the Six Learnings curriculum framework
The Six Learnings framework was derived after careful consideration and relatively extensive and sustained in-world experience over sixteen months by the team. The team leader conceptualized the framework after bringing to bear his own professional training and experience as a classroom teacher, curriculum designer, and academic researcher in the learning sciences. It is suggested that the probability of effectively meeting learning goals through learning interventions be maximized only if there is an equal and mutually respectful multi-partite relationship between school management, content developers and service providers, and curriculum designers (i.e., the teachers), as informed through the Six Learnings framework.
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The framework consists of six lenses through which curricular interventions designed for learning environments might be analysed and critically evaluated, even during the early planning stages. These lenses – termed the six ‘learnings’ – are not conceived of as either hierarchical or mutually exclusive. Instead, they serve the twin purposes of at once highlighting to the curriculum designer the breadth of potential learning designs in such environments (so that, for example, the design team not be lock-stepped into conceptualizing designs which might have been transposed more or less wholesale from contexts dissimilar to the immediate one), while at the same time providing a constraining focus on the scope of individual interventions as they are situated within the broader gamut, so that the criteria by which these individual interventions might be evaluated could be much more tailored and targeted. In turn, such tighter criteria would serve to inform subsequent reflection and redesign, as to increase the likelihood of the interventions meeting their design goals.
Briefly, the six learnings are:
Learning by exploring;
Learning by collaborating;
Learning by being;
Learning by building;
Learning by championing; and
Learning by expressing.
Learning by exploring
By ‘Learning by exploring’ is meant the learning that results from explorations (structured or otherwise) of installations, communities, and landscapes within the virtual world itself. Depending on the nature of the learning task, such explorations could be scaffolded to varying degrees and could possibly include inferential tasks to do with the conduct and subsequent analysis of fieldwork within the virtual world. Thus, for example, a group of learners in a geography class might collect data on wind patterns at various parts of the Second Life grid so that they could subsequently test their hypotheses on various aspects of meteorology and climatology.
Learning by collaborating
By ‘Learning by collaborating’ is meant the learning that results when students work in teams, either on problem-solving tasks or in other forms of structured inquiry. The focus here would be on helping the learners increase their metacognitive habits as well as their understanding of distributed cognition and the social dynamics of group work in general. This learning draws on the rich body of established literature on the benefits of learning collaboratively, as opposed to learning competitively (e.g., Johnson & Johnson, 1994).
Learning by being
By ‘Learning by being’ is meant the learning that results from explorations of self and of identity. This type of learning is congruent with Brown and Duguid’s (2000) understandings of ‘learning to be.’ Such learnings involve the assumption of identities and dispositions through enculturation. Role-play is a common learning design in Second Life, as witnessed by the use of holodecks in English as a Second Language (ESL) learning at the English Village sim, for example. Another example would be the performance of the works of Shakespeare by several groups within Second Life, to varying degrees of authenticity. The relative ease with which avatars can be customized and changed facilitates ‘Learning by being’ to the extent that this be a specific learning goal of the design intervention.
Learning by building
By ‘Learning by building’ is meant the learning that results from tasks that require the learners to build objects and/or script them. Such activities could potentially involve the demonstration of mathematical understandings of trigonometry and physics, the learners’ sense of aesthetics, as well as their grasp of the logical algorithmic flows inherent in a scripting language. Departments in a school that might wish to focus on ‘Learning by building’ include the design and technology department and the mathematics department, as well as the computer club.
Learning by championing
‘Learning by championing’ refers to the many initiatives by various communities in Second Life to adopt, champion, and evangelize causes from Real Life. Especially active in this regard are groups to do with health education, such as the Heron Sanctuary. ‘Learning by championing’ could easily be a focus of a school’s social studies/humanities department, in which, for example, learners might be tasked to design an installation/exhibit in-world which sought to raise awareness and educate the general public about particular causes that might be meaningful to them.
Learning by expressing
Finally, ‘Learning by expressing’ could be argued to be distinct from the preceding five Learnings, in the sense that while the five are to do very directly with the learnings that results from activity in-world, ‘Learning by expressing’ focuses more on the representation of in-world activity to the ‘outside world’ (that is, to an audience who are not necessarily in-world). This kind of learning is congruent with Hung's and Chen’s (2008) notions of the dialectical interaction which they term ‘self to reification.’ Thus, for example, ‘Learning by expressing’ would encompass the authoring and editing of blogs, podcasts, and machinima about in-world activities and tasks. The learning that results would encompass storyboarding, the technical aspects of audio- and video-editing, as well as the principles of literary critique and creative writing. ‘Learning by expressing’ is an obvious ‘learning’ to be adopted by a school’s media department and/or languages department.