Ok since my last post not a whole lot has change with my placement. Things are still fairly quiet with Victory. We have had a push on getting something into the semester 1 units which has resulted in the vast majority (something like 95%) have some sort of content in. I’m a bit frustrated with the level of content however. It seems that Terry’s view of what constitutes content in Victory and what I would class as suitable content differs somewhat. Terry is happy for them to just have a few website links up there and while I can see that something is better than nothing I cannot help but think this is a bit of a cop out by some members of staff. I’m not suggesting that lecturers create all singing, all dancing units in Victory or that Victory is necessarily the best of VLEs (it’s not) but to just throw up a couple of web links seems as though it is short-changing students. An electronic copy of the unit handbook at the very least would be something of direct use to the students and provide a more substantial presence within the system.
In terms of my side project, the Alternate Reality Game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game) I have continued my background reading and research while waiting for more information to be fed through from Simon. After having a brief meeting with him last week it was reassuring to see that he was still enthused with the idea and keen to get stuck in. We (Simon, Terry and I) have also booked onto the ARGs in Charity and Education Conference (http://conference.operationsleepercell.com/) being held at Channel 4 on 5th December. I’m hoping the conference will give us insight into how best to apply the ARG/cross-platform entertainment methodology to the Enterprise unit.
I’m getting a little frustrated by the lack of work. Although I do my best to keep myself busy, and once we get the details nailed down the ARG I’ll have stuff to keep me going, I wish there was more for me to get my teeth into. I’m also a bit frustrated that no one really wants to push themselves with Victory, it’s not an ideal system but it has far more potential than is currently being exploited.
