On Classrooms in Digital Spaces
First, before I begin the actual assignment, I’d like to post a short response to Robbins-Bell’s article on the use of virtual environments such as Second Life in higher education. While Robbins-Bell brings up an excellent point in that these spaces provide unique oppertunities for the study of gender identity and the self, we must not draw too-broad conclusions about the universial applicability of avatars, and of the ability to have classrooms in virtual spaces.
First of all, I contend that the application which Robbins posits is not nearly as wide as she seems to think. I hold that while you could study gender identity in a digital environment, pretending to be the opposite gender online teaches you only what it is like to pretend to be the opposite gender on the internet, and nothing about what gender is like in real life. The same goes for her example of pretending to be a handicapped person. The focus here is too narrow.
Furthermore, while she states that the chaotic nature of spaces such as Second Life are an asset, I disagree completely. Holding a class in Second Life would be incredibly distracting to me. I have enough trouble staying focused in a class where I’m expected to use the internet at all – give me a completely digital environment and I would be lost. Why pay attention to the teacher when you can wander around, fly, and shoot lasers? Who cares? The classroom would cease to be a classroom and instead become a game I’m playing about a classroom, and I don’t think I’d get much studying done.
Second Life is also NOT a replacement for real, in-classroom learning. There are certain experiences that you can’t get through a computer screen, that you must have face-to-face. Filtering the universe through silicon and light is a sure way to not know if anything’s real at all.
That said.
One of the most unique online experiences I’ve had was my short stint playing in Cyan Worlds’ Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, a game that has sadly been canceled due to lack of interest. In Uru, your character is you (the title is a pun, meaning both “you are you” and I think something like “city” in ancient Babylonian), only a “you” that has been “called” to participate in a very strange archaeological dig. What’s strange is that while there is a professional team, people have been showing up randomly to the site of the dig, saying only that they felt “called”. You are one of these people (along with all of the other players), and it’s your job to discover the mysteries and secrets behind the lost city of D’ni.
As the game progresses you find out about Linking Books, strange objects which allow teleportation to other worlds, the greatest technological achievement of the D’ni people. And then the real story begins to unfold…
The game was based on Cyan’s bestselling Myst franchise, and what made it stand out to me was the focus on exploration rather than pure social interaction or fighting. Most of the players in the game actually remained in-character, that is, unless stated otherwise they treated the world as real within the context of the game. They really were exploring the vast city of D’ni. Furthermore, there was quite a lot of intellectual legwork involved. The main part of the game relied on puzzles – pulling switches, pushing levers, and so on, sometimes even solving mathematical equations or comparing creature taxonomy or memorizing a set of ancient symbols. Solving a puzzle would unlock a piece of the story – usually a bit of D’ni history. The story itself was a complex melange of fantasy, science fiction, and anthropology. Some of the discoveries were indeed fantastical and some of the revelations felt like something out of a soap opera, but others were genuinely interesting and really did make me, the player, feel like an archaeologist exploring a great ruin.
One of the most interesting parts of the puzzle was the D’ni language, a concept introduced in the 1997 game Riven but which continued through Uru. There was a small but very dedicated group of players, most of them amateur linguists, who devoted their time to studying the D’ni language. At first, they worked only on figuring it out, but when they ran out of words Cyan actually began to work with the players to further develop the language. A number of players – myself included – learned quite a lot about linguistics, language development, and sociolinguistics this way, all inspired by a computer game. Player discussions on D’ni culture brought up questions of anthropology, history, and literature which went far beyond the comparatively simple scope of the game, and often players were asked to help write parts of D’ni history.
The best part of course was the community. Myst Online had one of the most friendly communities I have ever encountered online. There was none of the faction squabbling that you get between furries and 4-chan, and while the community had its disputes (one of the biggest was which should be canonical – the game’s portrayal of D’ni being under New Mexico, or the depiction in original novel from 1997 of it being somewhere under the Middle East), they were solved quickly and with few hard feelings. Players were always willing to help each other out in solving puzzles. The only sad part was that Cyan never updated any of the puzzles or worlds, due to a lack of staff and funds.
In the current day and age, Cyan has released its source code to the fans, allowing them to create their own stories and environments.
I promise, I’m going somewhere with this.
So, here we have an example of a community based around a game based around archaeology and linguistics. So what if instead of being an archaeological dig in a fictional city, why not have one in a real place, like, say, Egypt? Students could learn techniques of anthropological inquiry and even proper procedures for archaeology (though NOT actual techniques – those must be learned in the field), they could study ancient Egyptian by solving puzzles based on clues in the environment. A teacher would be on hand to answer questions and gently direct students – a technique already used by Myst Online in the form of volunteer moderators.
Other examples could be learning history through online wargames similar to Civilization but with a much more educational focus. This technique is already used in classrooms in the form of Reacting to the Past, a kind of roleplaying game in which students take on the roles of historical figures and read texts relating to the time period in question.
The problem is, as always, divorcing the subject matter from the real. While in the Egypt example it might be difficult for students to visit egypt in person, how is wandering around a digital egypt that much different from reading about it in books, other than the novelty of technology? and as to roleplaying, as a long-time roleplayer I must say that it can be much more fun to do in-person, even if doing it online helps you to keep track of what has and hasn’t been said better.
