MiRTLE: an ongoing project spanning three continents

In my last blog (and some previous blogs) I found a lot of research which supports the rather intuitive conclusion that yes, there is bias in the classroom, based on factors such as race, gender, age, and so on. In the classroom, as in the workplace, I strongly believe that people should be evaluated on the basis of their performance on assigned tasks in order to maximize the potential of each individual and, therefore, to encourage the best and most productive society we can attain. Bias—prejudice—against individuals based on extraneous factors has no place in the classroom.

But researchers at Project Implicit as well as numerous other researchers have found that some bias is completely unconscious. Regardless of how much a teacher wants to remain unbiased, it may be impossible (or very difficult). Can anything be done about this to ensure a more fair and equitable classroom environment for all students?

I hope that there is a solution. I suggest that the use of avatars to replace a student’s actual physical presence might be one solution. In my “dream” classroom, the class meets online rather than on a campus but at scheduled times, just like a brick-and-mortar class. The teacher is there as are all the students. There may be a lecture or a demonstration or the teacher may be available to help students with hands-on projects, just as in a traditional classroom. However, students create their own avatars to represent themselves, as does the teacher. In an ideal situation, the students and teacher could meet in real time, using property on Second Life purchased by the school for the classroom or another similar venue.

So I began to do some research into what it means to a person to create an avatar. The topic has interested many others but, because the technology that makes such a classroom possible is so new, much of the research is ongoing. Also, as I thought about this situation (a classroom populated by avatars created by students and teachers), I found more questions arose than were answered.

For one thing, if it is discovered that most people create avatars that resemble themselves, then this would not eliminate bias on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, age, weight, and other physical characteristics. However, if it is found that most—or even half of the—people create avatars that do not have the same physical traits as the people themselves, then the teacher would face a class and would have very little idea of who the women are, who is old and who is young, who is Latino and who is Asian, etc.

However, this situation would not eliminate the possibility of bias; it simply might change the end result. For example, if Joan Jones was a 50-year-old white woman whose avatar appeared to be a teenaged black male, Joan might experience the bias a teacher might have against (or for) black men even though the possible bias against (or for) older women would be effectively negated.

On the other hand, people in general do have an idea of how different stereotypes are treated in general in America. While we may not like it, I think most of us know that beautiful young people get preference, in the eyes of most, over dowdy old people. So we can probably assume that if a person creates a dowdy old lady for an avatar, that person is aware that the teacher will respond to him/her as a dowdy old lady. In other words, my dream classroom may be populated by some people who are consciously courting the teacher’s bias.

While using avatars may not eliminate bias, it does place the responsibility of “owning” each one’s appearance on the students and teacher. Which brings up a whole host of new questions and research topics… but that is more than can be addressed at this time.

Research into this fascinating topic is now underway in a collaboration between researchers across three continents—in the UK, China, and the US. The work is entitled A Mixed Reality Teaching and Learning Environment and the abstract follows:

This work in progress paper describes collaborative research, taking place on three continents, towards creating a ‘mixed reality teaching & learning environment’ (MiRTLE) that enables teachers and students participating in realtime mixed and online classes to interact with avatar representations of each other. The longer term hypothesis that will be investigated is that avatar representations of teachers and students will help create a sense of shared presence, engendering a sense of community and improving student engagement in online lessons. This paper explores the technology that will underpin such systems by presenting work on the use of a massively multi-user game server, based on Sun’s Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland tools, to create a shared teaching environment, illustrating the process by describing the creation of a virtual classroom. We describe the Shanghai NEC eLearning system that will form the platform for the deployment of this work. As these systems will take on an increasingly global reach, we discuss how cross cultural issues will effect such systems. We conclude by outlining our future plans to test our hypothesis by deploying this technology on a live system with some 15,000 online users. (from http://www.springerlink.com/content/25q2536128u10473/, retrieved April 17, 2009)

As I continue to do research into this topic, after the end of this course, I will follow the results of Callaghan, Gardner, Horan, Scott, Shen, and Wang enthusiastically.

References:

Callaghan, V. (University of Essex, UK), Gardner, M. (University of Essex, UK), Horan, B.(Sun Microsystems Laboratories, , UK), Scott, J.1, Shen, L.(Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China), and Wang, M.(San Diego State University, USA) . A Mixed Reality Teaching and Learning Environment, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg., Volume 5169/2008. From Hybrid Learning and Education, 2008. http://www.springerlink.com/content/25q2536128u10473/ (Retrieved April 17, 2009).

Project Implicit at http://projectimplicit.net/about.php (retrieved April 15, 2009)

Almost at the end…

This is the last week of my blog for this course. At the beginning, I was tasked with identifying an area of interest and, over the course of the semester, doing research into that topic. I restate my initial topic here:

My premise: There is bias in the classroom, be it conscious or unconscious, related to demographic factors such as race, ethnicity, age, and gender.

My hypothesis: Using avatars for students and teachers to represent themselves in an online classroom environment can, at least in part, offset some of the bias.

In my last blog I discussed the premise and found ample sources to support the supposition that bias in the classroom does exist, based on demographic factors. Today I will explore some of the research that has been done to create a classroom using avatars.

As I continued to research this topic over the past seven weeks, I found work done on bias in the classroom and work done on creating a virtual classroom using avatars to represent students. However, I did not find any completed research that addressed the question of whether or not the use of avatars is an aid to offsetting bias. I did find one very interesting piece of research about the topic but it is presently a work in progress. I will discuss that research in my next blog entry.

I did discover that a number of university programs and museums are developing the pedagogical powers of avatar worlds. In general, the following are required:

• resources (building a complex avatar world requires either a lot of money or a lot of free labor)
• extremely fast Internet access speeds
• an avatar voice technology that allows users to communicate with the spoken word
• advances in the programming of bots so that users can interact in a complex way with the avatars they encounter in the virtual world.

Dennis Beck at Boise State University did a study entitled Effects of detailed customization of student avatars on teacher expectations of students. Unfortunately, Beck approached the issue from a perspective that was opposite my perspective. He studied whether a student’s choice of avatar created teacher bias. I hope to see whether using avatars can help avoid bias that might exist in “real” life. Also, Beck’s study had very little statistical evidence to support his conclusions and the study was not dated, although it included many references to other works dating from 1979-2006. Thus, I conclude that Beck’s study is relatively recent.

Another very interesting study was by Joel Foreman from The Technology Source, a peer-reviewed bimonthly periodical (no longer in existence) whose purpose was to provide thoughtful articles to assist educators as they work to integrate information technology tools into teaching and into managing educational organizations (from http://technologysource.org/article/avatar_pedagogy/). Foreman described:

Avatars98, the first virtual conference of the Contact Consortium. Produced by Bruce Damer (the leading authority on avatar worlds), the conference connected global locations, provided an exhibit hall, featured ‘speakers,’ and was attended by 4000 people—and all of this took place (so to speak) on the computer screens of the thousands of geo-distributed individuals whose avatars came together in the virtual conference hall.

The Contact Consortium is a global forum for virtual world cyberspace, formed in 1995. When I went to the Contact Consortium and followed the link to Avatars98, I was rather surprised to see pictures of the conference which took place in Second Life that looked exactly like the Second Life I entered eleven years later! Check it out at http://www.digitalspace.com/papers/av98ars.html.

While I did not find any specific research that addressed the issue of whether or not using avatars in a virtual classroom can help reduce or eliminate bias in the classroom, I did learn that the technology for such a classroom is clearly available and ready to use. Now it is up to me to try to implement such a classroom in my college and follow up with a study that assesses the results!

References:

Avatars98 from Digital Space at http://www.digitalspace.com/papers/av98ars.html. (Retrieved April 17, 2009).

Beck, D. Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Technology,
College of Education, Boise State University.
http://74.125.113.132/search?=cache:I7J6mwaLvMAJ:vwresearchersgroup.pbwiki.com/f/DennisBeck.ppt+avatar+classroom+bias&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a. (retrieved April 17, 2009).

Contact Consortium at http://www.ccon.org/. (Retrieved April 17, 2009).

Foreman, J. Avatar Pedagogy. The Technology Source. From: http://technologysource.org/article/avatar_pedagogy/. November/December 1999. (retrieved April 17, 2009)

Unconscious Bias and Project Implicit

This week I will attempt to find sources that discuss the premise of my research topic and, if possible, some research that supports my hypothesis.

My premise: There is bias in the classroom, be it conscious or unconscious, related to demographic factors such as race, ethnicity, age, and gender.

My hypothesis: Using avatars for students and teachers to represent themselves in an online classroom environment can, at least in part, offset some of the bias.

I did some research into general bias in the classroom and found a wonderful study done by the California Teachers Association Institute for Teaching. The conclusions were as follows:

Social psychologists and social scientists have found that all of us, regardless of who we are, have cognitive biases that influence how we perceive and make decisions about other people. The behavior of human beings is often guided by racial and other stereotypes of which we are completely unaware. Simply put, those things that all of us are subject to (e.g. stereotypes, prejudices) that we are unaware of which lie deep within our subconscious. This unconscious stereotyping and prejudice reveal our "implicit attitudes" of various subjects including race and even the ability to learn. Research has shown that we develop and use cognitive shortcuts and generalizations to make sense of an overload of incoming information in order to navigate the world around us. Racial stereotyping is one method that is frequently relied upon to make decisions about people and the world. http://www.teacherdrivenchange.org/teacherdrivenchange/2008/08/unconscious-bia.html)

The study used something called the Implicit Association Test (IAT) which presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences “much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods.” The test was created by Project Implicit which is a Virtual Laboratory for the social and behavioral sciences designed to facilitate the research of implicit social cognition. These are the feelings and evaluations that are not necessarily available to conscious awareness, conscious control, conscious intention, or self-reflection.

Project Implicit comprises a network of laboratories, technicians, and research scientists at Harvard University, the University of Washington, and the University of Virginia. The project was initially launched as a demonstration website in 1998 at Yale University, and began to function fully as a research enterprise following a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health in 2003. (http://projectimplicit.net/about.php)

This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short. There were 15 Demonstration Tests offered and I chose the following tests: Gender-Science, Race, and Age before I got bored. The tests did not seem significantly unbiased (no pun intended) enough for me to put 100% faith into the results. However, Project Implicit is a respected Virtual Laboratory with world-wide connections, my personal opinions notwithstanding.

For each test, the test subject was given a stream of images or words. For example, for the Gender-Science Test, the first stream was a list of words that signified male or female (Mother, Father, Aunt, Uncle, Son, Daughter, etc.). Male might be the heading on the left side of the screen and Female on the right side. The ‘e’ key would signify the left side of the screen and the ‘i’ key signified the right side. If the word was a male word, the subject would press the ‘e’ key; if female, the subject pressed the ‘i’ key. In the next set of images, Science was one category and Liberal Arts was the other. The Science category would be listed under Male on the left side and Liberal Arts under Female on the right side. Again, as the subject was presented with words (such as Physics, History, Art, Geology), the ‘e’ key was pressed to signify a Science and the ‘i’ key to signify a Liberal Arts category. The next two or three screens presented the same images or words but the placement (left side or right side) would be changed. Male might be paired with Liberal Arts and Female with Science. It appears that the researchers believed that the number of wrong keypresses by the test subject and what those wrong keypresses were would indicate a level of unconscious bias.

Results for all the tests I took were given at the end and, if I can generalize from the ones I took, it appears that more than 50% of the population who took these tests had the bias which is commonly expected: the assumption that men are more prone and more able to do science/math than women, that blacks are more often associated with negative words, that people tend to prefer youth over old age.

While I don’t doubt the results, I do doubt that these tests proved these things. As a test subject myself, I “learned” where to put each category from the first round of images. It was difficult to unlearn the tendency to put category X on the left side the next time around. And since the first round of images consistently paired one thing (Male or Black) with its “expected” preference (Science or negative words), I learned to place science on the left and had to unlearn it the next time around when science was on the right side, under Female. I’m not sure I am explaining all these clearly so, if you’re interested, take one of the tests: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html

However, Project Implicit is an impressive project, with very interesting objectives, and has Web sites around the world, The more I read about it, the more I think I need to do more research into it. Next blog!

References:

Unconscious Bias in the Classroom by California Teachers Association Institute for Teaching, August 15, 2008. At: http://www.teacherdrivenchange.org/teacherdrivenchange/2008/08/unconscious-bia.html (retrieved April 15, 2009)

Project Implicit at http://projectimplicit.net/about.php (retrieved April 15, 2009)

The value of video games

For my third blog this week, I had planned to do more research on bias in the classroom and begin to tie it in to how avatars might be used to ameliorate this problem. But an email I received from a friend this morning stopped me.

I tried many ways to copy and paste the email into a Word document but the images are protected so, instead, I sent a copy to each of your UF email accounts. Please check it out -- the subject line is "Video games really ARE valuable" -- I hope it doesn't get filtered into Trash or Junk.

The email shows pictures of the new Mercedes Benz SCL 600. This was actually presented in 1996 as a "Concept Car" at the Paris Motor Show to show how technical features could be incorporated in a new car. There are some pretty interesting new features like a driver's side door that twists up and out, but the main new feature is no steering wheel! The driver uses a joystick instead. The email is partially true. Here’s the real story, from snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/photos/automobiles/newmercedes.asp

A car with a joystick instead of a steering wheel may not be ready for market in 2010, but I bet it will be soon. When I thought about it, at first, I freaked out. I can't use a joystick! I'm pretty inept at those types of video games and, while I love some games (especially role playing and adventure games), I don't do well with the shoot-em-up types where I need to move quickly with a joystick. While I am sure it will take a while for this joystick-steered car to become the norm, I bet it will, someday in my lifetime – and while I am still a driver. I thought, "Liz, you are simply too young to be removed from the pool of drivers."

But then I remembered that, in 1995 I was still refusing to use a mouse because I learned everything about computers using a keyboard. I owned computers with GUIs (Windows -3.0?) for about 5 years before I actually stopped by-passing the GUI (I worked through DOS). But, within a week or so of my decision to pick up the mouse, I became a pro. I bet I could do the same thing with a joystick if it meant Learn It or Stay Home.

But the whole thing brings up a lot of thoughts. Not everyone is so malleable. When the Joystick Car becomes the only one available, will a lot of people be left behind (literally and figuratively)? What else is on the horizon that requires a whole new set of computer-based skills? I still can't text. As yet, I don't need to and, at this point in my life, I don't have the time to learn skills until I need them. I thank my lucky stars that I'm a quick learner. But not everyone is.

Who are we leaving behind? Or are we leaving anyone behind? Ten years ago people lamented that their grandparents would never master computers. But so many grannies and grandpas are now avid surfers and email aficionados.

This is sort of the flip side of the Media Equation. Not only do people view media as real enough to interact with socially, but it seems that people are willing to extend themselves to learn to maintain that interaction.

And, finally, it makes me feel a lot less guilty about spending so much time learning to move around Second Life!

References:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/automobiles/newmercedes.asp

Media = Real Life: Reality Unmasked?

The Media Equation was absolutely fascinating reading with a gold mine of thought-provoking ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this chapter. Because there were so many interesting ideas in this selection, I’ll just comment on them as I encountered them.

On page 5 the Media Equation is introduced. Byron and Nass say, “…we have found that individuals’ interactions with computers, television, and the new media are fundamentally social and natural, just like interactions in real life.” This sentence (and all its variations throughout the selection) is the only one I can’t agree with. I see that the interactions between people and the media are, as demonstrated by the authors, “fundamentally social and natural.” However, I do not believe these interactions are “just like interactions in real life.” This would simply be physically impossible. Computers, television, and other man-made media have only a finite number of possible responses. People do not. Given enough time and information about “initial conditions,” every possible reaction or action of a machine can be predicted. The same, I doubt, can be said about human beings. As far as I know, scientists have yet to understand fully the workings of the human brain—including its interactions with the physical body—so there is no way to predict (or even count) all possible human responses.

That said, the rest of the chapter rang true. Byron and Nass, on page 7, say “[e]ven the simplest of media are close enough to the real people, places, and things they depict to activate rich social and natural responses.” It is interesting that, as I considered what movie to watch for this week’s assignment, I thought of “Short Circuit.” This movie is about a robot named Number Five who, by the end of the movie, has convinced even the most skeptical scientists and engineers (in the movie) as well as the audience that he is, in fact, “alive.” Number Five was not a human-appearing android like Data or a cuddly furball like a Furbie. Number Five was made of steel rods, LED lights, and moved on rubber wheels. But it was his all-too-human responses that caused him to be seen as alive. No one, looking at Number Five, would confuse him with a human. Yet, such is the power of imagination.

Unfortunately, the concept of imagination (what is it? who has or does not have it and why?) was conspicuously lacking from Byron and Nass’s analysis. The selection focused on human-media interaction. On page 8 the authors state:

People have done some amazing things in our labs. They have taken great care not to make a computer feel bad, they’ve felt physically threatened by mere pictures, and they’ve attributed to an animated line drawing a personality as rich as that of their best friend. It eventually occurred to us that people were not doing these things because they were childish, inexperienced, distracted, or because they needed a metaphor. We had to acknowledge that these responses were fundamentally human, and we had to acknowledge that they were important.

I was again reminded of a movie. In “CastAway” a successful, rather arrogant businessman (played by Tom Hanks) finds himself stranded, completely alone, on an island. He finds a basketball in the debris of his plane’s wreckage—a Wilson-brand basketball. Over the subsequent days, weeks, and months, he not only names his basketball (Wilson, of course), but develops a deep relationship with the ball. I am sure virtually every person in this class has a memory of a social relationship s/he had at some time with some object. It might have been a teddy bear, a blankie, a favorite shirt, or anything. Thus, there is more to the story than simply saying that people respond to media. People respond in a social manner to inanimate objects as well.

However, this book was written not just to express the existence of a phenomenon but to look specifically at media, how it functions in our society, and how an understanding of the Media Equation can impact society.

I found the question on page 11: “Why Do People React Socially and Naturally to Media?” the most interesting question. The authors referred to an incident between U.S. senators, the puppet Lamb Chop, and Lamb Chop’s “handler” (Shari Lewis) in an introduction to this section. Their conclusions, therefore, can be applied, I assume, to objects (Lamb Chop is an inanimate object) as well as media.

The authors also suggest that the human brain is designed to react to all perceived objects as real objects and that anything “that seemed to be a real person or place was real” (p. 12). When I was studying anthropology I read about many groups of people (societies) whose names for themselves were, when translated from their own language, the equivalent of “The People.” This is common. However, one group took this concept further. To them, all humans who were not of The People were called Others. They found it simple to identify a person as an Other because Others always walked upside down. They saw people who were not part of their society as upside down! The group had actually trained themselves to perceive some people to be upside down. Amazing what the human brain can do, huh?

In summary… well, I really have no summary. I found the selection to be a lively piece, written in an engaging manner, with thought-provoking ideas. However, I do believe it is important to keep in mind that human-human (or even human-animal) interaction is not the same as human-media interaction.

But at least I no longer feel guilty when I threaten my recalcitrant computer with my fist. It knows when it misbehaves!

References:
Reeves, Byron, and Clifford Nass. 1996. "Ch 1, The Media Equation," pp. 3-18 in The Media Equation. Cambridge University Press.

The Virtual Classroom is Reality

Well, now I’m a little excited and, at the same time, a little depressed. My wonderful idea of creating a virtual classroom in Second Life is already old hat… Back to that in a minute.

A little background: Here at Santa Fe College in the Information Technology Education area, our enrollment is rather low. We offer several tracks to our students so the students we do have are spread over many classes. For example, Networking students will never take our upper level programming classes. So, while we have many sections of our introductory courses, we can’t offer more than one section of the advanced courses per course each semester. Thus, we have to decide: should we offer the course during the day? evening? When we pick a day time schedule, we learn that half the students who want the class work all day and can only attend night classes. When we switch to an evening schedule, we find that half the students complain that they can’t come at night because of children, transportation problems, or other responsibilities. We end up offering most of these classes online in an effort to please everyone.

But we don’t please everyone. In fact, we please fewer students! People think that students who are taking computer classes would absolutely love online classes. And that the more advanced the student, the more that student would appreciate online classes. Not so. The material in upper level programming courses is difficult. Students want to listen to an instructor explain it. They want a teacher in front of the room who can be stopped, mid-explanation, to clarify a point. These students know how to read a text on their own. They know how to play with a new piece of software on their own. But if they are trying to understand how to use a Flag in a Sort Routine, they need the instructor right there to explain it, step by step, and stop when things get confusing, and backtrack, and try a second type of explanation.

I thought I had a wonderful partial solution! I began to dream of a virtual classroom in Second Life where the class would be scheduled at a specific time. True, this might still keep students who are working at that time from taking the class, but it would certainly allow students who lack night transportation to take the class. I even envisioned running two sessions of the same material (a day and a night) in lieu of a specific number of office hours. The administration would be happy because I would only be officially teaching one section but the students would be able to take the class either during the day or the evening schedule. The logistics are yet to be worked out.

What I did know was that this would be a way to have an online class environment in real time with real-time student-teacher interaction. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would be a start. So I began looking into the possibility. And I found that not only has it been done already, it’s been done right here in Gainesville! At UF…

Science Daily in February 2007 reports on Paul Fishwick’s classes: “There’s no excuse for being late to Paul Fishwick’s class, even though it’s held on an island, one that does not appear on the map of the landlocked University of Florida in Gainesville. That’s because students can just teleport in. “

“Fishwick, a computer science and engineering professor, is teaching one of at least two classes offered at UF this semester largely in cyberspace — specifically, the trendy three-dimensional online world called Second Life. There, Fishwick’s ‘avatar,’ the character that represents each player in Second Life, leads discussions among some 30 other avatars controlled by upper-level UF undergraduate and graduate students in CAP 4403/CAP 6402, Aesthetic Computing.” (from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070207193301.htm)

Why does Fishwick use Second Life for his classrooms? “I like the potential for collaboration, immersion, aesthetics, creativity, social interaction,” Fishwick said. “There are a lot of different dimensions I think are valuable to educators.” Just what I think!

On the other hand, Paul Fishwick at UF is not the only person using Second Life as a classroom. A Google search immediately returned a plethora of articles about this exact possibility; I didn’t even have to refine my “Second Life classrooms” search entry at all. One of the best articles I read is “101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom” by Dr. Megan S. Conklin at the Department of Computing Sciences at Elon University (http://facstaff.elon.edu/mconklin/pubs/glshandout.pdf). The article is a 31-page guide to using Second Life for various college disciplines, including many tips and suggestions about how to optimize the virtual world. I will keep this site for future use!

However, my blog should be about how using virtual worlds and avatars can work to eliminate teacher bias based on demographics like race, ethnicity, age, physical disability, and gender in the classroom. With this in mind, I can only say that I am thrilled to find so many references to help me in the future when I try using Second Life for an actual class. This blog has allowed me to come to the conclusion that my dream-class is not outside the realm of possibility and I will, in the future, be able to implement my idea and, hopefully, use the results to come to some valuable conclusions about bias, anti-bias, and avatars.

More to follow next time when I return to the topic of bias.

References:
University of Florida (2007, February 8). Distance Learning Moves Into 'Second Life' Virtual Classroom. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 9, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070207193301.htm

101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom. Dr. Megan S. Conklin. Department of Computing Sciences, Elon University (2007, February) Retrieved April 9, 2009 from http://facstaff.elon.edu/mconklin/pubs/glshandout.pdf

Response to Visual analyses of the creation of avatars by Ferdig et al

Today I read the article Dr. Ferdig co-authored for the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, entitled Visual analyses of the creation of avatars. I thought it was great! My comments today are all about the article so the page numbers of my quotes all come from that one source.

In my last blog, I discussed the emotions that I felt as I created my own avatar. I was surprised that, when given the chance to re-create my physical self, I found I picked many of my own physical characteristics, but made them a little better (or what I consider “better”). Ferdig’s article addressed this phenomenon. He and the co-authors examined what happened when participants in a study created avatars as heroes, villains, ideal selves and actual selves (p. 90).

The study participants were each presented with four small vignettes describing scenarios they would keep in mind as they created the four avatars. One set the scene for the creation of a hero, one for the creation of a villain, one for an ideal self, and the fourth asked participants to “to build a visual representation of yourself that you will use to interact with other students” in an online course (p. 93).

Analysis of the data was detailed and complex but a summary of the results showed some surprising conclusions. As expected, participants created “heros” and “villains” who were different in many physical traits from their real selves. The authors also found that “the majority of the characteristics changed were temporal. Temporal characteristics are those that can be easily changed in real life: clothing, hairstyle, and with the advent of color contact lenses, eye color. On the other hand, enduring characteristics are those that are not easily malleable: body type, skin tone, musculature, and gender-specific characteristics. This result was unexpected, as conventional wisdom supported with research by Turkle (1995) and Yee (2006), indicates that given the opportunity to become an anonymous denizen of an online world, one would adopt a liberated persona and the physical characteristics to match that persona” (p. 101). I found these results surprising as well, but especially interesting in light of what I discovered about myself—that my own ideal avatar also resembled me a lot!

I have one comment about these results: the comparisons the authors made between “real” and avatar came from photographs taken of the participants at the start of the project so some conclusions might not have been accurate. For example, the conclusion that many people made avatars who dressed in a more formal manner than they did in real life was based on a comparison between the avatar and the single photograph of that participant. The clothing the participant wore on the day of the photogram might not have been the norm for that person. This is a very watered down discussion of this topic, of course. But it’s one example.

I found all these results fascinating because they say something about how we view ourselves. Maybe most of us don’t dislike our own bodies as much as we suppose. In fact, this is even more interesting because a common theme in American society is that women are objectified and that we are bombarded with ads that insist we emulate some “ideal” body type. The idea of a slender woman with blond hair, tight buns, flat stomach, and large breasts is our supposed “ideal.” Yet, confronted with the opportunity to remake oneself into that image, it appears that most of Ferdig et al’s subjects did not choose that route.

These results are even more significant in light of one factor of the study that, from the researchers’ point of view was a problem but is not a problem from the perspective of “do American women really strive for a stereotypical ideal body?” In this study, 87% of the participants were female (p. 101). And, should one suggest that this American ideal is true mainly for the typical white woman, well, this study consisted of 96% white participants. In other words, these results could possibly be used to draw some conclusions about whether or not white American women really want to become Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, or Brittney Spears lookalikes.

On the other hand, last night I spent some time in the Help Institute in Second Life where I was amazed at all the skinny big-breasted, tight-butt women avatars, dressed in skin-tight jeans and very revealing cropped tops. I find it hard to believe that a large percentage of the people who are Residents of Second Life look close to that in Real Life…

Ferdig et al included photos of two participants paired up with images of the avatars they created. While I realize this might be an invasion of privacy, I wish I could have seen more photos alongside the avatars that went with those people. One pleasant-looking but overweight woman created a very thin, sexy avatar as a villain! The other woman created a male avatar for a villain even though the study stated that few participants crossed gender lines when creating their avatars.

I found this study absolutely riveting and I look forward to doing my own research on this topic. Just reading this one article gave me so many ideas for more research that I won’t have time, if I live to be 150, to look into all of them!

Ferdig et al brought up two interesting questions that emerged from their study related to gender and race: “Do female participants create male avatars (and vice versa)? Do participants create avatars of a different race?” (p. 101).

I look forward to investigating at least one of the topics Ferdig brought up or that I have thought of as I continue my blog.

References:
1. Black, E.W., Ferdig, R.E., DiPietro, J.C., Liu, F. & Whalen, B. (2009). Visual analyses of the creation of avatars. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, 1(1), 90-107. http://www.igi-global.com/newsletter/october08/ijgcms.pdf

2. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.

3. Yee, N. (2008). Our virtual bodies, ourselves? The Deadalus project: The psychology of MMORPGs. Retrieved from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/ archives/001613.php

Thank you, Debbie!

Thank you so much, Debbie -- I edited!

Liz in Wonderland

I thought that it would be a good idea to use this week’s assignment (download and evaluate some software) to help me with my research topic. I decided to download and use an avatar-creation program. However, as I started to look for such a program, I found the task not as easy as I had thought. I learned that most programs that allowed people to create avatars were geared to two audiences: people who want to make a cute little image to include on their Christmas letters or their emails to Aunt Bea or teens/children who want to create an avatar for a specific online game. So I chose to use opportunity to investigate Second Life (defined in my previous blog).

To join Second Life, a person must download the framework to a computer. The first thing one does, after joining, is to create an avatar. I spent an enormous amount of time creating my avatar since each feature (mouth, nose, eyes, ears, hair, etc. etc.) must be created separately and each feature has up to 20 possible choices. Then the avatar must be dressed, from underwear to outerwear. Next, this alter-me (or Other-Me) begins to wander around this virtual world. As a new Resident, I began in a Newbie Center where I initially met an apprentice named Reliar who was available to help find my way. I must admit that it was so enjoyable that I have had to exert extreme willpower to avoid spending all my free time in my new home.

My experiences in Second Life were… well, both interesting and exciting. I met some lovely people there. Several were there doing projects for college classes – so this project is not unusual in academia. The Newbie Center I found myself in was a German Newbie Center. I’m not sure if this was because I originally clicked on something that took me there or because America doesn’t have a Newbie Center. But all the Germans I met were friendly, pleasant, delightful and bi- or tri-lingual. I speak some Spanish and French (no German, but my son speaks German) so we conversed in several languages.

But the Americans I met were, unfortunately, the epitome of the Ugly American. One wanted virtual sex and would not stop talking about it. Others used vile language. All of them wanted “out” of the GNC (German Newbie Center) and demanded to know how to get out of the place. The apprentice-helper, Reliar, was consistently polite. I was embarrassed to be American.
Of course, this was one experience on one day and probably is not representative of how most Americans interact in this environment (I hope!). But it is a shame that I had to have one of my initial experiences be like this.

Another strange thing was my involvement with my own avatar. I had some insights into myself: most of the attributes I selected were similar to the “real” me but improved. For example, I chose long wild curly hair (which I have) but picked legs that were just a little longer (proportionately) than my own. It was very interesting to see which of my own physical characteristics I chose to keep and which I chose to change --- especially in light of the fact that I always thought I absolutely hated my own appearance!

Then I think of these experiences in light of all the research Hap has been doing on his blog about avatars and the ties people feel with their own avatars.

Another interesting thing: after my first trip to Second Life, I woke up the next morning thinking about this Other-Me. I actually felt it was me in another place. I haven’t thought of myself as an imaginary person since childhood, but the avatar had a strong sense of reality in my mind.

So many fascinating feelings – and I am sure there is research about all of these things. But this blog is a complete digression from my topic. On the other hand, I think I need some understanding of the way people interact with their own avatars before designing a classroom in Second Life – as a teacher, this would be an important part of how I interact with students. I’d need to keep in mind that I am interacting with avatars and some of that interaction is colored by the fact that the avatars are renditions of how the students wish to be seen.

That adds a new dimension to the idea that avatars may allow interaction without bias. But now I need to consider: what is bias? What does it mean?