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)