Croquelandia: The Next Best Thing to Being There
You are strolling through the market taking in the sights and sounds when you spot a pottery stand at the corner. “Perfect,” you think, “I’ll find some gifts for friends back home.” Using your best Spanish you ask the vendor about several pieces. A few minutes later you walk away, satisfied with your purchase. But on further reflection you feel a little unsure about the conversation. Unexpectedly, the vendor addressed you using the familiar form tu rather than the formal usted. And it seemed she wanted to chat long after you were prepared to pick up your things and be on your way.
No matter—you’ll understand better next time. Besides, the vendor wasn’t even real. The conversation took place in Croquelandia, an online immersive environment designed to help students develop more sophisticated language skills. Learning grammar and vocabulary is just a starting point for truly learning a language. Speakers also must develop pragmatic competence, or the ability to understand and use the complex rules governing communicative acts such as requests, apologies, and leave-taking. Pragmatic competence requires considerable knowledge about the language and culture. Moreover, the rules often don’t translate across languages and cultures. While beginning speakers know there are formal and informal forms of address, they may not know there is considerable variation in their use within and across Spanish-speaking cultures. There is an art to leave-taking; some situations require more “turns” than others. Immersion in the language is the best way to develop the necessary skills. Julie Sykes, a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish and Portuguese studies who leads the Croquelandia project, has developed a technology-enhanced educational environment that may be the next best thing to being there.
Croquelandia, funded in part by a Technology-enhanced Learning (TEL) grant, was built using Croquet, an open source software development environment that makes possible the creation of multi-user virtual worlds. Developing a multi-user world requires a multi-skilled team. Andrew Cohen, Program in English as a Second Language/Institute of Linguistics, English as a Second Language, and Slavic Languages and Literatures (ESL/ILES), and Carol Klee, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, co-chair Sykes’s dissertation committee and have provided ongoing input on both the content development and research component of the project. Mahmoud Sadrai, ILES, is co-principal investigator for the TEL grant and is working with Croquet to develop a space for Persian language acquisition. Sykes says her project was possible thanks to “the fusion of an amazing team” that includes Peter Moore and Liz Wendland, Java and Web Services, Office of Information Technology. “We did not have a traditional client relationship. Our working relationship was more symbiotic.”
Upon entering Croquelandia, students are required to pursue one of several communicative quests. For example, a student might be asked to plan a party for a friend, Pablo, and to ask Ana, a mutual friend, for assistance. In pursuit of the quest the student will interact with several characters. For each interaction the student chooses from options that are all grammatically correct but pragmatically different. The communicative feedback students receive helps them learn appropriate linguistic strategies for different situations.
If you think Croquelandia sounds like a game, you are correct. Proponents of educational or “serious” games argue that games can engage learners on many levels. Sykes notes that immersion in the game environment itself is a learning experience as the user learns how to navigate it. Games motivate students, who develop a “strong emotional connection to the space.” And Sykes confirms, “Students love it. They want to know: why wasn’t I ever able to do this before?” But as Sykes explains, “Part of my interest in creating this space is that it hasn’t been done before.”
While working as a research assistant with Professor Cohen, Sykes helped to develop interactive learning modules in a static Web site, where students were able to practice and develop their skills. But an advantage of online environments such as Croquet is the opportunity to create simulated worlds that students may find more engaging. In her travels throughout Latin America and Spain, Sykes collected images and sounds that would later be used to build the environment. Undergraduate student workers transformed her photographs into 3D models and integrated ambient noises recorded on her iPod. The result is not an exact reproduction of any particular place, but a synthesis of places including Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and Spain. Similarly, learning modules take into account pragmatics across and within varied Spanish-speaking cultures.
Developing Croquelandia led Sykes to rethink her approach to teaching as well. She notes that “When educators build a game, we bring to it ideologies about how learning should occur. Instead, we should think about the power of the game itself. We need to provide more options and more choices.” She adds, “Educational games can be so much more than a fun new virtual toy if we think carefully about how they actually enhance the learning experience.”
