Marie Jasinski

The Playhouse

The Alcazar

Sister Marie’s Approach to Solving all Problems

Anthology of Poems

My brief

My brief as a moderator of the Alcazar was to explore what could be done within a Forum. Be experimental! Have a go! Take risks! Have fun! Be informal! What an invitation! I took up the challenge like an intrepid explorer. Full of anticipation, but uncertain of what would be discovered.

Setting the Scene
A Welcome to the Alcazar by
Sister Marie Psychic, Solver of all Problems

As you step into the Village Alcazar, you enter an intriguing haven of fun, relaxation and social exchange.

Activities of all shapes and sizes unfold naturally here, so expect spontaneity and surprise. Exotic people come and go - you are here and that's my point.

Come in lone and weary traveller. Give your neo cortex a rest after a dynamic day at the Village!

Go limbic! Rest, relax and partake of the wonders of this bizarre bazaar. Everyone has a place here. Create, contribute, initiate, elaborate, connect, discover or just play scrabble. I roam surreptitiously around the Alcazar, keeping an eye on the Spitting Camel. It creeps up and slimes the unwary, so be on the lookout!

Sister Marie's inside information about the ALCAZAR:

• Lady Chattery always talks about her liver
• The gambling den gets raided once a week
• Sue Shi's portable Karaoke Bar is expected any day
• The cyber spa is chemical free and the left hand jet is the best one
• Thiagi the Magician is rumoured to visit
• The fermented brews are just delicious. Psst! I've got some moonshine in my tent, so come in for a tipple, but look innocent!

I solve all problems in the Alcazar. I've got a secret journal of my favourite techniques hidden below. Have a look at my range. Let me solve your problems, even if you don't have any. So welcome to the Alcazar - you'll be surprised who you'll meet!

A taster of the Alcazar Experience

What follows is a taster of the types of experiences and strategies that intrepid Alcazarians were willing to experiment with. Some were planned, some evolved.

Comments in italics were made by participants in the final week debrief.

Use of personas
Sister Marie Psychic and the Spitting Camel were sustained throughout the five week period. They were loved or hated, but provided plenty of food for thought!

I felt amused, curious and intrigued…the opening graphic clearly made this a very different place to the other streams, worked brilliantly!

I have settled into a comfy computer chair to have a virtual cocktail with you all. Many thanks to Sister Marie who put me on the straight and narrow with Raymans Pink Floyd Page. The personas worked for me - I never did trust Spitty though - couldn't this concept be used in online roleplays in a learning context?

Posting of a cartoon of the Alcazar "group photograph" in the early stages
This worked well, as it was a catalyst for people to make an initial contribution.

The Day 1 photo…acted as a framework to "come out of lurking" and also sent a clear message that participation was to be encouraged. The naming of the active Day 1 people also gave a sense that if you joined in you WOULD be noticed and not ignored and that all contributions were valued (even if in highly dubious ways!)

Interactive narrative

The narrative of a camel trek to Karratha with Spitty the Camel was initiated in Week 3 and participants were invited to develop the narrative. Participants were allocated roles like the quarter master, the Moet Poet, the Camel Tick Picker and Lurker Dobber!

The sense of community that emerged really does make it something I will be sad to leave! I hadn't thought an online experience with what started out mostly to be strangers to be so engaging and fun.

Being assigned roles as special food finder and guide to Silverton made me hurry up and do something about it!

Use of attachments to forum postings to support and enhance text

• Powerpoint
• Word file
• Graphics
• Links

Balancing right and left brain input for more holistic processing
(Not a time to get into debates about the theory. Just a framework for catering for diversity)

To test out what can be done besides straight text to provide information and test out conceptual understanding. We tried:

• Poetry - we got some beauties with strong messages attached
• Humour - very idiosyncratic
• Graphics
• Photographs
• Imagery and metaphor

I have had a wonderful time popping into to Alcazar to chat and read the poetry.

As I started receiving the emails before I had visited the conference on-line I didn't have a clue what was going on. However I soon became immersed in the story and the shinanagins(?) of the various characters and on several occasions laughed uproariously. It was great and opens up all possibilities to me as a teacher of English. The alcazar emphasises the importance of fun and games as part of learning. Maybe next time I'll be brave enough to do more than lurk.

Providing Information

• Web Quest taster - guided self-directed learning.
• Directing people to search engines to find resources
• Providing links to explore with purpose, e.g. the two hump camel site
• Private email for clarification

Encouraging participation

• Sending virtual gifts and private emails
• Invitation to participants to identify themselves in a "group photo"
• Providing quick response to first posting
• Acknowledging the presence of lurkers
• Role play - Lurker Dobber (played with gusto by Janine Bowes)

Lurking isn't only about lack of team spirit, it is complex and providing ways of multiple-level participation is part of the challenge.. and learning to describe and sort out what we all want from various experiences, is part of the challenge.. we still haven't names and clear concepts for a lot of this… the technology clearly can do it. I guess it's up to us from here on.

Marie's various strategies for bringing out lurkers have given me lots of ideas to try out in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed the banter and had great fun reading it! I am an active lurker and the next time will participate in the discussion. I have gained a huge amount from the conference, particularly the de-brief comments.

Thankyou to all the organisers for the wonderful opportunity to be initiated to the online learning world, including that mysterious place the Alcazar where I smiled a lot while I lurked…

Key influences underpinning the Alcazar experience:

Games and simulations work with Thiagi
Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan is based in Indiana USA and makes a living out of designing and facilitating games and simulations for training adults. Thiagi has a Doctorate in Instructional Systems and Psychology. He believes that online interactivity is more than connecting learners with the content. True instructional activity should involve examples of learner-to-learner and learner-to-facilitator interaction.

In other words, real interactivity is a human technology. Human technology involves body, mind, emotions and spirit.

Catering for diversity in learning preference
Some participants enjoyed the Alcazar experience, others did not! But they had choice! One of the key aims was to explore what could be done with a Forum besides serious discussion that could support a range of learning preferences including connecting, informing, coaching and synthesising.

The reference used was the Checks and Balances Planning Model for Online Design at www.tafe.sa.edu.au/lsrsc/one/natproj/tal

Technology Affordance
Professor Tom Reeves' fundamental questions about the use of instructional technology are:

1. What do you want your learners to do?

1. How can the technology afford that to happen?

In the Alcazar, I set out to discover how a Forum could enable a facilitator to promote interactive learning experiences.

Mental Models
This is a story told by a speaker at a Visual Literacy Conference I attended in Atlanta in 1998.

The essence: When Americans did a taste test on a range of croissants, the one voted number one by a long shot was a Burger King croissant. Apparently this bears little resemblance to the French original in either shape, size, taste or smell. So why do Americans prefer Burger King croissants?

Because the Burger King Croissant was the first experience of a croissant many Americans had. Good story!

Learning point: What we are exposed to first, tends to influence most the mental model we develop of what is real. Like imprinting - initial impressions are hard to shift.

What was your first experience of online learning? How did it influence your mental model of the scope of online learning environments? Do we need to challenge our mental model of this environment and what it can offer? Why are we tending to use a broadcast model in an interactive environment?

The Alcazar aimed to extend and explore the boundaries of what is possible within a Forum. It was welcomed by some and dismissed by others. It was controversial, but controversy gets people thinking and discussing and to that end, it achieved its aim!

Marie Jasinski
Alcazar Moderator
AKA Sister Marie and the Spitting Camel