Targeting Public Speaking Skills via Virtual Environments
Recently I shared an a-ha! moment on the use of virtual environments for confronting the fear of public speaking.
The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to claim that the real value of such technology is in targeted skills development.
Once again, I’ll use myself as an example here to make my point.
If I think back to my earliest attempts at public speaking as a graduate student, I’d claim that I did a reasonable job of delivering my presentation. And given that the content of my presentation was likely vetted with my research peers (fellow graduate students) and supervisor ahead of time, this left me with a targeted opportunity for improvement: The Q&A session.
Countless times I can recall having a brilliant answer to a question long after my presentation was finished – e.g., on my way home from the event. Not very useful … and exceedingly frustrating.
I would also assert that this lag, between question and appropriate answer, had a whole lot less to do with my expertise in a particular discipline, and a whole lot more to do with my degree nervousness – how else can I explain the ability to fashion perfect answers on the way home!
Over time, I like to think that I’ve approved my ability to deliver better-quality answers in real time. How have I improved? Experience. I would credit my experience teaching science to non-scientists at York, as well as my public-sector experience as a vendor representative at industry events, as particularly edifying in this regard.
Rather than submit to such baptisms of fire, and because hindsight is 20/20, I would’ve definitely appreciated the opportunity to develop my Q&A skills in virtual environments such as Nortel web.alive. Why? Such environments can easily facilitate the focused effort I required to target the development of my Q&A skills. And, of course, as my skills improve, so can the challenges brought to bear via the virtual environment.
All speculation at this point … Reasonable speculation that needs to be validated …
If you were to embrace such a virtual environment for the development of your public-speaking skills, which skills would you target? And how might you make use of the virtual environment to do so?
Confronting the Fear of Public Speaking via Virtual Environments
Confession: In the past, I’ve been extremely quick to dismiss the value of Second Life in the context of teaching and learning.
Even worse, my dismissal was not fact-based … and, if truth be told, I’ve gone out of my way to avoid opportunities to ‘gather the facts’ by attending presentations at conferences, conducting my own research online, speaking with my colleagues, etc.
So I, dear reader, am as surprised as any of you to have had an egg-on-my-face epiphany this morning …
Please allow me to elaborate:
- Yesterday, I witnessed a demonstration of Nortel web.alive (dubbed by some as ‘Second Life for business’)
- This morning I was brainstorming content with a colleague for an upcoming presentation on computing resources available for researchers at York
It was at some point during this morning’s brainstorming session that the egg hit me squarely in the face:
Why not use Nortel web.alive to prepare graduate students for presenting their research?
Often feared more than death and taxes, public speaking is an essential aspect of academic research – regardless of the discipline.
Enter Nortel web.alive with its virtual environment of a large lecture hall – complete with a podium, projection screen for sharing slides, and most importantly an audience!
As a former graduate student, I could easily ‘see’ myself in this environment with increasingly realistic audiences comprised of friends, family and/or pets, fellow graduate students, my research supervisor, my supervisory committee, etc. Because Nortel web.alive only requires a Web browser, my audience isn’t geographically constrained. This geographical freedom is important as it allows for participation – e.g., between graduate students at York in Toronto and their supervisor who just happens to be on sabbatical in the UK. (Trust me, this happens!)
As the manager of Network Operations at York, I’m always keen to encourage novel use of our campus network. The public-speaking use case I’ve described here has the potential to make innovative use of our campus network, regional network (GTAnet), provincial network (ORION), and even national network (CANARIE) that would ultimately allow for global connectivity.
While I busy myself scraping the egg off my face, please chime in with your feedback. Does this sound useful? Are you aware of other efforts to use virtual environments to confront the fear of public speaking? Are there related applications that come to mind for you? (As someone who’s taught classes of about 300 students in large lecture halls, a little bit of a priori experimentation in a virtual environment would’ve been greatly appreciated!)
Update (November 13, 2009): I just Google’d the title of this article and came up with a few, relevant hits; further research is required.
On Knowledge-Based Representations for Actionable Data …
I bumped into a professional acquaintance last week. After describing briefly a presentation I was about to give, he offered to broker introductions to others who might have an interest in the work I’ve been doing. To initiate the introductions, I crafted a brief description of what I’ve been up to for the past 5 years in this area. I’ve also decided to share it here as follows:
As always, [name deleted], I enjoyed our conversation at the recent AGU meeting in Toronto. Below, I’ve tried to provide some context for the work I’ve been doing in the area of knowledge representations over the past few years. I’m deeply interested in any introductions you might be able to broker with others at York who might have an interest in applications of the same.
Since 2004, I’ve been interested in expressive representations of data. My investigations started with a representation of geophysical data in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Although this was successful, use of the approach underlined the importance of metadata (data about data) as an oversight. To address this oversight, a subsequent effort introduced a relationship-centric representation via the Resource Description Format (RDF). RDF, by the way, forms the underpinnings of the next-generation Web – variously known as the Semantic Web, Web 3.0, etc. In addition to taking care of issues around metadata, use of RDF paved the way for increasingly expressive representations of the same geophysical data. For example, to represent features in and of the geophysical data, an RDF-based scheme for annotation was introduced using XML Pointer Language (XPointer). Somewhere around this point in my research, I placed all of this into a framework.
A data-centric framework for knowledge representation.
In addition to applying my Semantic Framework to use cases in Internet Protocol (IP) networking, I’ve continued to tease out increasingly expressive representations of data. Most recently, these representations have been articulated in RDFS – i.e., RDF Schema. And although I have not reached the final objective of an ontological representation in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), I am indeed progressing in this direction. (Whereas schemas capture the vocabulary of an application domain in geophysics or IT, for example, ontologies allow for knowledge-centric conceptualizations of the same.)
From niche areas of geophysics to IP networking, the Semantic Framework is broadly applicable. As a workflow for systematically enhancing the expressivity of data, the Framework is based on open standards emerging largely from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Because there is significant interest in this next-generation Web from numerous parties and angles, implementation platforms allow for increasingly expressive representations of data today. In making data actionable, the ultimate value of the Semantic Framework is in providing a means for integrating data from seemingly incongruous disciplines. For example, such representations are actually responsible for providing new results – derived by querying the representation through a ‘semantified’ version of the Structured Query Language (SQL) known as SPARQL.
I’ve spoken formally and informally about this research to audiences in the sciences, IT, and elsewhere. With York co-authors spanning academic and non-academic staff, I’ve also published four refereed journal papers on aspects of the Framework, and have an invited book chapter currently under review – interestingly, this chapter has been contributed to a book focusing on data management in the Semantic Web. Of course, I’d be pleased to share any of my publications and discuss aspects of this work with those finding it of interest.
With thanks in advance for any connections you’re able to facilitate, Ian.
If anything comes of this, I’m sure I’ll write about it here – eventually!
In the meantime, feedback is welcome.
Blended Learning Panel
York University’s Institute for Research on Learning Technologies is sponsoring a panel discussion on blended learning:
“A recent workplace survey reported by Brandon Hall Publishing (2008) indicates that employing a mix of web-technologies with face-to-face learning is more effective than either e-learning or face-to-face instructional approaches alone. To explore the use and potential of “blended learning” further, please join us for a panel discussion featuring experts from various fields …”
This event has been re-scheduled for April 2, 2009 at 12:15 pm in TEL 1009 at York’s Keele Campus. I anticipate a lively and interesting discussion!
(Please check the IRLT Web site for the latest updates on the event.)
CANHEIT 2009: Call for Proposals Open
Since my return to York, an annual highlight has been participation in CANHEIT – The Canadian Higher Education IT Conference. The 2009 conference is being hosted by The University of Montreal. The Call for Proposals opened a few days ago and will remain open until the end of January 2009. That gives us something to ponder over the holidays …
Stainless Improving By Leaps and Bounds!
When I first wrote about Stainless, I indicated that it provided impressive features/functionalities for a version 0.1 release. In a subsequent post, I elaborated on Stainless’ strengths and weaknesses.
Stainless is now at version 0.2.5. And in the space of a few weeks, Mesa Dynamics has addressed a number of the weaknesses I previously noted. Specifically:
- Download capability – It just works now! Thanks!
- Offline mode – Via Google Gears. Interestingly, I predicted this might take some time. I am so happy to be wrong!!
- Interaction with Google Notebook – Even via the bookmarklet is fine!
- URL Caching/Auto-Completion – As noted previously …
RDF-ization: Is That What I’ve Been Up To?
Recently, on his blog, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
RDF-ization is a term used by the Semantic Web community to describe the process of generating RDF from non RDF Data Sources such as (X)HTML, Weblogs, Shared Bookmark Collections, Photo Galleries, Calendars, Contact Managers, Feed Subscriptions, Wikis, and other information resource collections.
Although Idehen identifies a number of data sources, he does not explicitly identify two data sources I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with over the past few years:
- One source of data is that generated by scientific instruments. With various colleagues, the semantic framework I’ve built around this data source allows for RDF-ization of scientific data from semi-structured ASCII to XML (specifically ESML) to RDF via GRDDL. (Please see the illustration.) In principle, it should be possible to further transform the RDF representation into OWL thus resulting in what I’ve referred to elsewhere as an informal ontology. (According to Morville as well as Shadbolt et al., the RDF-ization of the data sources Idehen identifies result in folksonomies, rather than informal ontologies.) Again with various colleagues, I’ve also made use of RDF to annotate features inherent in the scientific data via XML Pointer Language (XPointer).
- Even more recently, with members of my Network Operations team at York University, I’ve been working with a relational database as a source of data on the topology of IP networks. (Please see the illustration.)
Of course, whether the motivation is personal/social-networking or scientific/IT related, the attention to RDF-ization is win-win for all stakeholders. Why? Anything that accelerates the RDF-ization of non-RDF data sources brings us that much closer to realizing the true value of the Semantic Web.
CANHEIT 2008: Enhanced Abstract
The program specifics for CANHEIT 2008 are becoming available online.
The enhanced abstract for one of my presentations is as follows:
From the Core to the Edge: Automating Awareness of Network Topology through Knowledge Representation
Ian Lumb – Manager Network Operations, Computing and Network Services (York University)
Abstract
Like many other institutions of higher education, York University makes extensive use of Open Source software. This is especially true in the case of monitoring and managing IP (Internet Protocol) devices. On the monitoring front, extensive manual configuration is currently required to make monitoring solutions (e.g., NAGIOS) aware of the topology of the York network. And with respect to managing, NetDisco automatically discovers assets placed on the network, but is unable to abstract away unnecessary complexity in, e.g., rendering schematics of the network topology. These and other examples suggest that NAGIOS and NetDisco operate in the realm of data, and possibly information, but are unable to envisage network topology from a knowledge-representation perspective. Thus the current focus is on applying a recently developed knowledge-representation platform to such routine requirements in network monitoring and management. The platform is based on Sematic Web standards and implementations and has already been proven effective in various scientific contexts. Ultimately our objective is to extract data automatically discovered by NetDisco, represent it using the knowledge-based platform, and transform a topology-aware representation of the data into configuration data that can be ingested by NAGIOS.
A visual representation of the approach is illustrated below.
