Chris Jones
Lancaster University, UK

Who are you? The experience of working through an avatar

This paper will explore the experience of a researcher being part of a team exploring one of the currently available avatar worlds used for educational purposes. The paper will report research undertaken as part of the EU funded project EQUEL from the point of view of a single researcher. The project was organised into several Significant interest groups and the AGORRA Sig was set up to explore knowledge sharing in 3D systems that were avatar based, in particular Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU). AWEDU is a shared online 3D desktop system in which the individual participant is represented as an avatar that can have either a naturalistic or a non-naturalistic character. AWEDU is a relatively common, stable and explored 3D system (Schroeder, 2002; Becker, 2002; Hudson-Smith, 2002). Further details of the research can be found in Siggaard Jensen (2004), and Fejfer Olsen et al (2004).

The position of the researcher was not part of the central team guiding the particular project and as a participant the researcher had to make sense of the research setting as it developed under another research group's control. The paper takes as its starting point a line from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when Alice meets the caterpillar.

The Caterpillar sleepily demands to know who Alice is. Shyly, Alice responds that, though she knows who she was when she got up in the morning, she is pretty sure she's been changed a few times since then. The Caterpillar orders her to explain herself and what she means by such a remark. Alice answers, "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir...because I'm not myself you see."

One of the possible reasons for using avatars is that they could enhance the sense of context and presence felt by the people using the system. My own experience was that the social context experienced in a virtual space using avatars was about mutual understanding in a way that was very similar to face-to-face settings. I found that the use of avatars in the virtual spaces we experienced both helped and hindered mutual understanding and my sense of presence. I was not sure if I was any more 'context bound' when in a virtual space using an avatar than I was in a simple text space such as email or a text-based conferencing system.

This paper will reflect upon the nature and meaning of presence in 3D avatar worlds and the nature of context as it appears to the user. Presence has particular meaning amongst Virtual Reality and Virtual Environment researchers and it has recently been suggested that this discussion should be extended to include the senses of presence and co-presence that can build up in Active Worlds type environments (Shroeder 2002). Context is a problematic term with multiple meanings in terms of education and learning environments. This paper will examine the experience of context in an avatar world and reflect upon possible educational implications.

References

Becker, B. and Mark, G. (2002) 'Social Conventions in Computer-mediated Communication: A Comparison of Three Online Shared Virtual Environments'. In Schroeder, R. (Ed.) The Social Life of Avatars. Springer-Verlag: London, 19-40.

Carroll, L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Available online at:
http://promo.net/pg/

Fejfer Olsen, S., Siggaard Jensen, S., Bolander, K., Deepwell, F., Jones, C.R., and Mann, S. (2004). 'Narratives from the 3D Agora-world'. In Banks, S., Goodyear, P., Hodgson, V., Jones, C., Lally, V., McConnell, D and Steeples, C. (Eds) Networked Learning 2004: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Networked Learning 2004. Lancaster: Lancaster University and University of Sheffield

Hudson-Smith, A. (2002) '30 Days in Active Worlds - Community, Design and Terrorism in a Virtual World'. In Schroeder, R. (Ed.) The Social Life of Avatars. Springer-Verlag: London, 77-90.

Schroeder, R. (Ed.) (2002) The Social Life of Avatars. Springer-Verlag: London.

Siggaard Jensen, S. (2004), 'Knowledge sharing in the 3D Agora-world'. In Banks, S., Goodyear, P., Hodgson, V., Jones, C., Lally, V., McConnell, D and Steeples, C. (Eds) Networked Learning 2004: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Networked Learning 2004. Lancaster: Lancaster University and University of Sheffield