How was it for you?

Overview

Collaboration is not easy. We often merely cooperate, distributing sections of a task rather than working together on the whole. It needs practice and as we will be doing more collaborative activities during the course it is important to reflect on the success of the process this time, so that we can improve it next time. 

Objectives

To reflect on the dynamics of the collaboration process 

Christmas and a few distractions later, I’m re-focusing on MUVEnations before the course re-starts next week.   I need to do some catching up, including reflecting on the dynamics of the collaboration involved in our most recent activity – producing a travel guide to a Second Life educational site or resource.  

Collaborating with blue group colleagues turned out to be complicated.  To start with, only one or two other group members seemed to be actively following-up the original blue group thread.  We all seemed unsure how to proceed; put into a group with several seemingly absent colleagues.  On reflection it might have been easier to let groups emerge naturally, allowing the different participants an opportunity to progress at their own pace together with likeminded colleagues. There was an uncomfortable wait to see who else would surface before we reached a decision to push on…  

Was it easy to define objectives and criteria? 

Having decided to make a start, a few of us got together at MUVEnation Island to discuss our plans.  Meeting in-world was interesting, my first real experience of how purposeful activity might be planned and acted on.  I wrote about this at the time in some earlier blog posts, and the logs of these conversations have been posted by Teresa Almeida d'Eça (Tere Short) at http://mvn08.edublogs.org/.   I certainly found it more engaging and immersive than simply participating in IM chat, even though in the end, IM chat was what it was…   By the second conversation protocols for our discussions were already emerging.  I found myself more consciously leaving space for others to speak, confirming my understanding and summarising regularly.  I’m pretty sure the same sorts of patterns were emerging in the behaviour of the others.  I also noticed that I became a little more ‘direct’ in making suggestions for moving forward.  This is probably one consequence of reduced social cues in computer mediated communication (Researchers have been writing about this for a long while… I’m not going to get all academic, but a search on ‘reduced social cues’ and CMC will turn stuff up if your interested.  What I couldn’t turn up is useful guidelines on how to manage purposeful interaction through IM.  I’m sure hey must be out there, and they’d be useful to teachers working in this medium for the first time.

How did you distribute the work? 

Our attempts to work collaboratively were mugged by the intrusion of RL events, first a family emergency that took Sally and I away from home unexpectedly, then Christmas and the aftermath… by the time we got back to SL the group had moved on.  Sally and I continued to collaborate on collecting our information and constructing our guidebook.  It’s funny how the frustrations of CMC collaboration melt away when you’re both in the same room…

How did you feel about your own participation? 

Pretty good actually, apart from the Christmas hiatus.   I feel I got my act together, contributed to the group aspects of the work, and put my guidebook together reasonably successfully.  In constructing our ‘Info Booth’ we went further than we needed to with building and presentation, but I guess that’s the dramaturg  in both of us…   

Where there any problems, or misunderstandings? 

I’d plan things a bit more systematically if doing this again, ensuring that I collect together all my images, text, artefacts, scripts, etc before starting building – but that’s learning.  I’m also left with a lot more questions about building, though I appreciate this was not essentially a building task, just an area I dragged myself off into. The main problem with the task itself was actually getting started – identifying the active group members and arranging a first meeting.  A little more assertiveness early on would have helped, although I also feel that a less directive approach to the organisation of the groups would have allowed the more active students to band together and move ahead more quickly.  Once we actually got going things seemed pretty straight forward, until RL events intervened.  Of course, it’s not clear how our early plans for collaboration would have worked out in practice.

An interlude... Identity of Relative and Absolute

I’m attending the Eduserv Digital Identity Event in London the day after tomorrow and have been putting off writing something on digital identity.  What’s to say?  I have very little clear concept of consistent identity, digital or otherwise.  On a philosophical and frequently experiential level the whole idea makes only partial sense. As the Sandōki says, “Fire is hot, wind moves, water is wet, earth hard…”  That’s about it.  But let’s go along for the ride. 

My recent first steps into Second Life amplified my sense of the relativity of identity.  Uncertainties around identity, anonymity, mask and pretence present themselves everywhere.   Here are my first couple of posts to the MUVEnation forum ‘Appearance and Identity in Second Life’, completed just a few days into the course.  I’m reproducing it here as much for what it reveals about my early experience of Second Life as for the words themselves.  Naturally, it's all relative, but in an effort to do as I'm told…

Situation: I've just started MUVEnation08, a course exploring the educational possibilities of Second Life (at least, I think that's what it is).

Task: “You have now had the chance to make changes to your avatar’s appearance, These changes change the identity of the avatar in different ways. They may also change how you feel about your avatar. To illustrate this many people who have more than one avatar report that they feel differently about their different avatars, and in the same way changes you make to your avatar may make you feel differently about it. When it looks more like you, for example, you may feel more or less comfortable with it. What do those feelings imply about your relation to your avatar?  In your blog, describe your experience playing with your avatar’s appearance: do you feel comfortable with your new appearance or is it going to take more work – share your reflections on this. How do you feel the changes you made to your avatar have affected your digital identity? How do you think your appearance affects your interactions with others and their interactions with you?

Actions: I fiddle about with Bascule, my avatar, in an attempt to make him look more like me. 

Results and Reflections…

Appearance and Identity in Second Life

by Steve Griffin - Saturday, 29 November 2008, 11:42 PM

I enjoyed experimenting with the appearance of my avatar, and the challenge of making it look like me.  I wanted to make it look as real as possible, which meant tracking down a shape, skin, hair, and animations (to give it a distinctive posture and walk).  I discovered that ironically skins are in many ways less malleable than the basic avatar appearance.  In a skin, shape can change, but not the surface, so unless someone produces a skin with wrinkles I’ll have to stay looking younger than my 50 years.  I wanted to put the ‘me’ avatar into something I might actually wear, so I found out how to make a t-shirt that I could put my College logo on.  The process reinforced useful technical skills and a number concepts underpinning the appearance of SL avatars.

Having gone to all that effort, I was very happy to have Bascule’s original appearance saved, and to be able to call him back.  I’ve already got attached to him.

Our physical appearance, both the way we are and the way we choose to be, is a key factor in establishing and projecting our identity.  In everyday life there are elements of the physical self that are fixed, and elements that are changeable, though tailoring, cosmetics and more recently surgery blur the boundaries.  The choices we make send signals that are understood or misunderstood by others as affiliations, values, warnings and requests.

The way we look is often the first impression we make, potentially giving rise to assumptions that shape future relationships.  Ironically, in re-introducing ‘presence’ SL re-establishes the importance of visual impressions in on-line communication where other mediums (IM and various forms of asynchronous writing) have tended to downplay them.  Acceptance in a role is frequently tied up in the way we appear, at least initially, and at least in part.  As immersive as SL can seem, it’s pretty thin when it comes to the subtleties of body language and gesture, voice colour and tone.  Appearance is less easily moderate by behavior, giving it a heightened symbolic importance.  How you look in SL will be taken by many as your principal statement of what you wish them to understand about you and how they should interact with you. If you go into SL to fulfill a particular role, it will probably be beneficial to wear a recognizable costume.  To play Hamlet, it’s helpful to look like Hamlet, at least to start with.  If you see part of your role as challenging assumptions about appearance SL will still give you great opportunities to do so.  Turning up as an Orc on week 5 might be a good starting point for work on stereotyping.  Turning up as an Orc on week 1 runs the danger of being misconstrued… 

In the absolute sense we may be right to dismiss appearance as trivial and preoccupation with it as unhealthy.  In practice, we almost all make judgments about others based on their appearance, as they make similar judgments about us.  My sense is that the relative lack of other clues in SL encourages judgments about others based on a reading of the fundamentals of their appearance, even where IRL judgments might more normally be mediated by other behavioral signals.  Maybe those early judgments will be open to revision, but sometimes not.  I will consider this when teaching in Second Life.

Re: Appearance and Identity in Second Life

by Steve Griffin - Sunday, 30 November 2008, 09:40 PM

I can't claim any special insight here, or especially wide reading around this topic. I'll try to be open about what I feel now, leaving the door open to change my mind in the future.

I studied drama in the past and was particularly struck by the power of symbols. Far from being two dimensional, symbols can frequently be 'n dimensional'... communicating complex meaning that both include and exclude. I do see an avatar as a mask, but that doesn't exclude it from having a complex role in establishing identity, even to the extent of imposing identity on the person behind it. See Keith Johnson's book 'Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre' for more on this. Here's a post reflecting on Johnstone, identity, mask and trance by Phantomias, who writes a blog called Achievement in Mind at http://mindmastery.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/masks-we-wear-masks-we-act/ or take a look at this video clip on Johnstone's website for a more immediate idea of what this might mean. http://www.keithjohnstone.com/videos/KJ_Teaches/Vol_1/4min-hiband.mov. 

An avatar is clearly more complex than the photo we put in our profile, though in my view even the photo we use can be a complex iconic signifier of who we are. In attempting to understand we suck up clues from wherever we can find them. Arguably, in a symbolically sparse on-line environment those signifiers that are available become even more important in the process of constructing meaning. If so, online presence is indeed substantially changed by SL.

Maybe there are people who don't read avatars in this way. This might even be a good thing. Even so, there are plenty of others who will read all sorts of meaning into the face we present to the world. Making allowances for this when teaching in SL would seem like a sensible precaution.

Re: Appearance and Identity in Second Life

by Steve Griffin - Sunday, 30 November 2008, 08:16 PM

Thanks for the pointer to Mark Presney, I think the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants is an interesting one. I wonder though if as the digital natives grow up their behaviour will change, for example using blogs for less emotional and more intellectual purposes. At the moment maybe we're too close to it all. The digital natives are all young, so we don't really know how old digital natives will behave. Maybe adult digital natives would be less hung up on appearance. It would be interesting to talk to some younger SL users about what if anything they read into appearance. Maybe an opportunity for some digital field anthropology! My guess is that someone's already doing it...

I'm sure you're right that meeting unknown SL residents is different to meeting students you already know, although in a funny way I still think appearance has an impact on both relationships. When meeting an unknown resident I am likely to form an early impression that guides how I interact with them, and to be mistrustful if I later detect differences between how they appear and how they act. But maybe I'm just suspicious...

Meeting someone I know in SL who projects a very different image IRL is also likely to leave me feeling uneasy, unless we're clearly in a 'play' situation. I'm not really talking about hair colour and clothing here - but gender, race (maybe), anthropomorphism, personification, extremist sub-cultural affiliation, etc. Maybe this is just the anxiety of a digital immigrant and I need to loosen up?

As I final shot, it's interesting to wonder how anonymity in SL might be used creatively to help free up youngsters who are otherwise constrained by marginalising factors. Here the ability to 'start fresh' might be very powerful.

Post script: I almost immediately went back to the earlier version of my avatar.  Later work on his appearence makes him look even less conventional, and even less like me.  As a MUVEnation student, I'm increasingly attached to him.  When and if I need a professional representation in SL maybe I'll need to think again.  Then again, I may just buy him a hat.