Transcript Slide 1

Your host:
• Randall Sadler
• The University of Illinois
A
call
to
virtual
arms
His Co-host
•Randall Renoir
•Second Life
First, the bad news…
Sadly, by
the end of this
presentation you’ll likely
hear me say (again)
“There are no easy
answers.”
Next, the good news…
 It
is not too late to establish a
set of guidelines for such
ethical research practices
 Our conversation today is
meant as a starting point in
that process.
If life were a “Real” Virtual World
What is a virtual world?
…an online environment
 Avatars representing “real” people
 Typically control own appearance: gender,
shape, clothing, species???
 May be similar or nearly identical to real
world
 May be a cooperative environment OR a
combative one—sometimes hard to tell
which is which!

A super brief history
From MUDs (1978)—still available!
telnet://british-legends.com:27750
 To MOOs
 To WOOs
 To GMUKs
 …to assorted other animal-like sounds
 To true graphically-oriented Virtual
Worlds (first MMORPG 1985—Habitat)

A few of the most popular VWs
 Second
Life:
◦ www.secondlife.com
 Active Worlds:
◦ www.activeworlds.com
 There:
◦ www.there.com
Some Second Life facts
(most from Gronstedt, 2007)
1.2 million logged in
over last 60 days
 60,599 logged in 8pm
on Monday
 Users
 60 % European

(Germans outnumber
Americans)
16 % from U.S.
 13 % from Asia.

60 % men
 40 % women
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◦ 20% of F avatars are
RL M
◦ Almost all M avatars
are RL M.
average age: 30s.
 What you see….is
created primarily by
users

Why use one for teaching?
…rich range of collaborative social activities
around objects (Brown & Bell, 2004, p. 350) .
 Some students prefer, and thrive in, an online
environments…allows them time to more
completely formulate their thoughts…(Childress &
Braswell, 2006, p. 188) .
 …provides educators with opportunities to
develop learning activities which closely replicate
real-world learning experience… (Childress & Braswell,
2006, p. 189) .
 ...they afford the communicative and
constructivist opportunities of text-based, chattype applications such as…MOOs (Dickey, 2005).

Second
Life
made PC
Worlds’
Prestigious
Top 10 list!
 #10
in “10
Biggest Web
Annoyances”
List
 Listed under
“Boring Virtual
Worlds”
Why research in one?
Sites of tremendous language practice
 …as Lave and Wenger (1991) argue,
understanding the shape of learning in
naturally occurring contexts and not
just…classrooms is crucial if we are to
forward educational theory and practice
(Steinkuehler, 2004, . p. 522) .
 Virtual Worlds Natural? For our students,
yes!

A FEW Education-Related
Current SL Applications
U. Kansas Medical Center, Second Life
medical clinic (Antonacci & Modaress, 2005).
 Distance Ed. Course in Instructional Tech
(Childress & Braswell, 2006).
 English Village Campus (Paul Preibisch/Fire

Centaur)
Second Louvre Museum
 UC Davis, Virtual Hallucinations Project
 Language Lab

of Virtual Worlds
 Distraction
Factor
 Lack of teacher
control
 Technical
Requirements
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More serious-'cybersexing‘ p. 13
'age play' in virtual
worlds Brundy, 2007,
p. 13

Legal issues—
university liability
◦ Bugeja, M. J. (2007)
◦ Carnevale, D. (2007).
Two S.L. Examples for Ethical
Discussion: (1) Orientation Island
(2) English Village
A couple studies to consider
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Yee, N., Bailenson, J., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., &
Merget, D. (2007). “The unbearable likeness
of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal
social norms in online virtual environments.”
CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(1), 115-121.
Dickey, M. D. (2005). "Three-dimensional
virtual worlds and distance learning: Two
case studies of Active Worlds as a medium
for distance education." British Journal of
Educational Technology 36(3): 439-451.
Ethics: A definition
 Ethics
refers to the character or
conscience of a person in
relation to a group… (Thomas,
1996, p. 108) .
Ethical Disasters, etc.

Laud Humphreys (1970)
◦ Tea Room Trade

Rimm Cybersex study (1995)
◦ From Georgetown Law Journal to Congress!

Finn and Lavitt's (1994)
◦ computer-based support groups for sexual
abuse survivors

Reid (1996)
◦ Even the best ethical intentions in a thesis….
Your first obligation….

Do no Harm (trickier than you might
think!) (Allen, 1996; King, 1996; Herring, 1996; Polancic
Boehlefeld, 1996; Reid, 1996; Thomas, 1996; Waskul & Douglas,
1996...)
But….what is “harm”?
 How do we prevent it?
 Not so much agreement on the latter
two items.

Other obligations
Check the policies in your field (e.g., APA,
Anthropology, Linguistics, etc.)
 Do they even have a policy?
 Check your institution’s policy—human
subjects’ review
 Obligation to future researchers

Ethical Conundrum


As discussed by King
(1996), …the potential
for harm for
cyberspace
participants is greatest
in the situation where
members remain
unaware that their
messages are being
analyzed until the
results of the research
are published.
[Covert observation]

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But….requesting
permission from the
group to conduct a
study based on the
messages that groups
generate is often a
gross disruption of the
very process of
interest to social
sciences. (King,1996, p.
120)
[Overt Observation]
[Observer’s Paradox]
And there’s the problem!
The ease of covert observation,
 the occasional blurry distinction between
public and private venues, and
 the difficulty of obtaining the informed
consent of subjects
 make cyber research particularly
vulnerable to ethical breaches by even the
most scrupulous scholars.

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(Thomas, 1996, p. 108—slightly modified formatting)
And Legal Conundrums!
Need for consent? Two Viewpoints
Online messages :
published works &
copyrighted.
 So, must give full citation:
author, group/ source,
date, etc.
 Or, you are violating
copyright…and could be
sued. (Cavazos, cited in Herring,

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1996, p. 154)

…once a cyber contributor
has posted under his or her
actual name, public
recognition and attribution
should follow. (Kitchin, 2003, p.
410)

…public discourse on
CMC… is not subject to
'Human Subject'
restraints.
More akin to the study
of tombstone epitaphs,
graffiti, or letters to the
editor. Personal? -yes.
Private? -no
(Sheizaf Rafaeli, as quoted in
Sudweeks & Rafaeli, 1995).
Ethical Points to consider
Group Accessibility
Public
vs. Private Spaces
Perceived Privacy
What is Group Accessibility?
How difficult it is to gain entrance into
and/or inhabit the space of a group.
 King (1996), discusses

◦ unmoderated Usenet bulletin board (BB)
groups: very accessible, part of the public
domain.
◦ private, closed e-mail group: subscription
address not published, requirements to join,
probably not in the public domain.
◦ Generally larger groups are more accessible
In today’s world, different tools
Different rules?
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Message Boards
Blogs
Wikis
Chat Rooms
Instant Messaging
Virtual Worlds
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Consider:
Text-based?
Orally-based?
Pictures included?
Avatars?
Do you need to be a
member?
Purpose of mode?
Criteria to join?
Public versus Private—RW
examples
The
park
bench (Waskul &
Douglas,1996)
And
later
that same
day..in your
SL house
 Point
to
consider. In RL
you at least saw
the audio and
video recorder.
How about in
SL?
What is the Perceived Privacy?
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Accessibility is one issue—that is the
perspective of the outsider, to a large extent.
Perceived Privacy is different: …the degree
to which group members perceive their
messages to be private to that group (King,
1996, p. 126).
Your perception of privacy may be very
different from that of the members!!!
In General, larger groups have less Perceived
Privacy (but what about “private” talk at a party?) .
RW examples: Wikipedia versus Spousal
Abuse Support Group in SL.
Accessibility, Perceived Privacy, &
Risk
+accessible
+accessible
-accessible
-accessible
-perceived
privacy
+perceived
privacy
-perceived
privacy
+perceived
privacy
Lower risk (not
“no risk”!)
Higher risk
Other questions:
How important is the research topic?
 Is Informed Consent feasible?
 Do you focus on language or content?
 Is your methodology Positivistic,
Interpretative, other?
 Can you truly make your subjects
anonymous? Should you name the site?
 Where are your participants located (e.g.,
E.U. vs. US)?

A few Research Issues
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Language and Gender
VW outside of educational use
Situated Learning Theory
Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991)
Use of traditional methodologies in Virtual Worlds
New teaching methodologies specifically for VWs
Language Exchanges
Conversation Analysis
Pragmatics
World Englishes
Virtual Ethnography
Some current research on VWs
Dickey, M. D. (2005). "Three-dimensional virtual
worlds and distance learning: Two case studies of
Active Worlds as a medium for distance education."
British Journal of Educational Technology 36(3): 439451.
 Childress, M. D. and R. Braswell (2006). "Using
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for
online learning." Distance Education 27(2): 187-196.
 Brown, B. and M. Bell (2004). CSCW at play: 'There' as
a collaborative virtual environment. 2004 ACM
Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative
Work, Chicago, Illinois, Association for Computing
Machinery.

A Final Thought

In all social research involving human subjects
there is the potential for harm to come to those
subjects. Guidelines for ethical behavior can
never eliminate that potential; all they can do is
attempt to minimize the risk. It would be
disingenuous of researchers to pretend that such
risks [are] nonexistent. We must face our moral
and ethical dilemmas rather than side-stepping
them. As researchers we can never be sure that
our actions won't have adverse consequences for
our subjects. (Reid, 1996, p. 173)
…there are no easy answers!
[email protected]
 www.eslweb.org (PowerPoint and a
bibliography available there next week)
 SL name: Randall Renoir

Active Worlds
There
Second Life
British Legends
Habitat