational purposes, at about $1,000 each plus $150 monthly maintenance. Owners of islands have more sophisticated controls over the virtual experience, including the ability to make their land public or private (invisible to others). Since N.Y.U.’s media studies class was one of the school’s first forays into Second Life, the class, which is offered within the Paul McGhee Division for adult education, took up residence on an island called simply Campus: Second Life. Linden donates a free acre for the duration of a class so a college can experiment before investing in an island. SECOND LIFE’S education community is growing: subscribers to its education listserve number more than 1,000; at least three islands run by library groups are open to the public; and universities are collaborating by lending space on their own islands or sharing ideas. Graduate students doing research or teaching in Second Life have formed a mobile colony that holds discussions with experts in subjects like online ethics or aesthetics. Seton Hall, in South Orange, N.J., presented its Second Life teaching methods at a recent conference held on New Media Consortium’s island, and the MacArthur Foundation held a panel discussion called “The Future of Digital Education” on Harvard’s island. “A year ago, in ancient history, we heard educators saying, ‘Wow, I logged into Second Life, and it is pretty neat,’ ” says John Lester, manager of education and community development at Linden. “A year later, we’re seeing them produce case studies in Second Life, pointing out what worked, what didn’t and giving a direction to future educators.” For example, Second Life isn’t conducive to traditional lecturing, since streaming real-time audio is difficult. So class on the grid is less professor-centered, because of the free-for-all nature of real-time chat. “I prefer classes to be discussions, and that’s a necessity in Second Life,” says Ms. Nesson. “Things pop up in a less linear fashion than they do in a regular classroom.” Still, even when 10 students chime in, the threads of a discussion are easy to follow, she says. “But I’ve found that it is important to ask questions that are not entirely open-ended,” she adds, “because that’s when chaos ensues.” Christine Lagorio is a news producer at CBSNews.com. BALL STATE UNIVERSITY Sarah Robbins (above, as her avatar, Intellagirl) was already a “video-game-excited person” when she decided to conduct her section of English 104, a required writing course, in Second Life. Knowing the learning curve is steep, she put out a call last summer for interested underclassmen, and got 300 responses for 18 spots. Ms. Robbins doesn’t use Second Life to impart textbook knowledge; she sends her students out to interact with other inhabitants to get them thinking and writing — “about our own identity, and respecting the identities of others, and exploring the look of our own avatar.” A 500-word blog is due weekly. One day students dressed their avatars to look like pitchers of Kool-Aid and traveled as a pack to observe reactions. Did they feel safer or bizarre? Another day, they switched genders by editing body form. “I gave them a big box of clothes to use,” Ms. Robbins says. “The women in class all put on sort of dorky, unathletic clothing and became sort of intellectual-looking men. Men in the class all put on bikinis and had big guns.” The women’s alarmed reactions to the men’s wardrobe choices provided fodder for that week’s blog. “I wanted to break out of real-world learning,” Ms. Robbins says. HARVARD LAW SCHOOL Last semester, Harvard Law offered “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion,” which explored public expression and new media. Only law students could enroll in the portion taught by Prof. Charles Nesson in a bricks-andmortar classroom. But continuing-education students at Harvard Extension School could participate via Second Life. Some 40 avatars attended weekly “in world” classes and watched Professor Nesson’s lectures on a large screen in the outdoor lecture pit adjacent to Austin Hall (above). Sessions were held outdoors because, “for people who are new to Second Life, navigating the indoors can be difficult,” says Rebecca Nesson, the extension-school instructor who taught the course with, yes, her father. Harvard’s island is open to the public, and nonstudents eavesdropped: the law-school lectures were downloaded at least 300 times a week, and many avatars at large sat in on her class (although not many law students showed up). Some nonstudent avatars even logged in to visit Ms. Nesson during her virtual office hours. This winter, Professor Nesson is moving his intensive trial-procedure class, “Evidence,” into a newly built virtual courtroom where students can simulate cases. The public will be able to observe from a gallery.

Universities register for virtual future Students may soon meet with professors once a week and then use simulations, virtual worlds and downloads to complete coursework. By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: February 7, 2007, 9:15 AM PST   SAN FRANCISCO--If you want to know what higher education will look like in a few years, you might ask Charles Reed, chancellor of the largest four-year university system in the United States. As head of the California State University system--with 23 campuses, 46,000 employees and more than 400,000 students--Reed says he's worried about classroom space in the future because of, among other reasons, expanding enrollment. Consequently, Reed said he envisions students becoming more like telecommuters. They might meet with faculty and peers one day a week on campus, and then use simulations, virtual worlds and downloaded information the rest of the week to complete coursework. "It's not an either-or thing. We need the 'high touch,' but we need the high tech at the same time," Reed said Tuesday at Sun Microsystem's Worldwide Education and Research Conference here. The three-day conference kicked off Tuesday to a packed hotel ballroom of roughly 400 attendees hailing from universities around the world. Sun devoted a large part of the day to selling educators on its open-source technology for classroom computing. Sun Chairman Scott McNealy himself promoted a range of Sun efforts, including Project Blackbox, which creates data centers packaged in stackable shipping containers, and Curriki.org, which focuses on creating free curriculum in the mold of Wikipedia. "It's not an either-or thing. We need the 'high touch,' but we need the high tech at the same time." --Charles Reed, chancellor, California State University "Technology has to play a huge role in education. (It's) changed commerce...publishing...banking. It's got to change education big time," McNealy said during a keynote speech. Virtual worlds are already beginning to change higher education, according to several educators. For example, more than 70 universities have built island campuses in Second Life, according to Stuart Sim, CTO and chief architect of Moodlerooms, which builds structures in virtual worlds and offers course management software. Sim said his company is currently developing tools to help universities better manage students and courses delivered in Second Life. That way, universities can have an application to control adding or removing a student avatar to the island campus, he said. The project is dubbed Sloodle.com. Gerri Sinclair, executive director of the master's degree program for digital media at the Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver, Canada, said her group is building a Second Life virtual campus alongside its physical one. "Our students are digital natives, and they don't want to be reached in traditional ways. So we're creating a virtual campus as we're building our real campus," Sinclair said. Jane Kagon, director of UCLA's Extension Department of Entertainment Studies and Performing Arts, also announced during the conference that the university has opened a Second Life island for its digital-film students. "It's an interesting time" to be part of gaming, noted Chris Melissinos, Sun's chief gaming officer. "There's an opportunity to grab this technology and new modes of communication and use them for a greater purpose." In that vein, Melissinos discussed Sun's Project Darkstar, which is designed to help developers of online games via server-side technology. With this technology, developers can create multiplayer online games that can be run on any game device, he said. Sun plans to demonstrate the technology at a game conference next month and will offer a free license for it to schools and universities, he said. Still, there are downsides to mixing virtual worlds and education. For example, Sinclair said that her school held a seminar in Second Life and an avatar entered the room and began shooting at all the other avatars. "We didn't know if we should duck," she said. An administrator in the seminar left the room and figured out how to ban the offender. Melissinos said Sun is working on open-source client-side software, called Project Wonderland, so developers can build applications on top of its server-side software. That presumably could solve security issues. "We wouldn't do business in Second Life there because it is insecure. That (security is) necessary for education, too," Melissinos said. Ultimately, Reed said, he cannot talk about where education is headed without talking about the future of technology because "it's shaping how we reach out to students and team (with) them in every way," he said. The California State University system, for example, plans to finish in 2008 a new so-called common management system, which will combine financial information, human resources and student services for all 23 campuses on one network. It will let students and faculty access information from any location. CSU also has systems in place for admission applications, teacher training and college prep tools. Reed said that schools' biggest challenges are in keeping costs down, getting teachers and students linked on the systems, updating outdated technology and keeping the system secure. For example, he said CSU gets as many as 100,000 hits a day from hackers trying to access personal, financial data on students and faculty in its system. "Many of the challenges we face today," he said, "are similar to ones the rest of the country's universities will face in the next 8 to 10 years."

Additional Resources:

Satellite 101
http://www.hughespace.com/sat101.html

Glossary of Satellite Terms
http://www.satnews.com/glossary.html

Satellite Program Providers
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/satellite/satprov.htm

American Law Network (ALN)
http://www.ali-aba.org/aliaba/aln.htm

Law Enforcement Training Network
http://www.letn.com

Emergency Education NETwork (EENET)
http://www.fema.gov/emi/eenet.htm

Federal Training Network
http://fedlearn.com/

PBS Adult Learner Service
http://www.pbs.org/als/

Enhancing the Educational Impact of
Distance Learning Experiences at the Local Level
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/cybela.htm

Compressed Video
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/vidconf/classroom.html

About ISDN
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/%7Edank/isdn/isdn_ai.html

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines
http://www.adsl.com/

Cable Modems
http://elaine.teleport.com/~samc/cable5.html

Desktop Videoconferencing Products
http://www3.ncsu.edu/dox/video/products.html

Videoconferencing for Learning
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/vidconf/

Desktop Videoconferencing
http://newmedia.com/NewMedia/95/11/td/vidconf/
Desktop_Videoconferencing.html

VTEL Videoconferencing Solutions
http://www.vtel.com/

Quickcam
http://www.quickcam.com/

CU-SeeMe
http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/
Multimedia/Videoconferencing/CU_SeeMe/

Elements of an Effective CU-SeeMe Video Conference
http://www.gsn.org/teach/articles/videoconf.html

Microsoft Netmeeting
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting/

ClassPoint
http://www.wpine.com/products/ClassPoint/index.html

Vxtreme
http://www.microsoft.com/netshow/vxtreme/software.htm

 

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4. Using Games and Simulations as Teaching Tools

No one has ever said that "learning can't be fun" or that "fun can't be educational." In addition to the asynchronous and synchronous technologies described so far, new types of software applications are revolutionizing teaching. It's now possible to design and use simulations and games that are both fun and educational. Everything from virtual chemistry labs to emergency room scenarios to ethnographic field trips have been created. These can be sent to distance learners on CD-ROMs for home use, put on campus lab computers for outside of class exercises, or made available over the Internet for both types of students.  

Today's computer games fall into three major categories; shoot-em ups, mystery and puzzle games, and system simulations. Each could prove useful in creating realistic criminal justice simulations capable of teaching rapid response skills, research skills, decision making logic, and long-term planning abilities. By combining elements of the three modes in one simulation, hybrid learning environments can be created. By adding models borrowed from game theory, artificial intelligence, and computer-based algorithms, simulations can better reflect real world situations.  While in the past games were typically one user interacting with a computer, the Internet and networked computing have opened up gaming to group participation, widening dramatically the skills which can be taught. Networked games can teach the benefits of collaborative work over reliance solely on the resources of independent individuals. Games integrated as part of 3D multi-user interactive worlds are likely to become the network computer interface of the near future.

Lately I’ve been thinking about where we go after Windows, how the human/computer interface will evolve, and what it means for computer professionals and enthusiasts. Indeed, I believe the first primitive versions of the next interface have already been delivered.

They’re called video games.

The computer era of tomorrow will be created and controlled by the children of today. Kids don’t think of computer interaction in terms of menus and windows, but of games. This points to two developments: a new kind of interface, and a new kind of collaboration.

You could even say that the next interface is burnt into kids brains. A growing body of evidence suggests that early childhood patterns become hard-wired. Our brains are born with many "extra" connections. Those that get used often survive and strengthen. The rest atrophy.

So, when you say, "they think differently than we did" you’re not just mouthing a cliché. You are describing an actual anatomical difference. Because of patterns etched during their early years, baby boomer brains—TV generation brains—are wired differently than those of the generation before, which grew up without TV.

The video game generation sees things differently, too. Think about the spatial metaphor that dominates most games. Typically, the hero wanders rooms interacting with objects—weapons, treasures, enemies, other users. Now think about the expectations engendered by this mindset. Gamers expect:

 

• to be "inside" the interface, represented by an avatar or character. (Contrast this with today’s metaphor, where users stand apart from the interface and interact with it.)

• to navigate "through" the environment

• to learn by trial and error, with no penalty (you can always come back to life)

• to have clues everywhere in case they get lost

• to encounter objects that are "alive" and actionable

As you consider these assumptions, you can start to see the outlines of a new interface. Where databases become information villages, with maps, streets and landmarks. Where documents can be visualized as rivers, highways and the like. And you can start to see the contour of a new kind of collaboration. One that happens in real time, with both parties "inside" the interface, interacting with the environment and each other.

Does the idea of 3D landscapes for business applications seem unlikely, silly, "not right?" The new interface will initially make us as uncomfortable as today’s computers made our parents. But there’s not much we can do about it. Today’s interface is at the end of its useful life. Tomorrow’s interface is already struggling to hatch. Chances are it will have little in common with the drop-down menus of Windows. And much more to do with the Nintendo 64...

 


Promo for Redneck Rampage

Yahoo actually lists six game categories, with the numbers of Web game pages for each listed below:

Action (1830)  Adventure (114)  Role Playing (823)

Simulation (566)  Sports (383)  Strategy (926)

For the purposes of discussing how games might play a useful role in criminal justice education if adapted properly, I have reclassified them into three broad categories:
(1) shoot-em ups, (2) mystery and puzzle games, and (3) system simulations. 

 

Are Shoot-em Ups Dangerous for Our Kids?    Quake 3 Arena screen capture  One of the most frequently asked questions about kids' fascination with these types of games is, whether such violent game play is dangerous? I've previously tried to address similar questions as have many social scientists. A number are quite concerned: While the studies on video games and aggressive behavior must be considered preliminary, it may be reasonably inferred from the more than 1,000 reports and studies on television violence that video game violence may also contribute to aggressive behavior and desensitization to violence. I'm not quite as worried about the negative impact of video games given the way results are generated in many of these studies. The changing responses to pre- and post-test questionnaires may be the result of a Hawthorne effect. In addition, Twitchell (1989) has identified "preposterous violence" as an persistent adolescent male preoccupation. What about girls? Girls are not as interested in killing games as boys, part of the overall gender imbalance in use of computers by kids. Computer games are proving to be a major factor attracting young boys to play with computers at increasingly earlier ages. This early access helps to make them feel comfortable with the technology. To date, the game companies have been far less effective in producing games which target girls and some now fear that the result will be a further exaggeration of the gap between male and female participation in technology and science. The paucity of software specifically for girls was witnessed firsthand at E3. Besides Clueless, Barbie, and Cosmo makeovers, little was available. Recently, I've been involved in a series of focus groups in which juvenile delinquent teens have been asked to describe the kind of worlds they would create on a computer. Boys and girls worlds differed greatly. Boys wanted to create higher levels for Quake while girls wanted to create homes and communities in which they could discuss personal problems.  Additional Resources: Media Effects Theories http://www.fsu.edu/~crimdo/lecture1.html#effects Mediascope http://www.mediascope.org/ Video Game Violence http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ivgv.htm Hawthorne Effect http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/HAWTHO_EFFEC.html Virtuous Video Games? http://hotwired.lycos.com/synapse/katz/98/02/index1a.html From Barbie to Mortal Kombat http://web.mit.edu/womens-studies/www/cyvixen.html Twitchell, James. 1989. Preposterous violence: Fables of aggression in modern culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

If one reversed the logic of today's shoot-em ups, they could be used as teaching tools for law enforcement training. In the shoot-em ups, firing one's weapon often is the first response to any appearance of an intruder; in police work discharging one's weapon is the choice of last resort. Nevertheless, in real police work, officers sometimes must make split second decisions on whether to shoot or hold their fire. However, by following proper police procedures, officers can limit the times they end in situations in which such choices must be made. The BEAT series of interactive CD-ROMs made by St. Petersburg Junior College used standard training procedures as the game model. Combining simulated stop and search situations with multiple user options, officers were taught how to avoid being placed in life and death situations. The scene below would never have occurred had the officer "called for back-up."

Rookie Officer is Dead Meat in BEAT!

2. Mystery and puzzle games are another staple of the computer gaming industry. One subcategory is best described as "interactive cinema" (Friedman, 1995). The game player enters into the game's world as the protagonist. In effect, the game typically has a narrative structure that the player must follow from beginning to end. In order not to bore the game player and to make the story interactive, the games is set up as a series of puzzles that must be solved in order to progress through the narrative.

A second option is to design the game more like hypertext, meaning it is not required to follow the narrative in a linear way. There are many paths to the same conclusion. Its also possible to construct the game with multiple endings, but each level of increasing variability requires additional design, programming, and expense for the game company. In some games, every choice you make effects your future options and the attitudes and actions of other game characters in the future. For example, being friendly to a character early on in the game may determine whether they're willing to help you later on when your life is in peril. Games can follow dozens of different story lines with many of the scenes never visited.

What is driving the increased complexity of such games? Dedicated computer gamers (again largely adolescent males) have come to expect better graphics, more difficult puzzles, etc., so that each generation of games must be better than the last. This, of course makes the games much more difficult for novices, opening up a secondary market in help books and cheats.  

Do you hate the spaceship in Myst as much as I do?

I could never match the notes on the organ located inside the rocket ship. I tried taping the first set of sounds and replaying them while trying to set the slider bar!!!  Here's the solution: Play the notes from the Selenitic Age book in the organ, and set the same notes in the controls of the ship. If you're tone deaf, just count number of notes from the bottom. (8, 20, 23, 13, and 6, respectively, including the bottom as one). Press the button and the book will appear before you.

The mystery and puzzle game model has lent itself very well to crime-related games. Given that solving crimes in which no apparent criminal is at hand is much like solving a mystery, police and detective games abound. These include games based on Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe novels, and the Police Quest series, etc. There are now online mystery sites as well. The Crime Scene Evidence File has fooled a number of visitors into thinking it was a real case.

The problem with most of these games is that they attempt to do police investigation and forensic analysis without an adequate grounding in the scientific basis of either. Crime detection and forensic science are disciplines ultimately based upon applying rigorous scientific analysis to multiple hypotheses, testing each, and then choosing the best supported one. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's Daubert decision, such methodology is essential. It attempted to:

...place appropriate limits on the admissibility of purportedly scientific evidence by assigning to the trial judge the task of ensuring that an expert's testimony both rests on a reliable foundation and is relevant to the task at hand. The reliability standard is established by Rule 702's requirement that an expert's testimony pertain to "scientific . . . knowledge," since the adjective "scientific" implies a grounding in science's methods and procedures, while the word "knowledge" connotes a body of known facts or of ideas inferred from such facts or accepted as true on good grounds. 

Simulated crime scene includes gruesome photos

Given that Web sites are easier to design that complete games, this may be the forum where interactive scientifically-based forensics simulations emerge. The Crime Scene Evidence File is one example. Combined with the growing number of academic forensic sites on the Web, students can learn a great deal about the art of collecting, analyzing, and preparing criminal evidence for court. The game D.A: Pursuit of Justice is one of best courtroom prep simulations to date. You know who did it; proving it was another matter. The game was so tough to win the U.S. Justice Department used it to prepare their attorneys for trial. 

Game Theory Rough (but Silly) Justice and Striking (Also Silly) Moves   A prosecutor and a witness in "Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All." By CHARLES HEROLD Published: January 25, 2007 When the judge in a murder case pronounces a defendant not guilty, I doubt that confetti streams from the ceiling. I also suspect that the prosecutor is rarely a foul-tempered teenager who carries a whip and curtsies when she presents compelling evidence. But if trials were as entertaining in the real world as in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Justice for All, it might be worth jury duty just see it all firsthand.   PHOENIX WRIGHT ACE ATTORNEY: JUSTICE FOR ALL Developed and published by CapCom for Nintendo DS; for ages 13 and up; $29.99.  Phoenix Wright is the spiky-haired defense lawyer previously seen in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. In this sequel from CapCom for Nintendo DS, most of the rest of the cast also returns, including Phoenix’s psychic sidekick, Maya, and the glum detective Dick Gumshoe. With their help, Phoenix seeks out evidence to exonerate clients facing seemingly incontrovertible testimony. This testimony comes from odd characters, including a ventriloquist who is continually insulted and pummeled by his dummy, a clown who uses makeup that is “sensitive enough for a baby, strong enough for a mime” and a security guard who wears an astronaut suit and carries a toy ray gun that she fires whenever she is annoyed. The prosecutor for most of the cases is an 18-year-old legal prodigy who derides Phoenix with remarks like “only a foolish-looking fool could be fooled by such a foolish fool’s foolish dream.” The game is divided into two parts: investigative segments in which you gather clues, and courtroom sequences where you must exploit inconsistencies in a witness’s testimony using deductive reasoning. If a witness swears your client was standing over the body with a knife, you must review the evidence in the court record for proof that the witness must have been looking the other way, or the knife was actually a carrot, or your client could not possibly have been seen wearing that particular pair of shoes. Find the right evidence and Phoenix will shout “Hold it!,” the jury will murmur in shock and the witness will cry out “Arrrgh!” Present the wrong evidence and Phoenix will stammer out a confused objection, after which the judge will penalize him; earn enough penalties and your client will wind up on death row. Winning is made more difficult by a legal system in which disproving every shred of evidence is not enough; you must get the murderer to confess on the stand. Fortunately for Phoenix, it seems every killer will make a public confession in a courtroom if you just show that missing shoelace or torn photograph that proves that only one person could have committed the crime. Justice is a terrific game, but it suffers in comparison with the previous one. This time around the plot twists aren’t quite as unexpected (you usually know who the real killer is fairly early on), and some of the puzzles in the last case are rather unreasonable. And while the previous game gave the player some cute toys, like a fingerprint kit and a liquid that revealed blood stains, there is little of that in the sequel. But as in the first game, Justice has gripping stories, clever, logical puzzles and laugh-out-loud dialogue. E-mail: Herold@nytimes.com

3. There are a number of other kinds of simulations. The types of simulations which hold great promise for criminal justice education are those that model social systems (system simulations), with the SimCity line of games being the most well known.  

The Sims simulates family and community life

Playing a systems simulation game is very different from a shoot-em up or puzzle game. As Ted Friedman (1995) points out:

The interaction between human and computer is constant and intense. Game playing is a continuous flow---it can be very hard to stop because the player is always in the middle of dozens of different projects...By the time the player has made a complete pass through the city, a whole new bunch of problems and opportunities have developed...The game can grow so absorbing, in fact, that players' subjective sense of time is distorted...the player forms a symbiotic circuit with the computer, a version of the cyborgian consciousness...

Given that criminal justice is itself a system and at the same time is constrained by the larger social system in which it is embedded, a systems-modeled simulation is a natural teaching tool. The functionalist cybernetic approach to criminology can be modeled within a system simulation. 

As in life, learning and winning in a computer game is a process of demystification. One learns the principles behind the game while discovering the inevitable flaws in its design. There are no perfect computer games, just as there are no functioning systems without problems. 

Can SimCity be used to teach criminology? We discover that SimCity has its own ideas about what causes crime and how to lessen it. According to Dargahi and Bremer (1995):

...crime breeds and spreads in areas of low land value and high population density. High crime also lowers the local land value, forming a feedback effect which can get out of control and lead to riots. Providing law enforcement, lowering the population density, and raising the land value are actions that defeat or lower the crime rate.

Law enforcement includes building both police stations and jails. A fully-personed police station, following the overall contiguously-based simulation engine of Sim City, lowers the crime rate proportionally in 5 radial areas surrounding the station. The closer to the police station a radial is the greater the crime reduction impact.

Jails/prisons in SimCity makes the police stations more effective because police do not have to guard the captured criminals at the station, but can return to their beats. Jails, if they become overcrowded (more than 10,000 inmates) start to release criminals back into society early; the result can be that crime runs rampant in the sector. Under normal conditions 25% of the inmates are released each year. Finally, there is a build-in NIMBY (not in my back yard) feature; sims attempt to block the building of jails in their neighborhoods.

Obviously, this model is overly simplistic and largely ignores the myriad of factors which could be taken into consideration in any multivariate analysis of crime causation and cessation. Whether the Sim City geo-spatial model is even adequate could be questioned. A thorough review of studies dating back to the concentric zone mapping done by the University of Chicago Department of Sociology in the 1920s through today's use of computerized mapping and GIS technologies might result in a more accurate model. SimCity 3000 features layered maps that allow users to isolate crime hot spots. 

SimCity Network Edition uses Internet Chat to allow multiple city managers to collaborate or compete. City managers themselves play multiple roles, requiring gamers to constantly shift identificatory positions.

A simulation based on the NYPD model might prove instructive. In the 1990s, New York City credits the use of geo-spatial computer technology to decreased crime rates:

The systematic approach was basic. Use computer databases and push-pin maps to mark troubled sites. These sites would become easily identifiable once someone, or something, kept track of any wrongdoing in that particular locality. The department designed computer maps to plot crime trends daily for every street in New York City. This way, the criminals could be stopped before they make their next move. The success of the strategy in New York law enforcement seems to reject the theory that crime is mysteriously tied to being poor or a victim of social prejudice. 

The advent of networked and online gaming has significantly changed the nature of computer simulations. (After years of playing Scrabble vrs. a computer, I finally have some real world opponents.) While in the past games were typically one user interacting with a computer, the Internet has opened up games to group participation, widening dramatically the skills which can be taught. Networked games can teach the benefits of collaborative work over reliance solely on the resources of independent individuals.

Of course, all types of games have migrated to the Net, including shoot-em ups, puzzle games, and simulations. Doom and Quake fanatics can kill daily. Quake, for instance, can pit up to 16 players against one another in a death match. 

In solo mode, players wander through a dark and dangerous virtual world, killing hideous monsters with an arsenal of weapons. The graphics are incredible and gameplay is frighteningly realistic. In a multiplayer mode, you stalk other players who appear as buff, armor-clad soldiers toting ridiculously large guns. Playing against computer-generated monsters is fun, but playing against other humans, who, in most cases, are a lot smarter-is absolutely compelling. It's like cops-and-robbers on digital steroids.

online quiz games such as You Don't Know Jack mix multiplayer gaming with unavoidable commercial advertising. Former inhabitants of text-based MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs and Dungeons & Dragons players find they can now visit the Realm, (a much friendlier looking place than Quake) and role play for endless hours. On a recent visit to a cybercafe in Copenhagen, I found the club filled with young adult males immersed in Internet role play games.

Looks like this is more girl-friendly than shoot-em ups!

 

The Realm is an interactive fantasy world where people can go on a quest or scour a dark forest for monsters, or simply find a quiet corner of the landscape to talk to a friend. Players can be powerful warriors, shadowy thieves, magical wizards or brave adventurers. One can choose a criminal career as a thief:

A thief thrives by moving quickly and quietly. Thieves usually become adept at opening locked objects, robbery, ambush and avoiding traps. Many a Realm resident has discovered items missing from an encounter with a thief. Also, for those seeking a well-guarded treasure, a skilled thief in a party can be a valuable asset.

 

 

The Realm was developed by Sierra, whose game designer, Ken Williams (1997), has given significant thought as to how to make all future games multiplayer. There were some differences of opinion within the company on what form multiplayer adventure games should take, particularly over whether the story plot or player interaction should dominate. One possibility considered was to create specific chat rooms for each level or act within a game, so that players could interact with others at the same place in a game. This assumed all would be following the same narrative toward a common end point. The Realm, however, ultimately was designed with no plot; only you determine whether to make friends, explore new worlds, or fight monsters. Future networked games may also include management and behind the scenes aspects. For example, rather than just racing cars, the player may first have to design the car, hire a racing team, and interact with the corporation sponsoring the racer, etc. These would all be roleplayed by other game players.  In the long run, games themselves may become interlinkable. After a hard day at work designing your race car, you might change clothes and join other avatars in trophy bass fishing. 

The most discussed online gaming initiative is Ultima Online. Based on the original Ultima series of role playing games, the online version is based upon the recognition that thousands of game players can't all be after the same quest. Instead the online world is a functioning community with participants adopting trades of their choice, learning lessons borrowed from ecology, and taking part in cooperative endeavors. The designer referred to it as a medieval agrarian simulation. Over 150,000 copies of game's CD-ROM were sold in a few months, overwhelming the company's expectations about how many would want to participate. 10,000 new online players were showing up each week, with players staying online an average of 4 to 6 hours a day.

Video Games O Brave New World That Has Such Gamers in It   One “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade” destination is the Dark Portal, gateway to Outland.   By SETH SCHIESEL Published: January 19, 2007 This week it’s likely that thousands of people cut school, called in sick and otherwise turned away from the real world so they could be among the first adventurers to traverse the Dark Portal and battle the demons of the Burning Legion in the broken world of Outland. Call it the World of Warcraft effect. This is what happens when Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft, the top online computer game with more than eight million paying subscribers, releases the game’s first retail expansion set. The Burning Crusade, as the set is titled, went on sale at midnight Tuesday. For people who don’t play online games, it can be a little difficult to describe the freakout many gamers experience as they try to explore and conquer the new content. Imagine the convergence of rabid fans if, say, Luciano Pavarotti were to star in a long-hyped live remake of “Star Trek” at Carnegie Hall, with special appearances by Tom Cruise and Kiefer Sutherland. It’s a bit like that, except for people who mostly don’t read People, care about Jack Bauer or subscribe to the Met. I’m one of them, which is why I spent 24 almost consecutive hours at my computer playing and why I will be playing the game for most of the next couple of weeks as I write an online serial review and travelogue through the most successful virtual world in, well, the world. The reason World of Warcraft has become such a cash factory (the game has attracted more than eight million subscribers, most of whom pay about $15 a month to play) is that it delivers an overall entertainment experience that goes far beyond what one might expect from a mere game. For example, in the new addition, as soon as you cross through the mystical Dark Portal and into the new continent Outland, you are immediately confronted with an epic battle taking place on the gate’s steps between the grotesque Burning Legion and the heroic defenders of peace and justice. It is an effect meant to impress that the player is merely part of a much larger, more important story. It is the same device used in the opening scenes of war films like “Saving Private Ryan” to viscerally establish the broader context before narrowing to focus on a much smaller-scale human drama. Of course in an online role-playing game like World of Warcraft the biggest and most central draw for most players is in exploring that virtual world and making one’s character more powerful. The two concepts — exploration and growth — go together. In W.O.W., as in most such games, characters begin life as a weakling at what is called Level 1. And since W.O.W.’s debut in late 2004, characters have been capped at Level 60. After two years of players champing at the bit to advance, Burning Crusade has raised the cap to Level 70 and opened seven new high-level zones for players to explore, complete quests and defeat monsters. The fun part is that on each server, or copy of the game world, thousands of other players — humans and orcs, wizards and rogues, druids and warlocks — are trying to do the same thing. What naturally emerges, at least among some players, is a race, or land-rush, mentality. There is a whole new continent to explore, all this new power to attain; who will see and experience it first? And so at midnight Tuesday the starter’s gun went off. Around 5:45 a.m., after completing most of the available quests in the first zone, called Hellfire Peninsula, I became the second player on my server to reach Level 61, around 20 minutes after another gamer in my guild. I moved west to the moody, slightly creepy bogland zone called Zangarmarsh and became my server’s first Level 62er just before noon. By then I was receiving dozens of private messages in the game every hour from players I had never met who could see that my guildmate and I were out front: “OMG how did you level so fast?,” “Hey you must have a lot of gold, can I have some?” and of course “You guys are huge nerds.” (Yes, and proud ones, I might add.) The chatter only increased after I became the first on my server to reach Level 65 early yesterday morning. In addition to bragging rights there is a very practical reason for wanting to stay in front of the pack in a situation like this. Only by maintaining a lead does one gets to experience the world in an almost pristine state. As I moved into lush Terokkar Forest Wednesday, there was almost no one else there, creating a blissful sense of exploration akin to hiking into Yosemite well before the tourists arrive. In a week Terokkar will be packed full of the equivalent of tour buses and noisy R.V.’s. As I continue to explore I will share my impressions and progress. After I reach Level 70 I hope to loop back and explore some of Burning Crusade’s other new features, like the new alternate starting areas for low-level characters.

Multiplayer gaming as the basis for designing criminal justice simulations will allow the creation of complex models. For example, for an overview of the criminal justice system course, two interlocked simulations could be created. Both could be based on a systems model simulation engine similar to those used in Sim City and The Sims (this simulates citizens making ordinary life decisions), but using better developed understandings of crime causation and cessation. The first would be a simulation of the criminal justice system itself, the second a simulation of the larger social system in which decisions about matters which impact on the criminal justice are made. In fact, both simulations are fundamentally interrelated; those playing roles within the criminal justice system will find their options, resources, etc., continually being modified by choices made by role players in the social system simulation. For example, as appropriated legislative expenditures for prisons and jails go up and the share remaining for education goes down, expect juvenile delinquency to be on the rise, creating problems for police, courts, and the juvenile justice system. Half of the students could be assigned to each simulation at the beginning of the course, and at the half-way point of the course switch to the other one. By taking the role of the other students might learn how to facilitate system needs rather than block them. The text and hypertext materials included in the course would help to provide clues on how to play the game better. 

Below is a more detailed example of how an Internet simulation could be used to develop skills that would be difficult to teach in a college classroom or police academy, and impossible to set up in the field. Sorry if this reads too much like a grant proposal, but that was it's original form.

Using a Virtual City to Teach Community Policing Skills Copyright Cecil Greek 1999 The following proposal describes the procedures that will be employed to develop a new technology for police training, using a 3D virtual model of a typical city. The virtual community will be used to train police recruits in both short term and long term problem solving techniques. Officers will interact virtually with citizens and other officers as they are faced with problems likely to be encountered in the real world. Problem solving training can be offered in text materials or discussed in classes, but the ability to role play such situations and develop responses particular to specific neighborhoods and their residents while virtually experiencing these factors is simply not possible today.  Using a simulation the following topics can be introduced in an integrated manner within a nonthreatening environment: investigative science, nonintrusive concealed weapons and contraband-detection technology, officer protection, and firearms. In addition, information technology areas such as data management, information analysis, and Internet communications will be demonstrated. BACKGROUND This proposal builds upon a number of upgrades already made to a basic recruit curriculum, and others that are now being completed.  Key already completed or under development components include: (1) redesign of the basic recruit curriculum,  (2) incorporation of scenarios as the basis for all training, (3) interactive CD-ROM featuring a number of the problem solving scenarios, and (4) complete design, on paper, of a virtual community and surrounding environment for use within the scenario-based training. This project represents the first effort to move the basic recruit curriculum into an Internet-based distance learning environment.  The simulation will become a fundamental part of the infrastructure needed to teach the recruit curriculum in distance learning mode. The 3D simulation described here will serve as the capstone to the new recruit curriculum in problem solving. (a) Recruits will discuss problem solving throughout their academy experience, as it is threaded through the entire curriculum within the scenarios. (b) After their exposure to problem solving, students will use the interactive videos to develop and refine their problem solving skills. (c) Finally, the 3D version of a virtual city will allow students to role play situations, with citizens and other officers, likely to be encountered in the community. Of course, the use of the role play simulation could be introduced somewhere near the middle of academy training; with repeated use of role play recruits should be expected to develop better action plans. This is similar to the US Justice Department’s repeat use of the interactive CD-ROM DA: Pursuit of Justice (Legacy Software, 1997) to prepare attorneys for trial. Basic Recruit Curriculum Redesign (1) Over the past three years the entire basic recruit curriculum has been redesigned. It is different from the traditional curriculum in the following ways: New instruction focuses on application of learning rather than memorization A Problem-Solving Model will be used throughout the academy Instruction is initiated through scenarios that are set in a virtual city New curriculum includes lesson plans, support materials, and student workbook A new certification exam will include both application and knowledge questions The new curriculum is based upon the S.E.C.U.R.E. problem solving model, which is similar to SARA as developed by Herman Goldstein (Police Executive Research Forum, 1999). SECURE represents Safety, Ethics, Community, Understanding, Response, and Evaluation as the order of thought an officer would generally follow when approaching a new problem situation. SECURE combines a first response model to resolve short-term problems and a long-term problem solving model to be used to examine root conditions that might cause the problem to reoccur. (2) A key component of the new curriculum is that it is scenario driven. A scenario is a description of a situation or incident that requires the learner to apply skills or knowledge to define the problem to determine what to do to solve the problem. An example scenario: Post college football game drinking has spilled over into destructive behavior in an area of town with a number of bars. Officers are called to the scene of a rowdy crowd and must develop an immediate response plan, followed by a long-term plan to avoid repeated occurrences. (3) A number of sample scenarios will be videotaped for inclusion on an interactive training CD-ROM. The software will include several decision points for each scenario based on the SECURE model. What happens next will depend upon the choices made by officer recruits. Wise decisions will help to diffuse immediate problems. Long-term planning decisions will help to avoid repeated problem situations. Both positive and negative outcomes will be filmed so that students can experience either.   (4) The scenarios will take place in a fictional town. The imaginary town has all the physical elements, criminal justice agencies, community service agencies, residential, business, and government areas, and outlying small communities that might be encountered by criminal justice officers. It will be populated by imaginary citizens who represent the various types of persons criminal justice officers would encounter on their jobs.  A complete set of details of the street and road layouts, buildings, and people has been completed. PROJECT DESIGN SPECIFICS : 3D Interactive Version of a Virtual City This proposal is for a 3D interactive version of a virtual city to be used for role play-based training, as follow-up to the video scenarios described above. The use of a 3D immersive environment will permit officers to take into consideration a number of factors at once while interacting with multiple citizens. Thus, such a simulation will be closer to real world community conditions than a text-based or video-driven training module. The advantages of using simulations in training are many.  This type of training would be nearly impossible to model within actual communities. The 3D virtual city will be constructed using ActiveWorlds software. ActiveWorlds is Internet-based, 3D chat world software that has a large existing stock of building materials, avatars, and bots (pre-programmed avatars or objects. Avatars are 3D representations of human beings able to interact with other avatars and their simulated environment. Avatars have a range of physical movements they can display such as walking, waving, jumping, and fighting. Additional objects and avatars can be designed in any 3D graphics software package and imported into ActiveWorlds. Additional animation movements can be added using Life Forms software. Bots can be programmed using C++.  All graphics can be loaded from CD-ROM rather than the Internet for fast response on all client computers.  As a potential training tool, Active Worlds supports text chat, sound files, hot spot links (to anywhere on the Internet), and accompanying Web pages in the same browser window. Any audio chat program (or videoconferencing program) can be used simultaneously with ActiveWorlds. The ActiveWorlds client software is free. The ActiveWorlds version of a virtual city will be constructed. In order to properly prepare the city for role play situations, the following will be required: designing neighborhoods and buildings, avatars, and bots, recording sound files, and writing scripting and personality profiles for role playing with avatars. A large number of existing objects and avatars are available from ActiveWorlds and the hundreds of already completed online worlds, giving us a major head start. In addition, a back end database that contains information about the city's neighborhoods (crime stats, demographic factors, housing statistics, community organizations, etc.) will need to be designed.  While inside the simulation, recruits will be able to click on hot spots to bring up database information about the community for use in problem solving. The database will contain simulated data that can be searched by month intervals, thus providing a time series component. For example, users will be able to review crime statistics for each neighborhood by month, going back twelve months. Tipping Points and Problem Solving One additional set of environmental elements will be added to the existing model. Greg Saville will assist in redesigning several of the neighborhoods in the virtual city employing his “community tipping points” model. Saville has documented that certain neighborhood factors (e.g., the number of abandoned buildings, bars, etc.) are directly related to local crime rates. When the number of crime attracters in a particular neighborhood reaches a critical mass, the crime rate increases dramatically. By modeling these factors within a 3D community in which officers can walk by, enter, and inspect buildings, another aspect of problem-solving policing can be demonstrated. This part of the project alone is quite significant, as it has implications not only for policing, but also for urban planning, ordinance and code enforcement, and community social policy. Problem Solving by Working With the Community While one of the major tenets of problem solving and community oriented policing is that police should work cooperatively with local community leaders and organizations, unfortunately sometimes community policing becomes something done “to” a community rather than with them. Within the 3D version of the virtual city, scenarios will be developed that encourage direct police cooperation with community organizations such as churches, schools, businesses, grass roots and fraternal organizations, etc. Leaders of these organizations will appear as citizens within the simulation and interact with police. Evaluation Instruments Given the large number of factors recruits will be able to consider in developing short and long term solutions to the problems they encounter in the virtual city, a traditional evaluation instrument is not possible. There may be no one best solution to a problem, particularly for long term problems. Thus, the pedagogical goals will be to train officers to consider as broad a range of factors as possible, develop a number of alternative solutions, evaluate each considering its potential impact on the community, decide upon a plan of action, implement it, then get feedback from the community and make changes to the plan as needed based upon feedback. The model is in reality a cybernetic systems approach. One effective way to incorporate evaluative instruments into the simulation is to include them in the help system. The help system will be set up so that users can go to it to check their progress. For example, a number of checklists can be built into the help system so that students can see which factors they have not yet considered in their plans. The help system can de designed with an option that allows review checklists only to be seen after students have submitted their plans, and therefore serve as an evaluative feedback mechanism. Similarly, outcomes for each scenario based upon plans likely to be submitted by students can be preprogrammed and used as feedback for recruits. However, there will need to be evaluations of students’ plans done by the instructors directing the students, as every possible plan that might be developed by a student cannot be anticipated.   Additional Resources: ActiveWorlds http://www.activeworlds.com Life Forms software http://www.credo-interactive.com

Games and simulations such as those described above can be useful teaching tools, but the outcomes may not mirror reality. Of course, this also presumes that game players will agree to interact according to the rules laid out in the simulated world. However, deviant players, like real world criminals, will not follow the rules. In working out how to response to deviant game players, students may get to put the classic fourfold model of punishment, taught in every introductory criminal justice course, to a test. Within Ultima Online, p-killers emerged who rather than developing skills and working to advance themselves, instead killed and robbed other players. Something very similar happened at Kymer (Worlds Away), according to Robert Rossney:

 

Kymer's inhabitants are spinning a culture of their own. This is most visible in the strange crimes that Kymer's tricksters and malcontents learned to commit and the practices the more law-abiding citizens have adopted to defend against them. For instance, while the wedding I attended was festive, its participants were also on guard against wedding bandits--raiders who crash the party, steal the valuable decorations on the floor, and run away. And then there are the headhunters.

Buying a head is the most prominent way to assert your identity in Kymer. Your choice of a head determines how other people see you. (It's not for nothing that in wedding ceremonies the bride and groom momentarily exchange heads.) It's no coincidence that heads are among the most expensive artifacts in Kymer's virtual economy of tokens. As objects of great value, heads also attract criminals.

The headhunters hang out by the docks, waiting for the boat that brings new users to Kymer. When a newcomer disembarks, the headhunter welcomes him with a friendly greeting. He gives the newbie a few hints on places to go and things to do. Then he moves in.

"Here's something fun," he might say. "Did you know you can take off your head? Try it!"

The newcomer removes his head. "So I can! That's pretty neat!"

"Here," says the headhunter, "let me show you something else. Give me your head."

You would think that most people would have the sense not to give something valuable, like their head, to a complete stranger. Judging from the number of headless avatars I saw wandering forlornly around the streets of Kymer, a fair amount of people do not. To combat the plague of headhunters, public-spirited citizens have started frequenting the docks just to warn newcomers not to give their heads to strangers.

None of Fujitsu's oracles came up with these solutions ­ or, for that matter, the problems. The users did. Douglas and Richardson don't see headhunting and thievery as problems that Fujitsu needs to solve. Indeed, they're signs of life: proof that the customers take what they're doing seriously enough to invent new ways, even creepy ones, of interacting. "We've had users ask us, 'Can't you do something about this?'" says Douglas. "And we say, 'What are you going to do about it?'"

This warning is now given to new members:

Certain objects, such as avatar heads, acquire value in a WorldsAway community whether or not an official economy and exchange system exist. And probably every WorldsAway community will have some thieves who use unethical and dishonest methods to take valuable items away from others. Each WorldsAway community will have its own methods and customs for dealing with thieves and teaching theft prevention. Proceed carefully until you are familiar with the operations and the citizens of the world you are visiting.

I wasn't sure the heads in this apartment were stolen!

How to handle the issue of deviant game players is only one concern for the designer. In the game programming world, the major problem is how to translate the game designer's intent into a simulation which maintains a verisimilitude to reality. (In some baseball simulations, Mark McGuire or Sammy Sosa hit 80 home runs in a season. Given this has never happened in baseball history, the result in unsatisfying to the baseball purist.) If a simulation is based on an adequate "theoretical model" the outcomes should be within the realm of plausibility. 

So how does such a simulation get developed? Depending upon the kind of simulation being designed, the developer may need a grounding in game theory, an understanding of artificial intelligence, and knowledge of computer algorithms.  If the simulation is to adequately provide ways for the students to achieve measurable learning goals, input from the field of instructional system design is needed as well.

Game theory began as a branch of applied mathematics. It could be called the science of strategy. It analyzes situations in which people's fortunes are interdependent. Game theory provides a systematic way to develop strategies when one person's fate depends on what other people do. According to Ratliff:

Game theory is sometimes described as multiperson decision theory or the analysis of conflict. Recurring themes include threatening and bluffing, punishing and rewarding, building reputations, signaling your unobservable "type," and sustaining cooperation in apparently noncooperative environments through repeated interactions.

The earliest applications of game theory within economics focused on industrial organization. More recently, game-theoretic analysis has insidiously penetrated the literature of macroeconomics, international trade, labor, public policy, natural resources, and development.

While game theory has been applied to law it has not, to my knowledge, been applied to criminal justice decision making. Simulations could be constructed based on classical game theory or combinatorial game theory. The latter differs from the former in that game players are assumed to move in sequence rather than simultaneously, so there is no point in randomization or other information-hiding strategies (chess is an example).

The incorporation of artificial intelligence can enhance a simulation's ability to respond to game players. However, there is no widely-agreed-upon definition of "artificial intelligence". In fact, artificial intelligence is considered an oxymoron by many computer scientists because computers don't really think. The definition is also a moving target, referring to whatever types of information processing computers can't yet handle. In terms of complexity, designing computer gaming engines has moved from fixed responses, to fixed rules, to AI-generated lookup tables, to flexible algorithms, to analysis of the human player's actions, and, finally, to sub-goal selection.

At this point in time, however, game realism is determined by the sophistication of the mathematical algorithms used within the simulations. Algorithms have greatly enhanced the human capacity for performing complex intellectual tasks by organizing detailed plans, scripts and procedures hierarchically... Algorithms are the subject of all computer programs and the object of higher order programming languages.

Designing games is a collaborative process involving not only computer programming experts, but subject matter experts, graphics designers, and instructional systems design professionals. The five stages of ISD game design identified by Bernie Dodge are (1) analysis (2) design (3) development (4) implementation and (5) evaluation.

From the point of view of instructional systems design, games which involve problem solving and provide continuing motivation to students once the initial fascination with the new technology has waned will do best. According to Sumner:

The types of interactive programs that would benefit the most seem to be ones based on problem solving activities. This by the way is one of the hardest things to design instruction around since it is not a matter of teaching students to repeat steps or memorize facts. They must use conceptual abilities and to an extent, imagination. The latter is challenging to assess. Furthermore, it is not the actual end result that is important. The knowledge derived from the process of solving the problem far outweighs the actual solution….which can be seen as a twist to the old saying, "Half the fun is in getting there." (or something like that.)

Of course, the biggest danger in creating simulations is to lose sight of the instructional goal, which is why an Instructional Systems Design (ISD) approach is important. By using systematic steps, objectives are written and assessments are formulated, which will lead to an effective outcome, or so the theory goes. 

Additional Resources:

General

The Interface That Will Replace Windows
http://www5.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_570.html

VideoGameSpot's History of Video Games
http://www.videogamespot.com/features/universal/hov/index.html

Gamespot TV
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/gamespottv/

Games Domain
http://www.gamesdomain.com/

Wired Collections: Gaming
http://www.wired.com/collections/gaming/

Computer Simulations
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~jflake/CompSim.html

Interactive Educational Simulations
http://www.simulations.com/

Computer Games: Genres (Yahoo)
http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Computer_Games/Genres/

Shoot-em Ups

Virtual Reality: The Future of Law Enforcement Training
http://nsi.org/Library/Law/lawtrain.html

IES
http://www.ies.com/

 

Police Investigations & Mysteries

Gamecenter Strategy Guides
http://www.gamecenter.com/Features/Guide/?st.gc.fd.tb.feg

The Mysterious Home Page
http://www.webfic.com/mysthome/mysthome.htm

MysteryNet.com
http://www.mysterynet.com/

Crime Scene Evidence File
http://www.crimescene.com/

Daubert Decision
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-102.ZS.html

Forensics Web Sites
http://www.fsu.edu/~crimdo/forensics.html

D.A: Pursuit of Justice
http://www.gamecenter.com/Reviews/Item/0,6,0-1077,00.html

 

System Simulations

Functionalism within Criminology
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/week7.htm

SimCity
http://www.simcity.com/3000/3000.html

Concentric Zone Theory
http://cua6.csuohio.edu/~norm/rac/racczt.htm

Animations of Crime Maps Using Virtual Reality Modeling Language
http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v1n2/lodha.html

Computer Simulation of Judicial Behaviour
http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/1998/issue3/allen3.html

Legal Crime
http://www.byteenchanters.com/legalcrime.html

Millennium Institute: National Sustainable Development Models
http://www.igc.apc.org/millennium/t21/index.html

Journal of Artifical Societies and Social Simulation
http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/JASSS.html

Virtual Cities (VRML)
http://www.planet9.com/indexie.htm

New York City's Use of Computers in Law Enforcement
http://wings.buffalo.edu/Complaw/CompLawPapers/devine.html

 

Multiplayer & Role Playing

Role Playing Computer Games
http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Computer_Games/Genres/Role_Playing/

Computer Games: Multiplayer
http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Computer_Games/Multiplayer/

Online Gaming Library
http://www.oglibrary.com/

You Don't Know Jack
http://www.bezerk.com/

MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs
http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Games/Internet_Games/MUDs__MUSHes__MOOs__etc_/

The Realm Home Page
http://www.realmserver.com/

Ultima Online
http://www.uo.com/

PowerPlay
http://www.powerplayinfo.com/

 

Designing Games

Game Theory (Yahoo)
http://www.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Economics/Game_Theory/

History of Game Theory
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/class/histf.html

Combinatorial Game Theory
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/cgt/

Robots & AI
http://www.wired.com/collections/robots_ai/

Artificial Intelligence
http://tqd.advanced.org/2705/

Gaming Intelligence
http://rpg.net/gi/

Game Algorithms
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/9498/gamealgorithms.html

Game Design Overview
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec670/GameDesign.html

 

Additional Bibliography:

Dargahi, Nick and Michael Bremer. 1995. Sim City 2000: Power, Politics, and Planning. (Revised Edition). Rockland, CA: Prima Publishing.

Friedman, Ted. 1995. Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality. in Steven G. Jones (ed.). Cybersociety. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. pp. 73-89.

Sumner, William. 1997. Personal Correspondence. (William is a graduate student in the Instructional Systems Design Ph.D. program at FSU).

Williams, Ken. 1997. The Future of online Gaming. Interaction Magazine. Spring. pp. 7-9.

 

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5. Evaluation and Assessment of Learners

One of the most significant area of concern shared by both students and instructors is how evaluation and assessment of student learning will be measured. In courses mediated by electronic communication, with little or no face-to-face interaction, the problem is peculiarly acute. For faculty, a major concern is how to guarantee that students are doing their own work. While the latter issue currently remains unsolvable without some form of proctoring, there are a number of ways to construct courses so that evaluation, assessment, and feedback are ongoing aspects of the course. Without such feedback, many students will become frustrated and drop out along the way. Before discussing online exams, it is useful to consider the wide range of projects and activities that can be used for student assessment of learning. 

The use of active learning strategies is essential in designing a distance learning course that includes ongoing feedback. The Internet with its wealth of readily available research articles, Web sites created by criminal justice agencies, and online databases can provide an endless source for interactive class projects. For example, the Internet projects for the George Cole text includes a project for each chapter requiring students to use material gathered from Web sites. Researchpaper.com goes even further, suggesting term paper topics with direct links to search engines and key words already optimized for each search. They offer criminal justice topics. A scavenger hunt can help students learn how to find materials on the Web and improve search skills.  Real statistical data sets can be downloaded from sites like the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data and BJS and others offering criminal justice information. Once downloaded students can use the data within SPSS or spreadsheet programs such as Excel (Chao and Davis, 2000). The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School provides access to a wealth of historical legal resources. Only the imagination of the instructor and students limits the kind of projects that can be created.  

Feedback on projects should be as immediate as possible. One way to do this is to have students turn in larger projects a section at a time rather than all at once. For example, I typically set up term papers with specific due dates for the chosen topic, initial bibliography, first draft of each section of the paper, first draft of entire paper for peer review, and final draft. This also eliminates receiving papers written as "all nighters."

Peer review can be an effective feedback instrument as well. However, as students are not familiar with it and may feel uncomfortable critiquing the work of fellow students, a blind review process may be needed. Both student and peer reviewer can remain anonymous. The other problematic issue is the quality of reviews that will result. Marginal students unable to locate the problems within their own writing style may not provide much feedback to superior students. On the other hand, superior students can truly assist others to produce better writing. Peer review needs to be guided by the instructor. I use a prepared written set of guidelines, based upon those things I ultimately consider important when I assess papers. Finally, as almost all professional writing goes through a process of peer review and editing, teaching these skills helps prepare students for the real world. 

The Internet opens up a number of possibilities for student evaluation which have proven elusive in traditional lecture and discussion courses. One of these involves using discussion as part of overall grading. Within the course Intranet, study or discussion questions can be set up using Web forum discussion software. The instructor can instantly see who is participating in the class and who is not. More importantly, it is possible to tell when students are participating and evaluate whether the quality of their comments is improving as the semester moves along, etc. In addition, forums can be archived and searched whenever a student, colleague, or employer asks for a reference. The resulting reference document can be a detailed evaluation of that student's abilities.

Live chat software can be used for small group discussion. It is essential that the chat software support archiving of conversations, as these can be later reviewed to assess the quality of student participation. A different set of skills are required for conversational chat sessions, as comments are not nearly as polished as those in discussion forums. The latter allows more time for research and reflection. Chat sessions can be used to survey if a student has read the class materials and is prepared to intelligently discuss them. Issues about which the instructor wants students to "think on their feet" can also be effectively incorporated into chat sessions.

Of course, traditional quizzes, tests, and exams can also be done over the Internet. There are several software companies developing software to permit online testing. Examples include products developed by Scantron and ESA. Superior Web-based testing software should support the generation of individualized tests, allow importation of questions from existing test banks while allowing instructors to submit their own questions, support full HTML features, and offer instant grading and feedback to students (including detailed help for incorrect answers). Some faculty have taken to constructing their own tests in HTML, but sometimes make mistakes such as making the correct answers obvious.  

Universities planning to move ahead with plans to institute Internet-based courses also need to consider how to manage grading. Ultimately, what is needed is an integrated solution involving course registration, input of student rosters (including photo IDs) to faculty course accounts, course management software for class activities including test banks, online grade books, and a way to export grades to the registrar's data base. 

     
Won't All the Students Cheat like Beavis and Butthead?

Cheating on online exams is a major concern among faculty teaching distance learning courses or using computerized test banks over computer networks. Students are also concerned about cheaters, as they drive down the grades of honest students. The only way to insure who is taking an exam is to have it proctored. That said, there are several issues to be considered here and a number of partial solutions being proposed: (1) How can you authenticate that the person submitting the assignments or taking the exams is indeed the student registered in the course? (2) Is it possible to prevent students during exams from simply looking up answers to questions in their texts or online materials? (3) What's to stop students from cutting and pasting together term papers from online sources rather than writing their own, or just submitting a paper found on the Web?   

If secure, authenticated communications between faculty and students are required, particularly for sending exam and grade-related information, the use of encrypted email or secure Web interactions may provide an answer. Secure email was discussed in the chapter on email. Students can be given individual IDs and passwords as authentication for submitting test materials.  Similarly, smart cards can be used for a number of purposes, including authentication. Of course, all of the above could be given to friends who might submit the work for them. 

Having the student sit in front of a Web cam and the use of biometric devices (eye scans, fingerprint scan, or keyboard recognition devices) have been proposed, but someone else could be in the room providing the test taker with answers. So then, we need listening devices, too? For each level of increased surveillance, students are likely to come up with a way to get around it. Ultimately, the quest for a secure, remote examining system becomes very expensive and impractical. 

A solution for multiple choice testing would be to have all such tests monitored in some way. Students would either have to come to a computer lab, community college, local library, etc., to take tests. The logistics of such an operation are tremendous and require university-wide planning. The Open University in the United Kingdom uses regionalized study centers for this purpose.  Students submit all course work directly to "tutor markers," but must take a proctored final exam.

In my opinion, moving away from total reliance upon multiple choice testing lessens concerns about cheating. If class assignments consist of papers or projects, essay type questions submitted using online forms, and chat/forum discussions, then there is little chance a student--not even a Beavis or Butthead type--will be able to find another student to do all their work for them. Only perhaps a spouse might complete an entire course for someone else. On the other hand, the instructor should recognize that all such assignments are, in effect, "open book" ones and plan evaluative exercises accordingly. Thus, group projects that involve collaborative problem solving or simulations, and for which chat or forum transcripts are available, are a natural evolution in Web-based courses.  Exercises that require higher level thinking, as discussed in Bloom's taxonomy, should be incorporated into distance learning courses, with online quizzing relegated to rote learning tasks.

The temptation to cut and paste materials found on the Web into assignments is another important issue. While honest students will not do this, any written materials that deviant from required citation and formatting create suspicion. By better knowing the rules about when citations are necessary, students can avoid being investigated for plagiarism.

While some students may be downloading term papers despite warnings about plagiarism, its much easier to catch them than in the real world. In my traditional classes I sometimes received papers with what I perceived to be "deliberately" faulty referencing. This usually meant a trip to the library and hours of searching through books and journals to check for plagiarism, only to be told by caught students that they were ignorant of the violations, even though the class handout (see above) discussed plagiarism in detail and how to avoid it. 

On the Internet, the instructor can cut and paste whole sentences from a student's writing assignment into a search engine query box, and locate the original Web document from which the text was taken.  BullsEye works very nicely for this, as it will search dozens of Web search engines simultaneously, rank the document containing the sentence as the most likely source, and highlight the phrase in the document. As the old term paper for sale businesses move to the Web, faculty must become more vigilant to check if papers are being submitted fraudulently. Organizations such as Plagiarism.org exist to help ferret out cheating as well. Glatt's software removes every fifth word from a submitted document; students who have written their own paper should have no problem with filling in the missing words (or fun playing Mad Libs).

Additional Resources:

Active Learning in Criminology
http://www.fsu.edu/~crimdo/courses/active.html

Internet Projects to Accompany Cole Text
http://cj.wadsworth.com/cole/chapters/chapters.html

Research Paper.com
http://www.researchpaper.com/

Research Paper.com Crime and Criminal Justice
http://www.researchpaper.com/questions/
Society/Crime_and_Criminal_Justice/

Best Information on the Net - Hot Paper Topics
http://www.sau.edu/CWIS/Internet/Wild/Hot/hotindex.htm

Dr. Gwen's Research Paper Page
http://astro.fccj.cc.fl.us/LearningResources/DrGwen/research.html

CJ Scavenger Hunt
http://cj.wadsworth.com/cole/scavenger.html

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/home.html

Bureau of Justice Statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

Agencies Providing Criminal Justice Information
http://www.fsu.edu/~crimdo/info.html

SPSS
http://www.spss.com/

Avalon Project at Yale Law School
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

Example Term Paper Project
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/hw1.htm

Peer Review of Student Term Papers
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/peerreview.htm

ParTEST by Scantron
http://www.scantron.com/ta_soft/ptest.htm

ESATEST 2000
http://www.esatest.com/prod01.htm

Exam Builder
http://www.exambuilder.com/

Secure Documents  
http://www.spyrus.com/content/products/

Smart Cards & Internet security
http://www.netscapeworld.com/netscapeworld/nw-03-1997/nw-03-smartcard.html

Bloom's Taxonomy
http://www.isd.uga.edu/facdev/sot/prep/blooms.html

Criminal Justice & Police Issues Term Papers for Sale
http://www.termpapers-on-file.com/termpapers/criminal.htm 

School Sucks - Download Your Workload!
http://www.schoolsucks.com/

Research Papers Online
http://www.ezwrite.com/

Cheat Wave
http://www.zdnet.com/yil/content/college/colleges99/cheaters.html

BullsEye
http://www.intelliseek.com

Plagiarism.org
http://plagiarism.org

Glatt Plagiarism Services
http://plagiarism.com/

Additional Bibliography:

Chao, Faith and James Davis. 2000. How Statistics "Excel Online. Syllabus Magazine. February, 46-47

 

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6. Evaluating Distance Learning Courses

As distance learning via the Internet is still very much in its infancy, evaluating what is effective from what is not remains crucial at this stage. In this section students will be given some tools for evaluating Web-based instruction. An understanding of the types of changes in academic instruction that are emerging will better equip students to critically assess the quality of distance learning courses and programs.  

One of the first signs of a quality distance learning course is the amount of pre-preperation that is evident. This includes smoothing the way for student access to university services, much more detailed syllabi, and new formats for lectures. 

Developing a cooperative relationship with all university service providers is essential for teaching a course in a distance mode. These include registration, ID card center, campus computing services, the bookstore, and the library. Failure to do preplanning with any of the above can lead to significant student retention problems. Hopefully, university wide policies and procedures for distance mode students will become fully institutionalized and such problems will cease. 

Everything that ordinarily would be put into a syllabus to be handed out in class should be included in a course study guide: contact information for all university services, required texts, course outline, weekly assignments, grading criteria, and additional bibliography (both Internet and text). The study guide can be mailed to students before the course begins, with an electronic version also available on the course Web site. Direct links to other parts of the course (e.g., lectures, demonstrations, citations and references formats, quizzes, tests, student projects, discussion forums, chat rooms, etc.) can be built into the online version of the study guide. All courses should have a similar look so that students don't waste time learning the equivalent of a new interface for every course.

Developing a course according to sound principles of instructional system design is something foreign to most faculty, but is essential in creating distance learning materials. ISD support can help to insure that course goals and objectives are clearly stated, course materials actually match those objectives, and that assessment instruments permit students to demonstrate their mastery of the materials at the level expected by the instructor. 

While some have predicted the demise of the lecture as an aspect of distance learning, a transformed version of this teaching tool may survive. Many professors consider their classroom lectures, sometimes honed by giving them repeatedly for twenty years, to be their most important "intellectual property." There are a number of fears, both founded and unfounded, about the implications of making lectures available in an online format for students to study at their own pace. Once committed to online text, professors worry if they are necessary? Certainly, professors who are typically inadequately prepared for class, or using outdated materials, or boring will be found out (or challenged to improve in all these areas). The time commitment required to reconfigure a traditional classroom lecture course for the Web can be tremendous, particularly for faculty with little computer skills and no hands-on help. 

Most importantly, the lecture needs to be revised into an interactive format that "feels" like an ongoing one-on-one conversation between teacher and student. The Open University has long used this approach in the development of its correspondence-based teaching materials. The usefulness of lectures also can be improved dramatically by adding in-line graphics, hypertext links and/or a bibliographical index of relevant Web sites, and feedback mechanisms built into the Web page itself, such as an email link, mailing list, or forum discussion questions. New media techniques can be used to present lecture information to students.  Components such as multimedia graphics, video, and audio can be employed to create dynamic, interactive learning environments.  

How does all of this differ from a typical lecture? Karp and Yoels (1976) first discussed the "banking model" of college classroom interaction. Typically, students enter a class with the presumption that the professor is the source of knowledge, while students are receptacles who will receive wisdom. Because students are only making "withdrawals," they feel that their classmates' comments are irrelevant, and attention tends to wander when classmates ask questions or make comments. Certainly, no one writes down what a student says because it is not important or "testworthy" material. In classroom interaction, if any exists, the professor asks an occasional low-order recall question, and the same small cadre of students always respond. The other students even begin to stare toward the known talkers when questions are asked, as if they are morally obligated to respond. Professors politely refuse to call on any of the other class members for fear of embarrassing them in front of their peers. Also, students remain silent rather than risking the possibility that their ideas will be questioned by the professor. Although the professor may be responding to students' comments by asking for further elaboration or clarification, or by asking an individual to think out the logical consequences of his or her position, students often interpret such reactions as a put-down of their ideas. Finally, students quickly recognize that even professors who claim to count classroom interaction as part of the overall grade rarely assign it a percentage, but sometimes use it as a justification for raising or not raising borderline grades. 

Can the use of active learning techniques combined with Internet-based lectures change the status quo? The impact of technology on education has been discounted by some, but studies document a number of positive outcomes, including the following student outcomes:  

• Increases performance when interactivity is prominent.

• Increased opportunities for interactivity with instructional programs.

• Is more effective with multiple technologies (video, computer, telecommunications, etc.).

• Improves attitude and confidence-especially for "at risk" students.

• Provides instructional opportunities otherwise not available.

• Can increase opportunities for student-constructed learning.

• Increases student collaboration on projects.

• Increase mastery of vocational and work force skills.

• Help prepare students for work when emphasized as a problem solving tool.

• Significantly improves problem solving skills of learning handicap students.

• Improves writing skills and attitudes about writing for urban LEP students.

• Improves writing skills as a result of using telecommunications.

Changes is teaching styles have been noticed as well. Instructors are taking on new roles as mentors, tutors, guides, and discussion leaders, while allowing students to uncover knowledge more on their own. This does not mean that professors are any less actively involved with their students than in a face-to-face class, just that the type of interaction is different. Documented changes in instructors include:  

• Less directive and more student-centered teaching.

• Increased emphasis on individualized instruction.

• More time engaged by teachers advising students.

• Increased interest in teaching.

• Interest in experimenting with emerging technology.

• Teacher preferences for multiple technology utilization.

• Increases administrator and teacher productivity.

• Increased planning and collaboration with colleagues.

• Rethinking and revision of curriculum and instructional strategies.

• Greater participation in school and district restructuring efforts.

• Business partnerships with schools to support technology.

• Increased education involvement with community agencies.

• Increases in teacher and administrator communication with parents.

 

Pitfalls of Online Courses Warned  By NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON Associated Press Writer CHICAGO (AP) When Pat Shapley taught advanced organic chemistry the traditional way, she often found herself looking into a sea of blank stares, or no stares at all. ``I'd have a lecture hall full of students, most of whom were sleeping or eating Cheerios,'' the University of Illinois professor said Tuesday. ``No one ever asked questions.'' That all changed, Shapley said, when she put her course on the Internet. Suddenly shy students were piping up with questions, and class members were excited to learn at their own pace.  Shapley's course is an example of good Internet teaching, according to an online learning study by group of University of Illinois professors. They found that online courses can be high-quality; but not if they become university cash cows filled with faceless teachers and anonymous students. The idea for the study came in 1997, after university President James Stukel discussed a vision for the school that included an emphasis on learning ``beyond the bounds of time and place.''  Not all professors embraced the idea. Among the skeptics was John Regalbuto, an associate professor of chemical engineering at the university's Chicago campus. Regalbuto, who became chairman of the professors' group, said he was concerned that the quality of teaching suffers when students and professors don't interact in person. ``The good news is high-quality online teaching can be done ... but it's not going to be the moneymaker administrators think it's going to be,'' Regalbuto said.  The study concluded that good online teaching still requires professors to maintain a ``human touch'' with their students, usually through small classes. The professors also said students benefit more from social settings where they can interact with classmates and teachers.  Shapley's online chemistry class includes quizzes three times a week and ``lectures'' that have pictures and text students can click on to learn more about unfamiliar concepts. Clicking on a diagram of a chemical reaction, for example, might show that reaction taking place step by step. But she said a large class--hers usually has 100 to 180 students--can still work. Students still talk with teaching assistants in small groups in additional to going online.  Matt Wargin, a 22-year-old University of Illinois journalism graduate, said he liked an economics class that offered online quizzes. ``I loved the fact that it was online,'' Wargin said. ``I didn't have to be in a specific room at a specific time.''  Janet Poley, president of the American Distance Education Consortium at the University of Nebraska, said college students whose work or family commitments prevent them from attending class find the Internet more convenient. She does not know how many student take online courses, although 58 colleges participate in the consortium and the University of Illinois alone has about 4,000 students in 200 online classes.  Regalbuto said professors must be involved for online courses to be successful. He sees some advantages to online learning, although he still wouldn't support an entire online undergraduate education. ``Perhaps the best of both worlds is to be a resident student with access to these online teaching tools, because some of them are fantastic,'' Regalbuto said.

Additional Resources:

Humanizing Online Instruction
http://www.shawnee.cc.il.us/libbyr/example/

Using Bloom's Taxonomy in Assignment Design
http://www.umuc.edu/ugp/ewp/bloomtax.html

Distance Education at a Glance
http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/distglan.html

Strategies for Teaching at a Distance
http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/dist2.html

Strategies for Learning at a Distance
http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/dist9.html

Is Distance Education for Me? (includes evaluation instruments)
http://eleaston.com/edqz.html

Student Evaluation Form
http://ranger.mie.uc.edu/Teaching/KinDyn/evaluation.html

Evaluation Resources
http://www.elec.gla.ac.uk/TLTSN/resource.html

Evaluating Distance Learning
http://www.ghayhoe.com/access/distance.htm

Distance Education Research
http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/dist10.html

Karp, D. and W. Yoels. (1976). "A College Classroom: Some Observations on the Meanings of Student Participation." Sociology and Social Research. 60 (Fall): 421-439.

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