A case study of learning in a 3d multi user virtual environment

IMMERSIVE SIMULATION GAMES: A CASE STUDY OF LEARNING IN A 3-DIMENSIONAL MULTI-USER VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT JOHN YAP YIN GWEE (BA Multimedia Design, Curtin University of Technology) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATIONS AND NEW MEDIA NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2012 IMMERSIVE SIMULATION GAMES: A CASE STUDY OF LEARNING IN A 3-DIMENSIONAL MULTI-USER VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT JOHN YAP YIN GWEE (BA MULTIMEDIA DESIGN, CURTIN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATIONS AND NEW MEDIA NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2012 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is my original work and it has been written by me in its entirety. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information which have been used in the thesis. This thesis has also not been submitted for any degree in any university previously. Name: John Yap Yin Gwee Matric. No.: HT081332A Date: 12 April 2013 Table of Contents Summary Chapter 1.0: Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 1.1: Context of Study ------------------------------------------------------------- 2 1.2: Relevance of Study ---------------------------------------------------------- 4 Chapter 2.0: Literature Review ------------------------------------------------------------ 7 2.1: Serious Games: Games and Immersive Environments ----------------- 7 2.2: Presence ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 2.3: Flow, Immersiveness and Engagement ----------------------------------- 20 2.4: Research Questions ---------------------------------------------------------- 25 Chapter 3.0: Methodology ----------------------------------------------------------------- 26 3.1: Overview ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 3.2: Virtual Ethnography ---------------------------------------------------------- 27 3.3: Proposed Design of The Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) ---------- 29 3.4: Data Sources ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 3.4.1: Screen captures of in-progress simulation game -------------- 34 3.4.2: Participant-observations ------------------------------------------- 37 3.4.3: Interviews (post exercise) with 36 students -------------------- 38 3.4.4: Interviews (post exercise) with lecturer ------------------------- 38 3.5: Data Collection Process ------------------------------------------------------- 39 3.6: Data Coding for Analysis ------------------------------------------------------ 42 Chapter 4.0: Findings ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 44 4.1: Virtual Identity: Choice of Avatars ----------------------------------------- 44 4.2: First Contact: Accessing the VLE ------------------------------------------- 48 4.3: Local Chat Activity ------------------------------------------------------------ 54 4.4: Avatar Behaviours ------------------------------------------------------------ 58 4.5: Presence of Other Avatars -------------------------------------------------- 61 4.6: Sense of Time and Immersive Engagement ------------------------------ 65 4.7: Challenges in the Game ----------------------------------------------------- 65 4.8: Strategy and Sense of Competition in the Game ------------------------ 66 4.9: Affordance of Activities Not Possible in Real Life ----------------------- 69 4.10: Assessment of Students’ Learning Objectives and Outcomes ------- 74 Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusion ---------------------------------------------------- 78 References ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 90 Appendix A - Simulation Game Brief Summary Playing online games is a pervasive phenomenon observed in our daily lives of today’s evolving digital age. As online games like World of Warcraft, Diablo and online virtual environments like Second Life begin to emerge as some of the biggest gaming communities that we indulge in, it became evidently possible that learning could take place in such an influential digital medium. Such game play concepts begin to emerge progressively as educational technology enabled for learning, particularly Serious Games, a game-based learning concept targeted at specific learning other than entertainment. The Serious Games initiative was popularly identified as the new education technology wave that will fulfil the learning ambitions which edutainment has failed to achieve in past experiences. This thesis seeks to develop a case study of a design of a robust virtual learning environment in the form of a simulation game, using the serious games concept in a 3dimensional multi-user virtual environment. The design of the game, based on a real life case study, will also leverage on the affordances of the virtual environment and be heavily influenced by the significant factors of presence, flow, immersive and engagement theories in a virtual environment. The game will first actively engage the students of an academic module in a fun and challenging task, thereafter, to empower and afford them the ability to test out various decision options in the environment without any consequences in reality. Students were then academically assessed in their turning in of a reflective essay, based on their heuristic experience of the game in relation to the real life case study. An eclectic mix of data was consequently collected in a qualitative perspective to build up the case study, including online ethnography, avatar-participant observations, communication transcripts and post-exercise, in-depth interviews with the lecturer and a sample of 36 undergraduate students from the module. The thesis hopes to design a fun and engaging game that can leverage on affordances of a multi-user virtual environment to encourage emotional reactions for the real life case, predicted to be able to derive a positive learning outcome for reflective and critical thinking that was challenging to achieve in traditional methods of learning. Students’ behaviour was found to be generally neutral or positive towards virtual simulation of games for learning. Though communications can be a challenge at first, some students deployed other modes of communication to overcome such communicative challenges between themselves. Their perceptions and attitudes towards presence of virtual elements and interactivity were positively reflected in demands for more challenges and loss of consciousness of time in the game. Lastly, the assessment of the learning outcomes achieved by the participation in the simulated game generated significant and positive learning engagement in the submissions of their post-experience reflective essays. Acknowledgments This research was never conceived to be an academic thesis at first. It was my deep foray into this parallel universe of Second Life that opened my eyes to a world that I had always only imagined in dreams and fantasy. The experience and subsequent encounters made me want to write this so that the world will know the immense potential of what this world could do for our world today. Most people steered clear of virtual and game environments with the paranoia of being sucked into a stereotyped world of crazy delusions, thus their disbelief that true friendships or relationships can never exist in such virtual circumstances. That is NOT TRUE. I want to first and foremost thank Mr Eric Kostal, a current research faculty in Mississippi State University, also known as Indigo Lucerne in Second Life, for he, whom we have never met in person, has inspired me and selflessly shared such levels of intelligence, creativity and character that made us friends for life despite our geographical distance apart. Thank you, my friend, for all our crazy discussions about simulations, about avatars and life in the middle of those nights. My gratitude for this lifelong friendship cannot be described enough in this short paragraph. Its amazingly bizarre how a chanced encounter with Antonio, son of Ms Sofia Morales, in Second Life, sparked off this entire opportunity to realistically use this platform for research in learning. My deepest heartfelt gratitude for Sofia, for it was your tenacity, faith and risks that you took that made all these possible. Thanks also go to Mr Alvin Saw Teong Chin, my creative friend, classmate and fellow compatriot in the vision that one day games will change and shape the landscape we live today. My most sincere thanks also goes out to Associate Professor Milagros Rivera, for taking that second chance in me, for believing in my passion for this concept and that I will make this thesis work against all odds of my medical condition, crazy work schedules at work and family. Extra thanks go to my 2 supervisors, Dr Zhang Weiyu and Dr Anne Marie Schleiner, who have in spite of their hectic teaching schedules in the department, were always patient and made time for me to steer me towards the right direction and focus to complete this academic thesis. Special thanks goes to Associate Professor Cho Hichang, for having taken his module on Computer Mediated Environments, his most important teachings also eventually became the appleseed of theories and analogies of communications that inspired the direction of a large part of this thesis. Thank you for sharing this amazing wealth of knowledge and inspiration. To my fellow coursemate and BFF, Kintu Annie Joseph, I wonder what would I do without you. For that tenaciously loyal friendship, you are the 1 pillar of strength that I could not have asked for more in life. Thanks for being there for me when the going gets tough. Last but definitely not least, I want to specially mention the appearance and entrance of the Karasu in my life. Without you, life would be meaningless. Without you, I would not have done anything right. My eternal thanks to you for becoming the love and centre of my life. Hooray! 1.0 Introduction Digital games are prevalent in everyday contemporary life ranging from the simplest gaming engagements from children on various forms of digital media to the intense indulgence in role-playing gaming communities by the adults. A report from the Entertainment Software Association reflects such pervasiveness of gaming, stating “75% of heads in households play games, and that 62% of the game players are over 18 with a mean age of 30” (Gibson, Aldrich, & Prensky, 2007). Evidently, the leisure hours that gamers spend in such popular online games like World of Warcraft 1 (WoW), amounts to a staggering 5.93 million years to its community yearly (McGonigal, 2011). Gaming advocators like Gonzalo Frasca and Jane McGonigal proposed that such gaming phenomenon could possibly be used to help us find solutions to our real world problems by playing these games (Frasca, 2001; McGonigal, 2011). Online games can also be understood as virtual environments, for example, Club Penguin, Habbo, Gaia (Wankel & Kingsley, 2009) has a thriving teenage population and both adults and young players populate the realms of Open Wonderland (previously funded by Sun Microsystem Laboratories), Activeworlds and Second Life 2 (SL). Such digital worlds provide us with a myriad of activities such as socializing, entertainment and learning (Hodge, 1 World of Warcraft is a commercial massively multiplayer online role-playing where game players control a fantasy character avatar within a game world in third- or first-person view, exploring the landscape, fighting various monsters, completing quests, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other players. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_warcraft) 2 Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab, launched since June 23, 2003. Free client programs, or viewers enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore the world (known as the grid), meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another. It is a virtual world intended for people aged 16 and over. 1 Collins, & Giordano, 2009). Multi-User Virtual Environments3 (MUVEs) like SL, amongst the largest of virtual environments with over 21,000 simulators since March 2009 (Schiller, 2009), can be deployed in an enhanced learning mode for learners to encourage “communication, interaction, collaboration, teamwork, feedback, engagement and constructivist learning activities” (Hodge, et al., 2009). Various modes of communication and learning can now be implemented in such virtual spaces to achieve learning objectives when engaging, appropriate and effective pedagogical practices and learning theories are implemented. 1.1 Context of Study One of the ways that digital or online games are helpful in a real world context is in the industry of education. As of summer 2009, over 4000 educators have joined the SL Educators List, and more and more educational institutes joining the SL grid (Wankel & Kingsley, 2009). After their initial stage of establishing presence in the virtual world, schools using SL have started to lean towards the vision of providing “student-centred, especially collaborative activities” (Atkins, 2009). The fact that SL, unlike most mainstream commercial games like WoW, has neither game rules to abide by, nor any hierarchy in gaining gaming credits or progress experience in “levels” (Jones, 2008), makes it a popular choice among virtual worlds for education especially since it is cost free and this encourages many interested educators to get started (Wankel & Kingsley, 2009). From University of 3 Multi User Virtual Environments refers to online, multi-user virtual environments, sometimes also called virtual worlds. They are built on 3 important aspects: The first is a server or a farm of servers, which are used as the host of the virtual world. Second, a program or an interface is needed that allows people to create a user name and some sort of identity that they can use when they log into the server. The third is there has to be some reason for the person to want to be in the Virtual Environment. 2 California’s Davis Medical Centre to language learning with The British Council to cultural heritage learning of Singapore in Temasek, innovative researchers in the virtual education frontier have pioneered and paved the way for the vast possibilities of virtual education in MUVEs like SL (Rufer-Bach, 2009). In the last few years in education, the gradual acceptance of educational games in the curriculum has helped engage students in learning (possibly further fuelled by the novelty of its introduction), and has also led to a lower attrition rate of learning students generally (Moreno-Ger, Burgos, & Torrente, 2009). The virtual engagement of attending classes in virtual environments is also now provided for students in the universities today (Wang & Hsu, 2009), and is usually offered as an overlapping concept commonly known as ‘e-learning’, for enhanced learning or even distance education (Susi, Johannesson, & Backlund, 2007). Notwithstanding SL as a 3-Dimensional (3D) MUVE with advanced capabilities in a virtual environment, there has been an increase in popularity of other mainstream social networking sites on the internet, like “blogs, facebook and wiki” (L. Jin, Wen, & Gough, 2010). However, the emergence of these networking and social software like Facebook are noted to be still limited to the heavy use of “text, image and video” media. By contrast, in a MUVE like SL, the 3D simulation of live human gestures and spatial navigations appeals to our natural reactions to non-verbal behaviours in synchronous communications (L. Jin, et al., 2010). In “social virtual worlds” like SL, players can “explore, meet others, socialise and participate in individual or group activities for education or business purposes”(L. Jin, et al., 2010). It might appear that MUVEs like SL, possess some relevant qualities and affordances for learners which other technologies lack. The affordance referred here can be defined as “attributes of something in the environment to an interactive activity by an agent who has 3 some ability” (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010; Greeno, 1994). In this context, we infer the meaning of affordance in association to the ability learners are given in a VLE (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010). 1.2 Relevance of the Study The objective of most game-based learning is largely to yield a better and deeper understanding of the teaching content. This study will draw on a few different areas of observed behaviours, phenomenon, and new media paradigms through the study of a simulation game made for learning. One of the more pedagogical tools educators draw upon is the case method approach. Through the case method of teaching, students can try to further understand teaching contents based on related research in various publications and the internet. Developed in 1870 at Harvard University, the case method of teaching has been practised and associated particularly with law schools and most business schools (Shugan, 2006). Critics of the method alleged that such case contents are sometimes not written in pertinence to the actual social impact, cause and effects of real life situations. They also contend that the selection case tends to overemphasize or underwhelm the underlying connections and correlations of illustrated scenarios (Flyvbjerg, 2006). It might appear to be highly engaging to partake in such a typical case in reality, but it does not necessarily translate into knowledge transfer that students can associate with in their cognitive or affective domains of learning (Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2001), since it really is just written texts to be analyzed and discussed in a class, with little engagement emotionally. It is also time consuming to synthesize large amounts of contents in illustrated cases(Heskett, 2008) and neither possible nor feasible for the students to revisit an actual industrial accident site due to geographical distances or other hazardous threats. 4 In our current demanding climate of innovative education, the pervasiveness of games in the lives of high school and college students made it a popular “medium of choice” for education (Jenkins, Klopfer, Squire, & Tan, 2003). MUVEs like SL, are fast becoming one of the few known virtual 3D environments that academic institutes have been leveraging on for their new technologies in education recently. Using avatars, which are essentially 3D digital representations of its users, educators saw the justification of deploying the technology when simulating environments and its affordances for education. Since a MUVE is “conceptually” built up mirroring what the real physical world looks like, a 3D MUVE would also serve to provide an “enhanced feeling of presence” of themselves in an environment (Park, Hwang, & Choi, 2009). With more advancements in technology that enable the customization of contents and environments, these gaming platforms now empower game designers and even amateur players with a large amount of flexibility and a powerful decision making ability to “play out consequences” (Jenkins, et al., 2003). Such natural advantages of the gaming platforms make a 3D MUVE, conducive vehicles to expose students to the learning process. James Paul Gee established that a simulated military video game like “Full Spectrum Warrior” 4 can be beneficial for learning, since a basic simulation game can embody “values, identity and doctrines” in context, thereby enabling learners to examine all possible actions and decisions that could eventually bring about a consequence (Gee, 2005). With a highly immersive environment that allows for zero life-threatening consequence in simulating our physical world in all possible scenarios, the MUVE becomes a learning environment with such learning affordances. 4 Full Spectrum Warrior is is a real-time tactics videogame. Gameplay revolves around the concept of fire and movement, with one team providing suppressive fire while the other moves. The game has also been adapted by psychologists to assist veterans from Iraq overcome the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Spectrum_Warrior) 5 This research, would firstly assume the significance of the current gaming phenomenon’s impact in our lives, and therefore highlight and examine the learning derivatives and impacts of serious game design in a MUVE like SL. Secondly, by leveraging the affordances of the unique nature of the virtual reality, this study will attempt to introduce the notion of game play to exploit and experience the simulated learning from the serious game without real life consequences, to examine 3D virtual environment as a gamebased learning environment as a viable resource for such educational purposes. The design of the simulation game will attempt to encapsulate the factors leveraging on the exploitation of presence in an asynchronous mode of learning for multi-users in a virtual environment. Considerations of other factors of heuristic design will also include the psychological influences of flow and engagement. Various ethnographic methods of online observation and qualitative techniques of query through in-depth interviews will be applied to the field for the anthropological study of a cohort of students subscribed to a real learning module in an institute of higher learning. Data will subsequently be collated and analyzed to isolate relevant themes from a representative sample that will support or relate itself to the existing literature in games research. The research would then finally analyze and present the factors, issues, phenomenon, potentials and impacts of such a virtual learning environment through a serious game perspective. 6 2.0 Literature Review 2.1 Serious Games: Games and Immersive Environments In the mid-60s, retrospective observations has indicated in academic publications, that games had shown immense possibilities in shifting the learning paradigm with the evolvement of digital and simulation games in the social sciences (Gibson, et al., 2007). However, this research will need to exclude the review of game literature published from the 1980s and early 1990s because of the lightning-speed evolvement in digital game technology that has rendered most of these past publications obsolete and inapplicable to our current state of technology. The other reason for excluding them here is ultimately, that games that were built in the earlier era have little relevance and had mostly failed to deliver much expectations of possible learning (Becker, 2010). This review is not intended to be an exhaustive repertoire of all studies on game research but a broad selection of relevant ones covering the field of serious games for learning. The aim of this presentation will eventually highlight the possibility and impacts of the implementation of learning using a MUVE as a virtual learning environment. In the monumental year of 2002, serious games first gained the world’s attention when it was founded as an establishment, at the “Serious Games Initiative” by Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholar in Washington, D.C.; despite the commercial failure of previous edutainment software as an educational technology (Michael & Chen, 2006; Susi, et al., 2007). Serious Games have since come a long way by sustaining a slow but incremental progress in extending substantial foothold in the potentials of the convergence of both learning and gaming into teaching contents in schools. In an effort to present this change of our learning paradigm, this chapter will seek to build a body of knowledge by 7 exploring and understanding the representations, significance and impacts of serious games in the domains of learning today. There are various definitions, analogies and related concepts drawn on the current meaning of serious games. These perspectives were established in the current applications of games and their derived definitions from the various industries of entertainment, government, corporate, healthcare, military, educational etc, none of which have led to a commonly accepted definition of serious games as yet (Susi, et al., 2007). One of the most common understanding of serious games defined simply by most serious games advocators is: “a game in which education (in various forms) is the primary goal, rather than entertainment” (de Freitas, 2006; Michael & Chen, 2006). A more detailed but direct definition from Crookall defined the concept as, “computerized simulation/game for training and learning” which leverages on computing power with its superior video graphics for the education (Crookall, 2010). The concept of serious games as a means of enhanced education has also often been directly associated with other educational phenomenon like game-based learning and digital game-based learning established by the likes of James Paul Gee and Marc Prensky respectively. Gee, referred to learning games as “problem solving spaces” that enables the learning of individuals in a variety of domains, skills and disciplines (Gee, 2009). If built with the correct features and implementation, game-based learning environments would become such a vehicle for players to experience the combination of both entertainment and learning (Gee, 2009). With similar optimism to this gaming phenomenon in education, Prensky’s vision of a “digital game-based learning” (DGBL) evolution also seeks transforming the education system on the premise of coupling entertainment and engagement of games 8 with learning contents (Prensky, 2007). Prensky believed that maintaining a high level of constant learning style and motivation needed to sustain engagement, will result in a good digital game-based learning system. With this, Prensky conclusively alleges that even serious games must be entertaining, for the youth of today he calls “digital natives”, and the “game generations” (Prensky, 2007). In another critical and important comparison of serious games with computer games made for entertainment, Zyda, critically addressed the existence and significance of more substantial components like “story, art and software” in contrast of those serious games which only emphasize pedagogy. Like Prensky’s notion of DGBL in emphasizing learners’ engagement through fun or entertainment elements, this approach was highly controversial. This is because it contrasted most educators who emphasized heavily on pedagogy over story, where the latter is usually the driver of the entertainment in most games (Zyda, 2005). Zyda proposes that in the future, through the assimilation of serious games into the education system, learning can become visceral and intuitive. Zyda’s vision was of a future perfect “emotion-cognizant” game mechanism designed to reduce or diminish the conventional questions and answers tutoring system that schools practiced traditionally today (Zyda, 2007). This hypothesis was grounded in the game developers’ measurement of “immersive experience” using presence, where the dichotomy of serious game conspicuously excludes pedagogy, as a subordinate and separate factor, to implement instructional design into the gaming experience (Zyda, 2005). Most educators misunderstood and deemed it a frivolous perspective that undermined pedagogy when what Zyda really was asserting, was that it is through the addition of pedagogy as means to instruct for learning, that makes any form of game a serious game (Susi, et al., 2007). 9 Despite the surgence of serious games and development of numerous overlapping or related concepts of education technology, many areas of learning games research have yet to be fully conducted, theorized and explored (Gibson, et al., 2007). Serious games, alongside with the advancement of technology brought forward by the commercial developers of the game industry, will in essence transform learning by deploying “scenarios to fail safely and creating memories through suspended disbelief that improve performance through recall” (Harris, 2009). Thus the importance of the players’ allowance and tolerance for failure during the learning process becomes paramount in leveraging on such affordances of the learning environment. Before we go further into the affordances of the virtual simulation as a game made for learning, it is crucial for us to understand the nature of the medium of digital games, its capabilities and its representation. Janet Murray introduced a popular analogy of video games as a medium, alongside with a few other digital mediums, and isolated 3 critical factors: immersion, agency and transformation (Murray, 1997). In this similar digital context drawn in parallel to simulation games, Murray theorised that in an immersion, the digital medium although assumed to be making its players suspend disbelief, was actually actively aiding them in the construction of a belief in the unreal world instead (Frasca, 2001; Murray, 1997). This theory also alleged that it was always the players’ subconscious inclination to accept and partake in a make-believe world and not to doubt the realism of it which led us to fortify this belief of the imagined (McGonigal, 2003; Murray, 1997). McGonigal also conceptualised a similar factor of this “longing to believe” in the imagined despite the consciousness of reality as “the Pinocchio effect” (McGonigal, 2003). Consequently, we would begin to desire a perceptible result in the environment, where we 10 experience ‘agency’, which Murray referred as our need for the medium to carry out a meaningful action and to witness the cause and effects of that representation (Murray, 1997). Finally, Murray asserted that with the belief of the imagined and ability of seeing the consequences in the immersion, it therefore empowered us an ability to transform and comprehend the consequences as new, multifaceted forms of representations (Murray, 1997). In extending the cultural representation of digital games, Murray also concurred with Michael Tomsasello’s earlier findings which identified insightful benefits derived under “joint attentional scenes”, a cognitive framework which shapes the basic cognitive development in humans (Murray, 2006, 2007; Tomasello, 1999). In this theory, Tomasello established 3 beneficial cognitive reinforcements in the “core adaptive benefits” of games which included: the awareness of the self as an entity agent and object with others, the ability to empathise with another being and the ability to impart knowledge and learn from it (Murray, 2006, 2007; Tomasello, 1999). In what could be seen as an extension to the establishment of Murray’s theory, her former Masters student Gonzalo Frasca, further examined the influence of video games and simulations in his foundation study of ludology (studies in video games). He alleged that digital games can be used as a method to represent simulation which has immense potential to “foster critical thinking, creating personal empowerment and effecting social change” (Frasca, 2001). Frasca highlighted an important fact through his differing perception with Murray, of Tetris as a simulation, which concluded in a fact that as a player of the Tetris game, one could test out consequences of its rules while as an observer, the rules remained limited as how it was being portrayed (Frasca, 2001). This further proved that the meanings behind any simulation game was never dictated entirely by the author but is instead 11 deciphered individually and uniquely by each observer’s or participant’s perceptions (Frasca, 2001, 2003). The participants in particular, when in the game, often have such control over the consequences via the reactive response to an impetus (for example: joystick, gamepad, keyboard keys) by the player and then they form differing representations through this behaviour (Frasca, 2003). The way video games, digital games or simulation games are visually represented might not be original environmental designs that are out of this world, since they inherited these from models existing in reality. In similar representation to serious games used for experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) in education, digital games can be designed to model our reality and at the same time strategically devised with rules and procedures to achieve goals. Such games can be designed to impart skills and learning through a player’s heuristic process of the causes and effects exacted in the environment (Gee, 2009). With the accessibility and availability of such games in the age of internet, particularly serious games like “Darfur is Dying” 5, they can also provide an avenue for learning through activism for social change of a real situation in Africa. The learning objectives of a serious game like “Darfur is dying” has encapsulated various dangerous consequences that can happen to the specific playable characters while carrying out familiar, domestic tasks. These were devised and designed in the hope of engaging its players to incite empathy for victims exposed to such environments filled with fear and hardship in light of perils of genocide (Huang & Tettegah, 2010). 5 “Darfur is Dying” is a thesis project of Susana Ruiz, University of Southern California, created as a pioneering project of serious game made to instigate or encourage real social changes of the genocide in western Sudan in Africa. The game combines several smaller game sequences to give the player a range of consequences and experiences aimed at invoking empathy for the victims and consequently educating a need for social change. (Source: http://cinema.usc.edu/imap/projects/darfur.cfm) 12 In earlier scholar reviews, it was also discovered that in the eclectic use of games for education which includes a multitude of disciplines like healthcare and common literacy, there were signs in the prevalent usage of simulations, particularly to achieve learning by experience (Becker, 2010; Mitchell & Savill-Smith, 2004). One successful simulated game by Jesse Schell and students from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, “Biohazrd: Hotzone”, is an example of how education leverages on its technology to engage their students in such learning by experience (Squire & Jenkins, 2003). The obvious fact that a dangerously simulated environment cannot be replicated nor experienced in reality makes the game a suitable answer to the constraint of risks involved. With the ability to simulate various settings in the hazardous environment of exposed toxin, students who experienced the game could, individually or use group strategies, to learn essential survival and evacuation management skills in a crisis like these. Skills they could learn included observing signs and symptoms in victims, formulate how to deploy emergency remedies by trying out different alternatives or predicting outcomes in familiarly simulated environments like, a shopping mall (Squire & Jenkins, 2003). What MUVEs have essentially brought to us, is the ability to host learners as players in “worlds where we experience things” thus making the virtual state of a serious game a much “deeper and abstract space” of learning (Gee, 2009). Galarneau and Zibit quoted Kelly, who described that players in games have progressed at a deeper level, “...they are making progress on an emotional level. They’re not just getting ahead in the virtual world, but actually maturing, growing, learning from their experiments with behaviour, and reformulating their views of themselves and 13 their fellow human beings as a result of their experiences in the virtual world” (Galarneau & Zibit, 2007; Kelly, 2004). Such game experiences in the virtual environment can also take players into a psychological and emotionally-charged learning journey, which could ultimately bring about an attitude change that shifts one’s values and belief system (Hung & Van Eck, 2010). In order to study how players emotionally perceive their characters and how they detect their sense of ownership to its social perspectives, we can examine how they personalize their virtual outlook to carry out game tasks to solve problems (Huang & Tettegah, 2010). Through the use of a virtual representation in games like “Darfur is Dying”, “Biohazard: Hotzone” and even “Full Spectrum Warrior”, digital games afford us the ability to put players into the dimension of learning through problem solving (Gee, 2009). The players’ virtual representations in digital games are also known as the avatars, often referred to as a personal digital and graphical representation of their real self. Celia Pearce inferred that in games, the “addition of the avatar gave the player a specific, customizable identity and sense of embodiment” that empowered “all players to enjoy a new kind of inhabitation and agency in the world, of which they are now physically and representationally a part (of each other)” (Celia Pearce, 2007). Unlike most video games or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, SL avatars were highly customisable and can exist in various forms ranging from fantasy states to forms that resemble our human selves. With the absence of typical restrictive game rules, avatars in SL also did not require health replenishments to survive and would not perish or reduce any survival vitalities like games such as WoW (Clark, 2011). Besides these characteristics, MUVEs like SL also empowered its avatars with abilities that are not possible 14 in real life, including navigation and movement without physical exhaustion (by flying, walking or running) and the ability to communicate and interact with multiple people using text, gesture and voice within the environment (Reeves & Minocha, 2011). Arguably, the biggest benefit these games bring to learning is the possibility of accessing such rich immersion in a learning environment by a much wider mass of people (McGonigal, 2011). “Learning communities” could be evolved organically by leveraging on the natural advantage of the MUVE being asynchronous and by assuring respectful communication practices that gives players a sense of social community and bonding to one another in a virtual environment for learning (Riedl, McClannon, & Cheney, 2011). Such a communal nature also enabled a common virtual experience, making it attractive to communicate in when it resembled familiar elements that learners could have experienced in a typical classroom in reality (Brown, 2008). Furthermore, with each student experiencing the dynamic environment differently, it makes class discussions more reflective when students discuss individual experience of their choices played in an off-game mode (Jenkins, et al., 2003). The affordances of the environment which fostered social communication, development of behaviours, enhanced interactivity evolved will bring us further into another important aspect of discussion in the virtual learning environment. 2.2 Presence The concept of presence has been often been used to measure the immersiveness and to detect engagement of human subjects of “being there”, in a virtual environment mediated by technology (Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). It is important that we understand the 15 explication of the presence concept by notable scholars before we discuss the occurrence of this phenomenon in human experiences in virtual environments like SL. The human experience becomes virtual in 2 perspectives: When the process of experience is “mediated by a man-made technology” or when objectification of the experience is “artificially created or simulated by technology” (Lee, 2004). The result of such a virtual experience when engaged by its users has been defined as any “presence caused by virtual technologies” (Lee, 2004; Sheridan, 1992). The significance of such impacts of presence has been a constant factor identified and emphasized by scholars from various disciplines for measuring experience and interactions of users of such technologies (Biocca, 1997; Biocca, Harms, & Burgoon, 2003; Lee, 2004). According to Biocca and Lee, the experience of humans in simulations resulting from technology has been known to broadly exists in 3 forms of presence: physical, social and self (Biocca, 1997; Lee, 2004). There is manifestation of physical presence, when the psychological state of human sense virtual or simulated objects as how they would of physical objects in reality (Lee, 2004). Physical presence also disregards sense of transportation since it does not warrant for “feeling of self-existence” in the virtual reality, resulting in its possible inclusion of virtual experiences resulting from both low and hightech media (Lee, 2004). Social presence is evident in psychological states where the human sense of the “virtual social actors” (avatars as non-human intelligences) in the virtual environment are perceived to be no different from the human self in reality (Lee, 2004). This is particularly prevalent in MUVEs dominated by the interactions and exchanges of the avatars. However, social presence defined here by Lee, should not be confused with another common 16 interpretation of the presence concept which refers it to the degree of “social richness in the interpersonal interaction of its users that a medium could bring” (Lee, 2004; Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) Self presence is referred as the psychological state of humans in their virtual self (eg. their avatar) being experienced just like its true self in reality (Lee, 2004). When technology users of MUVEs experienced self presence in the environment, they do not realise any difference between their virtual self (eg. an avatar), be it “para-authentic” or artificially created by the virtual environment as any different from their real self (Lee, 2004). In a nutshell, Lee’s explication has established the assumption that presence can exist in a multitude of experiences by users when they become indifferent and oblivious to the nature of its artificial presentation, or its mediation in objects, agents and environments. It became clear that the way humans experience the virtual environment, is depended largely on how they would perceive the physicality and environment of the game, the artificial characters involved and the human’s own game avatar forged in the environment (Lee, 2004). Biocca, Harms and Burgoon also established an important fact that the social presence or copresence in an environment is usually determined by the ability to sense another avatar in virtual reality. This also meant that the computer mediated communications (CMC) that gave birth to the interactivity between avatars are mandatory factors that dictate the experience of “being there” with another being (Biocca, et al., 2003). Lee et al conducted another recent noteworthy experiment which compared online educational games made up of multi-players with offline games and standalone games using traditional mediums. The results from this study have established the positive impacts of social presence with multi-players in online games since these studies observed a mediated 17 process of networked interactivity between players which influenced positivity in the learning process, eventually leading to multiple significantly favourable learning outcomes (Lee, Jeong, Park, & Ryu, 2011). When compared to face-to-face encounters, CMC has been established to exclude the significance of physical appearances, gestures, or even voice of the virtual graphical appearance of avatars. It was argued that such social factors of CMC played a more substantial role in the factors influencing “trust, attraction and friendships” between users of mediated technology (Schroeder, 2010). There were also differing studies that shown the emphasis of presence has always been about the ability of people to concentrate within a virtual space and not their intentional omission of non-verbal cues in the environment (Wrench & Punyanunt-Carter, 2007). Notwithstanding these, in “embodied social presence” established by Mennecke et al, it was alleged that in their study of avatars in virtual environments, players can embody their virtual representations in a deep way which included “avatar characteristics, body visualizations and movements/gestures” This virtual embodiment has significance in tasks that are goal and activity based (Mennecke, Triplett, Hassall, Conde, & Heer, 2011). Additionally, data findings from research on CMC between avatars often still sighted casual conversations of communications that scrutinize the physical appearances of the corresponding avatars and even their movements and positioning within the virtual environment (Schroeder, 2010). Results from other studies also show that perceived aesthetics of interactive avatars in a MUVE have a significant influence to engagement in the virtual environment(van Vugt, Konijn, Hoorn, Keur, & Eliëns, 2007). 18 On the other end of the spectrum of avatars being controlled by a human, there also exist non-player characters (NPC) also known as “computer-controlled agents”, purposefully designed and placed strategically in games, often bearing striking resemblance to any other human-controlled avatars (Shapiro, Pena-Herborn, & Hancock, 2006). NPCs or sometimes also known as “animated pedagogical agents”, serve highly useful functions within a game, usually to enhance realism and to perform increasingly intelligent functions of interactivity in collaborative activities with the human-controlled avatars in the environment (Rickel, 2001). Studies have also since concluded that when game players knew distinctly of differences between avatars and NPCs, they were found open to interact with avatars that are believed to be human more than they would with NPCs (Shapiro, et al., 2006). It appears there is critical CMC involved here related to social and copresence between the NPCs with its players that needs to be further examined. Social presence in a MUVE made for learning could also be defined from a different perspective. The engagement of learners in an online learning environment can be affected by the lack of social presence. The disengagement is often discovered in users with the absence of or lack of social affinity to other learners or the teacher in a typical online asynchronous learning environments when compared to their usual face-to-face learning environments (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, 2004). Therefore, it becomes crucial for students to be encouraged to stay engaged by meeting their lecturers and peers frequently, to bond themselves with stronger social community ties in the virtual learning environment since it encourages interactions with one another using various synchronous communication tools like text and voice chat, using non-verbal communication functions like poses, animations et al, all experiencing through their own personalised avatars (Wang 19 & Hsu, 2009). Thus, this research will focus on the social ‘synchronous’ live immersion and the interactivity between avatars in a virtual environment, also interpreted here as “presence”. This study would boldly predict that with mediated sense of presence and engagement in the simulation game, virtual environments could possibly provide for an accessible and media rich platform that enables players to learn constructively and experience simulations, scenarios that are often impossible in our real world today due to the various cost and safety constraints (Squire & Jenkins, 2003). There has also been major research that has indicated that the satisfaction of games are multiplied when copresence and social presence of other players are prevalent in games and that it further intensified the relevant factors of “immersion, engagement and flow” (Gajadhar, deKort, & Ijsselsteijn, 2011). The next section shall discuss these other factors of engagement in the context of the learning experience in a VLE within a 3D MUVE. 2.3 Flow, Immersiveness and Engagement To understand the state of mind in the game players’ engagement in an immersive simulation made for digital game-based learning, this study will elaborate on the crucial occurrence of fundamental factors in the experience of “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1992). It is inferred that the flow is a mental state of intense focus, accompanied by the satisfaction of the senses and a liberated sense of consciousness of self and time, all of which occurs during the process of such an enriching experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). The experience of flow has been concluded to give rise 20 to the engagement of an activity while this engagement is known to be a significant contributory factor to an effective learning process (Shute, Ventura, Bauer, & Zapata-Rivera, 2009). Game play, as advocated by various scholars, emphasized that in the abundance of the flow experience during the activities, will also generate positive impacts on its players (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Kiili, 2005; McGonigal, 2011). The absence of flow would consequently incur negative perceptions from the players and results in the player’s disengagement and eventual exit from the game (Van Eck, 2006). The state of engagement in the mind can also be referred as a psychological condition where the user undergoes an uninterrupted experience which captivates him/her sufficiently to unreservedly dispel any incredulity of an imitatively simulated environment (Schuurink & Toet, 2010). Noted in the affective influence of engagement, is also the readiness of the user to “think and feel both in terms of the contents and context” when immersed in the simulated environment (Schuurink & Toet, 2010). Game play particularly in virtual worlds, often introduce the intentional accompaniment of interactive stories in order to facilitate contextual background for problems solving in tasks and laying out learning or assessment objectives to enhance the immersion of its players (Shute, et al., 2009). Murray defined immersion in simulation games by its participatory nature designed for its game players, granting them this ability to bring them out of its once apparently impossible boundaries: “The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. ...We enjoy the movement out of our familiar world, the feeling of alertness that comes from being in 21 the new place, and the delight that comes from learning to move within it.” (Murray, 1997) In the crafting of virtual and game-based learning environments, there is the need for the game’s design to be “intrinsically motivating” (Malone, 1981) to learners in order to better engage them for its maximum effectiveness. Malone identified 4 such major features (Malone, 1981; Toro-Troconis, Meeran, Higham, Mellström, & Partridge, 2010, p. 114) which were similar to Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). Therefore by ensuring that these features are considered in the context of the proposed design in the game play, learners will be fully engaged with the basis of “fantasy, challenge, control and curiosity” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Malone, 1981; Malone & Lepper, 1987; Toro-Troconis, et al., 2010, p. 114). It is often through these identified factors combined in the design of games that gives the experience its optimal immersion and for its players to experience “flow” (Shute, et al., 2009). When in games, particularly when simulation games often allowed players to take on a special blend of identity that intertwined their real selves with their virtual characters into what is known as “projective identity”(Gee, 2005). According to Gee, this fantasy identity in game play, is firstly a depiction of the player’s “values and its desires” and secondly, a purposeful character forged to become an accomplishment or achievement of an aspired self (Gee, 2005). Jane McGonigal defined our modern day’s digital representation as avatars, “Avatars are a way to express our true selves, our most heroic, idealized version of who we might become.” (McGonigal, 2012) 22 The prevalence of such identities can be found particularly intense in role-playing games which usually reflects players’ real world fantasy and ideals of a better world (Gee, 2005). It was found that learning through games would be truly fortified if students can identify with their projective identities so much that they believe they could become that aspired self over progression of time, to be assimilated into the learning process (Gee, 2005). Such fantasy affordances in games also provided its players the ability disregard the consequences it has in reality, further enhancing the immersion and allowing the experience of the game play take on a new dimension of possibility (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002). Challenges in the games can be strategized in a variety of creative avenues in sustaining engagement in games. With meaningful goals being explicitly indicated in the design of the game, players of the game could be introduced to the engagement of challenges gradually to attain the ultimate goals through a blend of balance in ambiguity of results and a stable, exponential progression of its difficulty in achieving them (Garris, et al., 2002; Kiili, 2005). Games design, particularly in its level of difficulty, has been advised not to be made too easy (not engaging) nor too difficult (too daunting) and should consider carefully and sufficiently balanced feedback timed to respond according to the performance (Van Eck, 2006). Shute et al formulated their game design’s challenge strategy as “Each level ‘dances around the outer limits of the player’s abilities’, seeking at every point to be hard enough to be just doable” (Shute, et al., 2009), to incite players of games to consistently and persistently push themselves over their threshold of perceived competency. The amount of control a player is provided during game play can also affect the players’ engagement in the experience. A clear definition of this significant form of game play motivation is “Control refers to the exercise of authority or the ability to regulate, 23 direct, or command something.” (Garris, et al., 2002) Game play is often motivated by the latitude provided in the game’s ability to regulate player’s own performance at levels that are comfortable enough for challenges to be persistently present (Kiili, 2005). This important factor is also found to be much based on our inherent self-esteem and sense of self ability (Ullén et al., 2012). This becomes necessary if we wish to empower players with a sense of control in games that allows for the execution of different solutions which greatly enhances the knowledge associated with the reflective topic, and also allows them to discover better and creative solutions (Kiili, 2005). Another point to note here is during the experience of flow, a good game always has an immediate feedback mechanism that will interact and keep its players engage in its control of the game progress (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005). The sense of mystery in games is often used to inciting a sense of curiosity and enthusiasm that encourages the continuation of flow in games (Garris, et al., 2002; Malone & Lepper, 1987). Studies has shown that this sense of excitement in external experiences not possible in our reality, drives players in their constant engagement in games, especially in exploration-based simulation games (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005). Curiosity is a natural reflection of human’s need to comprehend what is not explainable or possible in our world and having such “sensory stimuli” created in games, satisfied the sensation of players’ need for the knowledge behind it (Garris, et al., 2002; Malone, 1981). 24 2.4 Research Questions The present studies of serious games, presence and theories and analogies of immersiveness, engagement and flow acknowledges the impacts of digital games and video games in the field of education. The challenge remains how we can leverage on the best of the advantages identified in digital and video games that can be weaved into a design and instruction made for learning, particularly in the education for higher learning. This thesis will therefore aim to use this study, to explore and evaluate the support in education technology with its communication, design and instruction of a VLE, in SL to achieve the targeted learning outcomes. The research proposed to examine and study the affordances and the influences of a virtual learning environment in a 3D MUVE, SL, using a virtual game simulation concept with various communication considerations designed as a serious game. To sum up the discussion, the main research questions the thesis seeks to address are as follows: RQ1: What factors of presence are significant in the engagement of learners in a serious game? RQ2: How can we leverage on the design and affordances of a serious game to effect learning in a MUVE? 25 3.0 Methodology 3.1 Overview This research features the construction of a descriptive study with emphasis on exploring the design of a VLE, in order to gain insights to the process of its communications and suitability for academic delivery. Virtual ethnography is the recommended anthropological approach here, can be described as the “multiscaled approach of studying both the individual players and the system as a whole, our repeating theme of looking at the forest and the trees concurrently”(C. Pearce, 2009a). The research via virtual ethnography, which is in its unique element of researching by passive observations in a 3-D virtual reality environment and inquiry thereafter, thus becomes paramount to the research objectives of studying behaviours of human controlled representation used for learning within a simulation game system. The study derived its findings from a simulation game exercise with an undergraduate academic module NM3202: Governance and New Media, run yearly by the Department of Communications and New Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. The academic module under this research runs from January to May 2012, attended by 88 undergraduate students, of which 67 are females and 21 are males between the ages of 21 – 26 years old. The research capitalises on the ease of access to a student population in a higher learning institute, applying convenience sampling to its participants since all students subscribed to the module are required to complete this simulation game as part of their mandatory assessment for credits to graduate. Out of the 88 students subscribed to the module, 20 female and 16 male respondents eventually accepted the call for involvement in a more intimate study; forming the final sample of 36 respondents, where individual, face-to-face, post-exercise interviews were conducted 26 immediately in the weeks after the simulation game. This simulation game is not made to enable the cognitive development of knowledge but more designed with the objective of engaging students affectively through experiential learning(Becker, 2010; Mitchell & SavillSmith, 2004), to incite empathy to a real life scenario (Gee, 2009; Squire & Jenkins, 2003) similar to typical serious games like “Darfur is Dying” (Huang & Tettegah, 2010), made to assess their development for critical thinking. 3.2 Virtual Ethnography In the current internet bound state of our lives, there exist identities that transcend beyond the typical CMC of textual formats, what we know as the avatars, accompanied by corresponding graphical visuals of idealised selves and gestures. Such communicative selves and their actions became an area of study that the researcher found richness in the limits of the virtual environment like how a typical research would be applied in a face-to-face situation(Williams, 2007). The important reason for adopting a more anthropological methodology like virtual ethnography is that the reality of the students’ learning behaviours today are so closely related to their social lifestyles and communications of today where no single student’s observation can justify for a complete discovery; it calls for more in-depth explorative research in the interconnectivity to each other in a broader perspective(Berg, 2001; C. Pearce, 2009b; Williams, 2007; Yin, 2009). With an unique context of a virtual environment filled with computer-mediated communications and game-based learning, there was an obvious need for the study to be conducted by ethnographical immersion in the field, to participate critically as an observer 27 in order to gather more insights into this phenomenon. This research seeks to derive its qualitative data collected from the virtual ethnography of the students’ learning experience particularly because of the intricacies of how learning activities are being carried out in a VLE like SL(Lazar, Feng, & Hochheiser, 2010). 3D MUVEs like SL are highly immersive, rich environments and communications occur through rich graphical modes of identity and consequence of actions in visual forms of a digital avatar in a simulated VLE. With such a unique nature of the virtual environment, the manifestations of any phenomenon in the communications and learning experience becomes the undiscovered nature of the technology that calls for more in-depth study. Using researcher’s observatory reflections plus the analysis of students’ feedback, the qualitative aspect of this study may uncover the implicit meanings behind game player behaviours when students are exposed to designed environments made to encourage curiosity and thinking (P. Jin, 2011). This study would seek to examine, solicit and collate all relevant raw data from the virtual environment, to subsequently analyze for any patterns of occurrence, insights into behaviours, communications or phenomenon that can be explained by theories in an inductive manner(Lazar, et al., 2010). The fieldwork here included accounts for ethnographic observations of participants in their 3D virtual avatars during the simulation game exercise, transcripts of avatars’ chat communications in the virtual environment and the solicitation of qualitative data via in-depth face-to-face interviews immediately after the academic assessment. These are further supplemented by detailed tracing of procedures and instructions leading to the students’ eventual exposure to the simulation game exercise. 28 3.3 Proposed Design of The Virtual Learning Environment(VLE) Most educators today are accustomed and exposed to 2-dimensional (2D) technologically enhanced environments for teaching that exists commonly in likes of virtual chat rooms, forums and various web-based classrooms. Introducing a 3D virtual environment like SL to an academic curriculum is a radical enhancement to the traditional way to carry out the typical academic delivery. SL, is a 3D digital virtual environment that allows students and faculty to co-exist as avatars, to interact and carry out activities, like how typical game players would engage in a typical MMORPG. The limitation, however, is that most MMORPGs, like WoW, are restrictive of its players’ activities as avatars and almost does not allow any customizations, reconstructions or manipulation of its interactive elements within the environment. The silver lining for enabling such virtual affordances was the emergence of a MUVE like SL, engineered to resemble a typical MMORPG equipped to perform activities in a game-like virtual environment, only with abundance of latitude and liberty for users’ content creation and customizations. In the media-richness of the virtual environment of SL, an “online 3D virtual world, imagined, and created by its residents” as described in www.secondlife.com, where players in their 3D avatars’ are empowered to do anything desired is the essence of the digital life of its residents within the virtual environment; users and their avatars are able to carry out the following basic functions (Tapley, 2007): 1) Customize and personalize a digital representation of themselves as an avatar 2) Ability of flight as a means of movement in the virtual space 3) Teleport to different locations and simulators/island as mode of transportation 29 4) Interact with objects through touch, visuals and other experiential functions 5) Communicate via chats, socialize, make friends and build/join community groups of specific interests 6) Create, build, design, customize, script and programme interactive objects and digital consumables for avatars and its environment The background of the proposed simulation game was designed in reference to a real life industrial accident introduced as a reading supplement in the suggested readings of the module. The design of the game stems from the tragic industrial accident in Bhopal, India, circa 1984, which killed many of its people in a toxic gas leak. The obvious lack of governance and legislation of preventive measures against such industrial accidents at that time, coupled with the corrupted nature of its apparent remedies, have caused the people and its environment suffer prolonged languishing effects till today. As this industrial accident’s legislative woes continue to rage on in reality with its social and economic repercussions on the people, there appeared to be no appropriate resolutions or corrective actions of governance to improve the dire situation of its victims. The proposed game will simulate this real life accident with reference to this example study in a similar toxic, hazardous environment, designed with a game-based learning quest objective. The students will first complete a simple but engaging task of the quest of exploration within the simulation game, and thereafter, write a reflective essay on their choice of a proposed corrective action to the simulated situation, based entirely on their personal interaction and experience in the game. The learning objectives, as established by the lecturer for the module, Ms Morales, Sofia, were to encapsulate a heuristic and holistic curriculum that will empower the 30 students to not just apply what they have learnt from the concepts taught in the course, but also to objectively analyze the reality of their choices to solve problems of today. In past experiences of students in this module, it was observed that they have solicited the typical illustrations conveniently from their prescribed readings or the transpired lectures with minimal independent thinking and little critical analysis of any underlying problems or consequences. The game-based learning in SL was strategically designed as a serious game, leveraging on this ubiquitous mode of learning that enables a simulation of extreme realities we see today that are often impossible to be experienced or revisit in real life. By exposing students to this game-based learning environment, this study hoped to engage the students in a way that will enable the students to first be affectively invested in a game-like simulation of a similar or familiar reality. With the engagement and immersion in the VLE, these students can learn to apply independent and critical analysis to a range of options with their empowerment of testing the available options with zero consequences in reality. Using these affective involvements in the exercise, the students could consequently be catapulted into an independent evaluation of a scenario and then analyze critically what the likely consequences of actions are before deriving individualized solutions in a reflective essay for assessment of their learning. The simulation game of the toxic plant is designed and strategically built 1200ft above ground, in the skies on a private simulator of NUS, 65,536 square metres in size, capable of supporting up to 15,000 3D prims. As the flying height limit of all avatars in SL is set at 4096m, avatars in the simulation will not be able to fly up beyond this height since the location is already situated at 1200 ft above ground. This will enable the simulation to restrict the site’s height limits and prevent the students from flying off the tangent of focus, 31 away from the buildings and the simulation, which they will obviously be distracted and lose their way. The toxic plant is a simple rectangular space protected by barbed fences on the perimeter, with 2 main plant buildings in the middle. Adding to the realism of a simulated plant, are several transportation vehicles scattered in the middle and a toilet building at the northwest corner (see Figure M1 and M2). There are highly interactive elements here where the shutters will open or shut upon the avatars’ touch. Each building has a total of 6 cojoining shutters, where 1 out of the 6 shutters will open to reveal a machinery control room, while the other 5 shutters open to smaller storage units filled with simulations of fixtures and fittings one will commonly find in a plant. Out of the 12 shutters in total, only 1 shutter will open to reveal the toxic waste evidence and the informant, whom will be discovered to be deceased due to unknown reasons. Figure M1: Bird’s Eye View of Simulation Game Site 32 Figure M2: Lateral View of Simulation Game Site Students will be required to complete the simulation game exercise with a noble objective like a typical game mission (see appendix: Simulation Game Brief). The mission contains mainly 2 tasks to be fulfilled for assessment. Firstly, students have to physically locate the informant avatar and uncover evidence of the apparent toxic waste by taking a snapshot of their avatar at the discovered site, to be submitted for qualification for participation. This task will build up the student’s engagement to the game since it will pose a substantial level of challenge of accomplishment to anyone who has not explored the place before. Subsequently, they will need to proceed to the end of the plant for the second task, where they will be exposed to 3 choices of decision consequences. The options are open to their testing or experience with no restrictions. This scenario is supposed to instil a sense of empowerment to them, to be able to react, to effect a change immediately to the dire situation of the toxic waste evidence that has just been uncovered. Thereafter, they are 33 required to submit a reflective essay as a reaction paper 6, in direct pertinence to their empowered choice of remedy for the toxic situation, based on this simulated experience. This reaction paper6 will effectively form the final and most critical assessment of the entire learning experience in the simulation game experience. At the end of the submission week, a formal debrief session will be held during lecture to officially present a demonstration walkthrough of the entire game sequence, the ideal route of learning and also to reiterate any overlooked learning outcomes that could not be addressed during the game. 3.4 Data Sources This study seeks to exhaust rich, descriptive and heuristic data through the implementation of: unobtrusive, detailed, ethnographic observations as a participant within the environment, supplemented with digital captures of students in their avatar forms in the designated VLE. Subsequently, face-to-face, in-depth interviews not exceeding 45 minutes each, were conducted individually with the sample students immediately after the week to solicit data from the sample of students. The following sources of data formed the fieldwork which was carried out, with particular focus on the sample of 36 consented participants for the post-exercise interviews: 3.4.1. Screen captures of in-progress simulation game Students’ learning and activities will be illustrated by screen captures (See figure 6 Reaction paper, in this teaching module, is a evaluation tool in the form of submission of a post learning essay that undergraduate students are required to write immediately after each learning experience. Students can write anything about their learning experience in their own terms and are often encouraged to write in their personal perspectives and capacity. This paper is commonly used by lecturers to ascertain the student’s takeaway from the lessons, to evaluate student’s progress in learning, for assessment in grading and most importantly, to ensure that learning outcomes have been achieved at the end of the lessons. 34 M4) made by the ‘Snapshot’ function within the SL interface(see figure M1) through the unobtrusive presence of the researcher’s avatar. About 5-10 snapshots of the students’ avatars were made at every site of contact with an avatar. As it might be unpredictable how the avatars will move or interact in the environment, there was a need to capture as many snapshots as possible, in the fastest manner. More snapshots were immediately taken wherever there are sightings of communication between any 2 or more avatars. Different angles up to 360 degree of these captures were also made possible with discretion from the zooming and panning functions(see figure M3) found in the camera view. This capturing process does not disrupt any avatar being observed since the observer’s avatar does not display any signs of movements or gestures of capturing during the snapshot. All students’ avatars were all protected and represented anonymously in their SL created avatar names. 35 Figure M3: Typical Second Life Control Interface Figure M4: Typical Avatars Snapshot in the VLE 36 3.4.2. Participant-observations As a participant-observer in the environment, field notes were recorded discreetly in plain text using a text editor outside of the SL interface. These descriptive data , were written in short notes but in a descriptive-narrative form of the avatars’ interaction and activities during the simulation game exercise and also reflective notes on outcomes encountered. Transcripts of chat communications between avatars, textual emoticons used and how their avatars’ gestures(if any) were activated were recorded in public group chat formats by copying local onscreen chat text onto individual plain text file(out of the SL interface) logged for subsequent in-depth analysis. Interactive elements in the environment which reacted to students’ curiosity in exploring were also captured in the chat transcripts(see example of transcript below) by enabling and activating chatlog function in the observer’s user interface. Students’ avatars were all represented anonymously in their SL created avatar names in all the logs of chat transcripts. Avatar names in SL are all anonymous but it will be replaced by an assigned pseudo name (example: F1, F2, F3 etc) if student had used their real name as their avatar names to protect their identity in this research. Below is a sample of how a typical recorded transcript appears on the local public chat screens of the observing avatar: [05:50] F1: Is she behind [05:50] F1: think she’s lost? [05:50] F1: Oh [05:50] F1: or she went afk (abbreviation for away-from-keyboard) [05:50] F2: hmm [05:51] F1: Hey they looking for u 37 [05:51] F3: oh? [05:51] F1: wait here [05:51] F1: I get them [05:51] F3: am looking for the options [05:51] F2: let's go [05:51] F1: I go teleport back le [05:51] F1: shes here [05:51] F1: at the options place 3.4.3. Interviews(post exercise) with 36 students (20 females, 16 males) In-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews(see appendix Interview Guide), lasting not more than 45 minutes each, were conducted face-to-face in the premises of NUS, with the sample of 20 female and 16 male respondents. The Interviews were conducted to probe, discuss and conclude any other observations and responses observed in the simulation game. This was done immediately in the week after the simulation game exercise to ensure their memory of the experience can still be freshly articulated. All students’ real life names featured in the interviews will be replaced and represented here in the study by an assigned pseudonym. 3.4.4. Interview(post exercise) with lecturer An in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews was conducted face-to-face, with the lecturer, Ms Morales, Sofia, to gather any other feedback and responses to the students’ assessments and learning outcomes. 38 3.5 Data Collection Process The cohort of students was given a week to complete the assignment with the flexibility of access at their own time within the designated week. Prior to the actual weeklong simulation exercise, a familiarisation lecture on how to use the general controls(particularly the camera views, movement and communication modes) of the avatar within the user interface of SL were conducted in a lecture session. This was introduced early into the academic curriculum to ensure there is a general standardization of basic knowledge to use the simulation game controls in SL across the entire cohort of students in NM3202 before they embarked on the actual simulation exercise. Such an orientation lecture ensures that any student who had no prior experiences to any similar gaming environments will not be alienated but will also be equipped with the necessary skills during the implementation of the simulation game exercise. In addition to this, students were encouraged and empowered to take the opportunity to be creative, by customizing and personalizing their digital representation and identity in their SL avatar. This activity was not compulsory and thus not academically assessed for grades, but it gave them their first exposure into the SL without any specific academic instructions or restrictions. During the familiarization lecture for using SL and the brief period of time leading to the exercise, there was minimal disclosure of details of the simulation game or specifications of any academic expectations of the students in their avatar forms during the week long exercise. Disclosure of what to expect in the simulation, was announced to the students with prudence and discretion for assurance of data collection integrity(Lazar, et al., 2010). In order for the ethnographic study to be most effective, it would require the students to participate as naturally as possible within the boundaries of the VLE that was 39 created for this purpose. The students were briefed in the lecture to react to the learning instructions as natural as they are encountered and not to behave or react deviously towards any opinions or expectations that they might think they are supposed to in a scientific experiment(Knapper, 1980). Without excessive disclosure of the details in the research, this would also greatly prevent any likely contamination of data from the “Hawthorne effect 7”(Adair, 1984). This was executed by the minimum declaration mandated by the NUS Institutional Review Board (IRB), made known ethically to the students from the start of the module during the SL orientation lecture, that this was declared an observation study only and not a scientific experiment. The study was further explicitly disclaimed to contain any implicit forms of classification or segregation of any order of their participation into specific control or experimental groups used for subsequent data comparison after the exercise. All students were also provided with consent forms to indicate their consent for their avatars to be observed in the environment, to be visually captured in snapshots and subsequently documented for analysis. The students were further assured that there is homogenous, zero-biasness and asynchronous access of the VLE for all participants in a very fair manner that ensures academic assessment in the fairest possible way. This simulation game exercise has also been pre-tested with a typical undergraduate female student from the department, 21 years of age, in the second year of the programme who has no prior experience in the module or using SL from the same department. It was observed that this student who was briefed, learnt the basic controls and had used SL for the first time, took about 48 minutes to fulfil the requirements in the 7 The Hawthorne effect is referred to as the effect of resistance and suppression of natural reaction by test subjects, in an intentional bid to prevent observation of occurrences during an experiment due to the knowledge of themselves being observed in the laboratory. 40 simulation game. This duration is close to or similar to the approximate time taken for a typical tutorial class in the university. All the data collection were carried out in the English language, within the SL virtual campus and academic premises of the National University of Singapore. In any report, publication or oral presentations of this study, only participants above the legal age of 21 will be admitted into the research and they will not be identified by their real names; only SL avatar names or assigned pseudonyms will be used accordingly to replace their real-life names. Other identifiable information will not be used without their express consent. These conditions and boundaries were all clearly elaborated in the consent forms signed by the participants before the actual simulation game exercise. Prior to the week-long simulation game exercise, students were also informed during lecture of the overt presence of ethnographic observations in the exercise and were subsequently observed in an unobtrusive participative manner (through a self-declared and co-present avatar by the SL name of, LividEye Yoshikawa) that allowed the students to behave as natural and free as they wish within the VLE in SL. There were also ethical declarations that other than avatar observations, screen captures will be also made in a non-disruptive manner of their activities in the VLE. Despite the vast boundaries set within the VLE, screen captures of the participants’ activities were recorded unobtrusively by leveraging on the use of extreme distance zooming enabled by the capabilities of the camera mode(see figure M1) in the extensive user interface of SL. With this capability, the researcher, in his avatar form, need to stay only within 20 metres of local chat limit distance of observed participants and can appear less intrusive, to capture and record all communicative conversations in text between the 41 avatars through public chat transcripts. Field notes were then recorded simultaneously of the observations in behaviours of the avatars, interactions and flow of activities in a discrete way. Following the week of the simulation game exercise, the sample students of 20 female and 16 male respondents were presented with the consent forms for their interviews to be audio recorded and were individually interviewed immediately. This is to ensure their responses remained lucid and that their reactions and sentiments of their experience can be vividly articulated and recorded during the interviews. All 36 interviews were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed into plain text in a text editor for data coding for interpretive analysis by the identified themes as discussed in the Findings and Results Chapters. 3.6 Data Coding for Analysis The bulk of the data for detailed analysis were acquired from the chat transcripts within the VLE and from the in-depth, post-exercise interviews with the students. With increasing popularity for qualitative investigation studies in virtual worlds like Second Life(Tran, Minocha, Roberts, Laing, & Langdridge, 2011), qualitative thematic analysis has mostly been selected for appropriate analysis. Themes, or sometimes known as “abstracts constructs”, are formed from the basis of any researcher’s understanding of the literature of the topics(Ryan & Bernard, 2003). With considerations for subjectivity and objectivity issues, this study also seeks to strike a clear balance between any previous knowledge from other studies and phenomenon that could have been observed to emerge by keeping an open 42 perspective to any new discovery. With the prior understanding of the literature in place, these constructs naturally emerged during the vigorous and repetitive scans for their relevant appearances and often becomes salient, associative and repetitive enough to be picked up forming the main themes(Ryan & Bernard, 2003). For example, an obvious appearance that emerged immediately in multiple frequencies was the mention of how much their avatars are an extension of their real selves and how they can be affected by how they look to other avatars despite the acknowledgement that this is not real(C. Pearce, 2009a). Often enough, the sub themes of loneliness in a big space also emerged naturally during the collation of the main themes. Such emerging themes and sub themes are highlighted immediately to isolate them from the vast sets of data transcriptions collected for analysis. Thematic analysis when applied throughout both chat and interview transcripts would uncover firstly, the codes or key themes. These can now be identified and organized into particularly significant factors of presence and affordances unique of the VLE(Tran, et al., 2011). Other indirectly related phenomenon which could be observed appearing, especially in multiple frequencies, were also isolated and selected as possible sub-themes to be analyzed for its impact and significance. All 36 interviews were arranged alphabetically by the subjects’ names for rigorous reading, to first identify all major themes that emerged from the text. The initial set of data is read another time to allow the identified themes to be refined and re-coded to eliminate any errors(C. Pearce, 2009a). Basic themes are first formed and collated, which are comprehensive themes that can also allow the formation of sub themes that could also possibly be salient in the findings. 43 4.0 Findings This chapter seeks to collate, describe, analyse and translate all field data, descriptive notes and codings formed during the process of the fieldwork for research. These data presented here, were derived from the various sources of ethnographic observations of avatars’ behaviours in the VLE; screen captures of avatars activities in the simulation game, transcript of avatars’ local chat communications and the in-depth, postexercise interviews with the sample of 36 students and finally post-assessment interview with the module’s lecturer. The study of the data derives codes that will provide the pertinent direction to which the themes of the analysis can be developed to possibly provide us with insights to the research objectives. Themes that were emerged and derived from these codings were analyzed using phenomenological approach as the research’s focus has always been on the “perceptions, feelings and lived experiences” of the students(Guest, MacQueen, MacQueen, & Namey, 2011). These data collected were further broken down into the final themes for analysis as follows. 4.1 Virtual Identity: Choice of Avatars The cohort of students was briefly introduced to SL during the orientation lecture which covered an aspect of customizing and personalizing their avatars before the week for the simulation game exercise. They were encouraged to browse from the catalogue of canned avatars to select an avatar that best represented them. Avatars provided in the default catalogue (see Figure F1) of each avatar ranged from radically fantasy to human ones that mirror our typical everyday lifestyles. As the avatar customization was introduced 44 earlier prior to the simulation game, the students had already enthusiastically spent some time browsing through the catalogue and selected their avatars by the time they login to complete their game exercise. It was observed that majority of the students had selected avatars that are very much lifestyle humanoids while the second majority chose avatars that are in fantasy forms of animalistic humanoids known as furrys. A minority of them chose to be mechanical-looking, robot avatars. Figure F1: Choice of a typical fantasy furry avatar from default catalogue It was revealed in the interviews that when a group of avatars who know each other out of the environment enters a virtual environment like SL, they have the tendency to influence each other in their avatar representation. Students who arranged to do the simulation game together were found to be in avatars that are similar despite their personal preferences of their virtual identity to be human. They followed the group’s norm despite the common choice being an identity that might apparently make them look ridiculous. 45 Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Describe what is your avatar like in the simulation game. M1: My SL avatar was a panda with 2 of my friends, I chose this because my friends were in a fox avatar and another one also in animal avatar so we chose the avatars that were a little quirky and did the exercise together. I chose the panda avatar because my friends decided on those animal avatars and I wanted to choose something that can be more fun like my friends. My friends were my group mates in school, we arranged to do it together and so we sort of decided to have the same avatars. F2: At first I thought if I get to see something like yourself, a projection of maybe yourself or something similar to yourself, then it will be like you can connect to it like you can feel that it’s a little more realistic. It can sort of represent more of you. I know this sounds ridiculous, but my friends chose the animal avatars out of fun and I didn’t want to be left out so I also followed them choosing an animal in the end. However, there was another observation of students who came in a group, choosing to spend more time in customising and personalising their avatars out of the default library, making themselves radically different from their friends. These avatars were found to be popular amongst the social group of avatars when they were in the simulation game and often at times, appeared to be assertive in persuading the team to move in their suggested directions in the exploring part of the game. Source: Local Chat Transcripts [[21:41] Vestier Ashland: take the geaaaaar and equip! [21:41] MacsBreakfast Deluxe: hello guys! Sorry I am late! [21:41] Vestier Ashland: I mean wear what equip this is not skyrim [21:42] Vestier Ashland: FASTER MA! We must find the dead guy! :< [21:43] Vestier Ashland: so just click anywhere and activate the shutter, you can see inside [21:43] Vestier Ashland: you know how to interact with the stuffz anot o_o [21:44] Jodium Kroll: Damn noob ): [21:44] Jodium Kroll: eh I go to next building, you all meet me there later, I can’t wait [21:44] MacsBreakfast Deluxe: hahaha I don’t know how to turn my avatar around 46 [21:44] Vestier Ashland: see the gate opened? [21:44] Vestier Ashland: come follow me, don’t wait anymore [21:44] Vestier Ashland: -_[21:44] Vestier Ashland: why she keeps changing clothes? get from where one? [21:46] Vestier Ashland: Just click on the shutters [21:46] MacsBreakfast Deluxe: M2 your avatar is as loud as your afro in reality! LOL Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Can tell me why did you customize your avatar that way? F2: I got so many different avatars, which one? Hahaha I keep changing my clothes because the ones they gave in the library is the same as everyone else. In other words, boring la! I think my avatar is like me in school, cos I also make an effort to look different every time. I only wish it is that easy for me to change my look like in SL. Imagine can save me so much time to get ready for school! M2: Hahaha, I know you ask because my avatar looks damn weird right? It is a black dude crouching like a dragon. And he has a cape on with a big afro. Interviewer: So why did you made it weird like you just said? M2: Because this is like in real life. If you are boring, who wants to talk to you? If your avatar looks the same like everyone else, you become boring as well. And I want to let everyone inside there knows I am Colin, the Colin in school which they all know. I used to keep my hair without cutting for a year and it was so long, everyone in school knows me as the guy with the big hair. So yeah, somehow my avatar is like me. Anyway, its so easy to customise it inside. The majority of the students who chose the humanoid avatars felt the choice of a humanoid has more representation of them in reality. However, they also do think that they should still be somewhat different from their real life look since this environment has that special affordance for them to be radically different from their real selves. Some believed this will also enhance their experience since the background story is based on a real life industrial accident. Interviewer: What was your avatar in SL like? 47 M3: My avatar should still be distinctively me. Still humanoid character and in terms of dressing more outrageous, hair colorful hair, an alter ego, something I can’t be in real life. But I still want me to look asian, after all this game is academic. M4: I chose my SL avatar as the vampire because it looks like the lead character vampire from “The Vampire Diaries”, because I watched the TV series, its just something I chose when I first saw it. Something I can relate to or like, but something I cannot be in real life. F3: Think most of them chose the gothic people and I thought I should be more ethnic. Plus this background case study is in India... So I chose this Indian lady avatar with a saree. It suits the case. Maybe I will feel more for the case study now? I don't know but it was fun that I can be something I am not in reality. 4.2 First Contact: Accessing the VLE As the students were given the liberty to access and complete the simulation game asynchronously within the week, most of the them have been observed to login to the VLE in SL alone with minimal or no coordination with one another to complete the exercise together. This could be observed in the usual solo entrance into the simulation in the avatars’ first arrival, only to be joined by seemingly random avatars that subsequently came online, subsequently teleporting individually to the simulated site. There was usually no sign of immediate communication between the avatars until any one of them initiated contact or engaged the other in the local chat. Students will experience their first avatar teleportation in SL from the point of entry with simple instructions (see appendix: Simulation Game Brief) for preparation to arrive at the stipulated simulation to commence their experience. Many of them, when in their avatar forms, appeared to be bewildered, psyched up or some even excited to play. This is usually sighted in their first contact of the simulation and or with another avatar during their arrival at the start point of the simulation game. Such a sentiment could also be attributed to the atmosphere of the simulation which resembled a gloomy and heavy industry-like 48 environment (See Figure F2) in the VLE. The following transcript extract and interview verbatim depicts the typical atmosphere and interaction between avatars when they first arrived into the simulated site. Source: Local Chat Transcripts [04:55] F1: you can see everything here right? [04:55] F2: yup [04:55] F1: Quick go take the mask, its for protection [04:55] F2: Yes, i saw the toxic protection mask [04:55] F1: faster go wear leh. Oh my, this place looks damn gloomy, so scary. [04:56] F2: done let's go! [04:56] F2: so cool, this is getting so exciting, like mission!! Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How did it feel when you first started the simulation game in SL? M5: There is that sense of mystery because you don’t know what to expect but you could see there are things going on around. This feeling is largely negative because we were given a mission at the start so we know that we are investigating a certain disappearance of an agent so there is definitely a sense of conspiracy going on in that place and when you arrive at the area around you saw that scene, there is definitely a negative sense of mystery because you will feel that something bad is going down here but you don’t know what is it and you are still trying to find out and trying to guess and you are also very wary of what is going to happen. M1: It felt like you are more into the assignment and into the mission suddenly when we started. Because for some of the games I played that started off with a teleportation from the village to maybe like the wilderness or something… it had some sort of the feeling like from a safe place then you get transported to a dark grey place and you feel like you are into the mission and objective now. It’s very much like a factory setting and there is not much people around and looked kind of isolated. The atmosphere is very dark and industrial like. Actually at that time, I felt very ready and psyched up to do it! M6 My feel was the place and environment does really look replicated from a real place. In fact, it was a bit more moody and ambient than I think it would be. I thought the normal SL environment was by default bright day and sunny. That was the thing. It was a very ominous feel kind of feeling. I didn’t know SL could do this because I didn’t explore SL enough to get that kind of exposure, that’s the first time I was in such an environment in SL. I thought it looks very game-like and interesting, it looks almost entirely like how I will remember it in a game. I was really excited and raring to go immediately. 49 M3: The place did give a sense of apprehension and you don’t know what to expect and the atmosphere is quite dark, this adds on more to the suspense at the location. You know you are in for a mission of grave importance immediately. F4: There was quite a difference because in u-hall where we teleported from, I think weather always looked good. When I went over to this place, the sky is quite grey and everything... so it’s a bit different. Like something ominous is going to happen in this mission. Kind of scary really but I know this is the game and its supposed to look that way right? Yeah. It’s actually quite fun if you think about it. Figure F2: View of the simulation upon arrival at the toxic plant Upon their entry into the site, the first instruction in the simulation game was implemented to engage the students, by instructing them to put on a toxic-protection mask for their avatar. Such an activity was implemented to simulate a life-like exposure of an apparent location that was contaminated with an industrial toxic leakage (see Figure F3). Despite some of the avatars existing in fantasy forms (eg. animals, robot etc) which can look ridiculously out of place with the gas mask on the avatar, all the students were observed to have picked up and worn their toxic gas mask dutifully upon their first contact at the start point. There were no signs of disbelief or any questioning of the rationale or consequences 50 of such an activity with the item on their avatar despite their knowledge of their existence being artificially created in the virtual environment and therefore not real. Upon probing during the interviews, it was discovered that there was an immediate suspension of disbelief of the virtual state they were in. Apparently, they had assumed the removal of the toxic protection mask in the game might endanger their avatar’s lives or bring about an unexpected consequence. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Did you walk into the simulation with or without the mask? F5: I went in with it. Because I believed in the story like I am in the mission and that I need to put it on myself. I’m not sure what will happen to me if I didn’t put it because I might die in the mission? It’s toxic exposure right? M7: I thought, “oh, something might happen to me." I didn’t try. I was afraid. Yeah, I thought I would die. So I didn’t remove it (the toxic protection mask), not at all. M3: I don’t know when to put on the mask actually because I thought there will be a prompt or something to say that your health is degenerating or something. Then you will know that there is a toxic contamination in the air? I was reminded by Muttoncutter later at the entrance that I need to wear the mask to proceed. I didn’t remove it in the game anyway. M5: I felt the place was very mysterious. First thing was the prerequisite to wear the mask so you will realized that there is a sense of danger because if you are required to wear the mask, that means in that world there is a certain level of toxic fumes in the surroundings that will require you to do it to this extent. As we look around, we pan across the place, we saw fumes emitting out of the buildings, so you could really feel that there is something going on around here but you don’t know what to expect, you don’t know whether there are people there or there is just an empty place. Better be safe, just wear the mask. 51 Figure F3: Student avatars putting on toxic gas masks upon arrival at simulation site Most students eased into using the avatar’s navigational controls and communications in the first 5-10 minutes after their logins. The students did not express much technical assistance needed, at least not openly in the local chat. This would not be their first experience in using SL since they have had their first experience after the initial lecture which introduced them to the basics in using SL. However, observations show that there were still some who have encountered challenges in using the interactivity in SL and were seen asking for help. They were usually found waddling around aimlessly, possibly hoping to thumb through the navigations in their immediate exploration of the controls. This can be observed in the awkward control in movements of some of these avatars, which usually render their avatars to steer recklessly in uncontrollable directions. Such incidents would result in unintentional contact with other avatars by ‘pushing’ them accidentally out of their positions and appearing to have lost their bearings entirely. Most of them ended up stranded in an unknown or unfamiliar location which is due probably to the loss of the 52 default camera view of the avatar. This would appear to be a helpless situation for the avatar’s view unless they managed to reset it. During such dire scenarios, the ‘confused’ avatars were seen seeking help from another avatar especially if they sighted an avatar within their sight or noticed chat-activity from a nearby conversation on their screens. In the most desperate and drastic situation, these avatars will be seen logging out of their situation and will return to the start location using the original teleportation landmark given to them when they first came in. These observed behaviours of disorientation in the avatars were not orchestrated and found to be similar amongst the students who are adapting to the interface navigation views in 3D form. At this juncture, it was observed that there are also avatars who exhibited an altruistic initiative to help one another, almost like in a state of camaraderie and participation of their co-presence. Such initiatives occurred despite their random encounter being out of purely coincidental circumstances. Some of these observed avatars, which appeared to be more acquainted and well-adapted with the interface, would initiate local chat communication upon the sighting of another avatar in a spontaneous and friendly manner. With little or no regards of each other’s real life identity, there were spontaneous exchanges of instruction information of the simulation game or knowledge of interface controls learnt earlier in their experience. Despite being oblivious of each other’s real life identities, the conversations revealed that they were typically enjoying most of the time in the game (See Figure F4): Source: Local Chat Transcripts [01:08] F3: hi hi :) [01:09] Happymix Lyric: hello! [01:08] F3: u doing it alone also? 53 [01:09] Happymix Lyric: ya lor u know how to do? I not good at this [01:09] Happymix Lyric: We have to take photo here [01:09] Happymix Lyric: must sit on the red thing! [01:09] Happymix Lyric: u go sit on the other one leh. we can take tgt haha. Want? [01:10] F3: how to sit I dunno?! [01:10] Happymix Lyric: you right click the ball, then got this pop up just choose sit, very easy [01:11] F3: hahaha ok now this is kinda fun actually Figure F4: Student avatars taking snapshots together at site location of toxic evidence 4.3 Local Chat Activity SL local chat communication mode is an intuitive, vibrant and highly uninhibited form of communication with other online avatars within the same virtual environment. However, it was observed that there was an obvious lack of such active chat activity captured on transcript despite of this availability and access to communicate with other 54 avatars. It was discovered that there were several forms of unintentional miscommunication as well as intentional reduction of such forms of communication. For avatars to see any local chat conversations, they need to be within a specific distance of each other, particularly within the avatar physical distance of 20 meters. But due to the liberty empowered to move about freely to explore a spacious simulation like in this reference, the simulated plant, most avatars are prone to have unknowingly walked/ran/flown out of the 20 meters chat boundary whilst exploring. As a result, some of them were often found to be talking to themselves, in their futile attempts to communicate with another moving avatar. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How was the communications using the chat between you and your friend? How did you feel while using SL to communicate? F6: It was terrible. I was so lost. All I could do was to keep flying around and I had to stop and type “Jerrick, where are you? Answer me!” Most of the time, I realised I am just talking to myself. We were lost and constantly looking for each other during the exploring bit. I almost wanted to call his mobile phone just to ask where he is. M3: It was tough communicating in SL. I guess this was the kind of times when you wish you can get a microphone and you get the means to talk to her. This was the kind of time you want the immediacy to get things across rather than spending time to quickly type and wait for response. Especially when you realized she is looking for you and asking “Jerrick, where are you?!” and you kind of panicked. I didn’t know about the spatial limits that when you go out of the minimum perimeter we will not be able to see the same common chat which was why we noticed the strange awkward silence at times. We were wondering what had happened was probably because we are out of the perimeter of communication to see the chats. My first thought was she was just too busy to notice because she was just busy flying and exploring. End up, I was just talking to myself or she is looking for me by shouting all over but never once stopping to see if I could see her chat or response. On the other hand, there were also some particular observations, of avatars who had completed the simulation game in a group, displaying behaviours that were noticeably and intentionally different. Some of these avatars upon detecting the researcher’s avatar 55 and realizing that they were being observed in the environment displayed a shy persona or became intentionally coy towards the observation process. They appeared to have resisted any forms of communicative text on their local chats and this was further confirmed by the interview with the students who had been observed to display such behaviours: Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer : She mentioned in her interview that communication was not in the game? What do you guys mean? F1 : We were actually talking on whatsapp because she didn’t respond to me when I typed on the screen and so I give up and just ‘whatsapp’ 8 her. More importantly, I knew that you were watching! I know... so I say to them, “Let’s not look so stupid. Let’s go whatsapp and communicate there.” Interviewer : So it’s because of this consciousness of my presence as a researcher there? F1 : Yeah, so I sorta decided and told everyone, “Hey, let’s just talk in whatsapp. I’m not letting him know this is how dumb I must really look.” Interviewer: I can’t help but noticed that chatting seemed to stop whenever I appear. Why is this so? M1: I think if we were at home on our own, we will actually be talking even more. Because the off-topic chat is more personal, so if you were there observing us, we are kind of reluctant to talk, maybe for general things and mundane chatting. Not that we are so guarded about our chats but its also because of the fact if there is someone there who we don’t know and if its something personal, that person will actually feel left out because he doesn’t know what we are saying. There were also students who felt the initial adapting to the new communication within the virtual environment will be detrimental to the smooth progress of the game. These avatars were firstly observed to move in unison as a group without any sighting of local chat communication and visible chat communication only started to appear after 8 8 WhatsApp Messenger (WAM) is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging application for smartphones. In addition to basic messaging WhatsApp Messenger users can send each other images, video and audio media messages. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp) The application has also recently extended its capabilities for group chats of up to 10 multiple users simultaneously. 56 communication skills are levelled and assured in the environment. This was reflected during further probing in the interviews with the 2 sighted avatars. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: What was going on with you and your partner? Were you helping her? M5: She told me she was not very adept at navigating in the game so a lot of things she asked was via ‘whatsapp’8 and since she used ‘whatsapp’8 to communicate with me I will use it with her. Maybe she was shy or what I don’t know. Anyway, if I were to use IM with her in SL, she may not be able to command the IM out and that will waste time in communicating with her so I decided to guide her on how to use IM as well as how to navigate first, so then after that it was fine then we stop messaging in ‘whatsapp’8 and we start using IM in SL. In addition to the fear of embarrassment or intrusion to their privacies, some of these avatars were also observed to move in group synchronicity and attained unusual precision of success in completing the tasks in unison, despite the lack of communication chat appearing in the local chat environment to coordinate this sudden and swift progress. This observation was not normal because the usual way to communicate between 2 avatars via the local chat windows was already challenging, let alone a group of avatars all seemingly coordinated in movements at the same time. There can be several probable conclusions drawn from such an observation of the avatars in SL: 1) The avatars were using the voice function within the SL interface to communicate and this was done in a private group chat window that is not audible or visible to public chat. 2) The avatars were completing the simulation game exercise together in real life and communication was done via speaking to each other in person for the convenience and speed, instead of typing out articulations in text-chat mode of SL. 57 3) The avatars were engaged in private text-chat windows with each other within SL and thus restricted their chat from transpiring in the public/local chat window environment for privacy reasons. 4) The avatars were engaged in other forms of communication mode out of SL (example: IM applications like Yahoo Messenger or mobile phone chat applications like whatsapp) and had used it as their preferred communication mode to synchronize their avatar activities to accomplish the tasks in the simulation game together. 4.4 Avatar Behaviours There were a few common locations that almost every avatar seemed to be irresistibly drawn into exploring upon their entrance into the simulated toxic plant. One of them is the dumpster simulation that was found behind the shutter in the middle of one of the plant buildings. The shutters were made to be interactive and will open to reveal a lifelike simulation of a typical dumpster to the avatars upon their mouse click on the shutter doors. Upon opening the shutters, most of the avatars were found to be highly attracted and curious about what is within the dumpster, most of them thinking they have a good chance in locating the toxic evidence within (see figure F5). They would usually click and activate the simulated dumpster’s animation that the avatar could simulate for interactive fun. Such engagement with the animation lasts for at least 5 – 15 seconds, before the avatars eventually realised in disappointment that it was really made for interactive engagement, not related to the task at hand. 58 The other part of the simulation that attracted their curiosity for exploration was the simulated lavatory next to the building (see figure F6). This lavatory was strategically positioned next to the second building and similar to the dumpster, it was just a complement to the realism in simulation of a typical plant. It was made to be an independent building on its own and almost all the avatars ventured into the lavatory and explored the simulation, often clicking and activating the simulated animations for their avatars. During the interviews, it was revealed that most of them shown interests in these simulations because the simulation looked intriguingly impossible for them to experience in their real lives and that it became an opportunity to do it in the simulated version of it in SL. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: What do you think of the simulations that you saw in the simulation game? F7: Looks very realistic but I guess it does have its influence from real life, I mean I seen these before. But the fact that I would never ever sit in a dumpster in real life, I can do it in second life and so why not? I would do it. M1: Quite real. Sort of. Environments like the toilet and the dumpsters and shutters are all very real life. You can relate to it. Something that you can see in Singapore. In those industrial parks. Because the dumpster and the toilet are the ones that looks kind of unique to the environment. Stood out looks special. You won’t go to the other common looking places like shutters first because they look normal and common. At first, we didn’t recognize it was the toilet till we went inside exploring, then we found it quite special and explored further. Interviewer: So why did you go to the toilet? F8: Because it was open and I thought toilets have most evidence like drama series and movies. They always have corpse inside those toilets so I thought it will be the best place to look for evidence. Yeah I thought his body will be inside, he can die in the toilet? I think for this one is really closer to real life if you compare it to like maple story that I play. And this kind of pollution scenario, it does happen in reality you know. F9: In the toilet, coz I wanted to check out everything in there, clicking everywhere in the toilet, the basin, checking out the two animations there. And then I realize, what am I doing here? So I just came out after a long time. 59 Figure F5: Student avatars exploring the dumpster within the opened shutter Figure F6: Student avatars exploring the toilet beside the buildings 60 4.5 Presence of other Avatars Most of the avatars turned up at the simulation alone, with the sole intention to complete the tasks at hand and leave afterwards. The amount of contact with another avatar is not prevalent unless the duration of their co-presence is substantial enough to enable interaction. The immediate feelings of their isolation and being ‘lost’ in the virtual environment were commonly felt amongst the students. Students also thought that the anonymity they have in the environment gave them the advantage of removing any barriers of shyness to seek help from any avatars they have encountered. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How did you feel when you first went into the simulation? F10: I think the whole place looked really quiet and creepy. It gives you a very big and very lonely feel. Then I saw another avatar walking by. Interviewer: So when you saw the avatar, what did you do? F10: Yeah I was so excited when I saw her! Maybe because the place is too big, if the place is too big and there’s no other avatar around it, you will sort of, become lonely? At one point I felt really lost, especially because I couldn’t see anything I know of, I didn’t explore anything much too. And I thought if I’m going to do this thing alone, I will be very lost and it will also probably take a very very long time. I almost wanted to just sms my friend to help me get out of there! F7: After a while of exploring, I actually felt a bit helpless. I didn’t know where to go you see…at that point I felt a little lonely and hopeless. You know, the feeling you just want to give up when you are all alone. F11: I was lost and don’t know what to do when I am alone. It actually felt quite lonely. If I were to see anyone, I will probably go crazy enough to say, “Oh hi! I’m from the same course, I am a bit lost, so can you help me?” Hahaha... I would never do this in school cos this is too crazy but who cares when we are in here? Nobody knows who I am! While there were students who felt the need to see or interact with other avatars like themselves, there were also some who expressed a different take on encountering other forms of presence in the virtual environment. This was even if there were existence of 61 interactive beings were made from artificial-intelligence like Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) which apparently might give them a different experience despite the NPC’s limited or lack of control in interactivity by another player. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How did you feel when you first went into the simulation? M6: I was rather disappointed not to see others inside. I thought there will be some other avatars to interact with me, or maybe at least NPCs or something that I have to interact with, or maybe I need to try persuade them to give me some clues or information or something like that. That will be something I expect along that line here. It will really bring out, I guess, the SL experience, having to interact with other characters even if they are just NPCs. We just need to connect with something inside. Interviewer: What were you expecting when you enter the simulation? F4: I was expecting like NPCs, quest items… I had the whole mentality also that it’s a quest then there’ll be someone to tell you like…you collect these things then they’ll tell you more information and stuff. I’ve always thought NPCs are there for a purpose like in a game…it will help you advance and solve quest. In most of the games I’ve played, they’re there and you talk to them when you need to talk to them. I was kinda sad cos there’s no NPCs, no guidance and you’ll just be trying to navigate the entire landscape on your own. On further probing, 1 of the students went on to describe the immediate feeling of the environment’s emptiness and expressed her reference for the significance of NPCs as agents that could technically provide for the same presence as avatars controlled by another student. This is even if they are of artificial intelligence, that she felt was a need to fill the absence that could have been filled by other avatars. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Can you tell me more about this feeling while you were doing it? F4: Just very alone. Empty sort of feeling. Not lonely as in lonely cos you won’t feel that they are there as friends or something. Then for NPCs, when you communicate, there’s only a certain amount of permutations in them. They’re not really ‘there’ there… For me, I only talk to NPCs when I need to talk to them like anything. The ambience there is very empty as if something bad happened there, so with some NPCs there, the impact might feel a bit different…like there’s still people around. 62 Even if they’re just electronic, you’ll feel that the people are there. Yeah, definitely. Even if it’s just a robot or something, like someone or something talking is there. On the other hand, some other students related and compared their experiences in the game with real life social interactions that they have experienced before. As much as they saw the need for connection with another avatar in the virtual environment, they felt that an overcrowded space with simultaneous or overlapping conversations transpiring between excessive number of avatars are as ineffective in its communications as what you would see in real life. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Did you complete the game on your own? Tell me about your communications with another avatar? M3: I completed it entirely with MuttonCutter and we left together. There was a sense of collaboration and I guess she makes me feel not that lost because I was not alone after all. I guess, with another person it makes you feel like what you are doing there is for real and not artificial. I think it’s more fun to do in a pair too. If there are too many people, it kind of spoils the fun. Everybody is talking at same time and typing all over the place, it’s very hard to talk, hard to decide who to reply to. I guess for me, even if it is to go out (in real life), I prefer to go out in 2s or 4s, anything larger the group becomes difficult to communicate, it becomes hard to give your attention to the rest of the people in the group, especially when you go out with 8 or 10 people or even more, people start to break into cliques, and you start to lose focus with the people around you. I think it’s the same in games like SL, people start to lose connection with each other when they are not cohesive. Some of the students who arranged to login at the same time to complete the simulation game have expressed their immense satisfaction in the experience. There was a common spirit of togetherness despite the challenging communication in avatar forms and it appears if there is an existence of an informal relationship out of the game, it will further cement their trust and reliability in each other in the virtual environment. There was even a comparison made of the virtual time spent together like how they would do in their real lives. 63 Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: What is it like to do this with friends compared to if you do it alone? M1: Its really more fun to do it together because when you do it with friends you have this sense that you are spending quality time with your friends also to do something and there is also this sense that when you need help there is always someone there to help you. You will definitely feel a sense of loneliness if you do it alone. Within the simulated location, the students might encounter avatars that they do not know in their real lives but have only very minimal social interaction with them during the encounter in the environment in a short amount of time. It was observed that most of them were indifferent to the real life identities behind the avatars and thus it never really hindered the communication. They also appreciated and expressed relief that a fellow student who has experienced this earlier, was apparently altruistic enough to stay on after he has completed his assessment, giving them tips to attain their objectives. This, to them, greatly improved their experience. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Did you know the avatar who you spoke to? M1: Actually we did ask the avatar we met for his name. He did reveal his name and say why he is here and all that, which is for the assignment. I didn’t really catch his name and was more interested in what he’s guiding us to do. Probably because what he himself told us that the mission was more important than for me to know his name. Because we were so focused on the mission, we didn’t really remember his name since it doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t mind talking to strangers actually. It was a friendly encounter, he came up to us and asked us if we are doing the same module and we started introducing ourselves and found out we were actually the first few who were doing the assignment, he then say he will guide us if we need help. We were actually excited to see someone else, especially when he came up to help as there were 3 of us and we were equally lost and had no one around to help us when we started. You must know, he didn’t spoil the fun for us by telling us where exactly. He just gave us hints to look out for things along the way. At least there was someone there to guide us, it felt so much better I tell you. 64 4.6 Sense of Time and Immersive Engagement All of the interviewed students expressed that they had lost track of the time that had transpired in the simulation game exercise. This was also observed as no one expressed their need to leave or logout from SL during the exercise and every student who came in completed the exercise in less than an hour as predicted in the earlier pre-test. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How long did you take to complete the game? M5: I think, if I remember correctly, I took half an hour or maybe less. I did definitely sort of lost track of time. Because there is school tomorrow, so I was supposed to finish fast and go but in the game, I didn’t really want to care about the time because you are more concerned with completing it, after that then you check to see because I got other things to do. I was like wow I didn’t know I took so long already. M6: Maybe because when I found the objective (locating the toxic evidence), time wasn’t a pressure to me anymore. I was just exploring the toilet, exploring everywhere, other areas. Then I also went to open the other shutters to see what’s inside all of them and saw all the interactive stuffs. I didn’t know I already spent so much time during that span of time. I was just exploring non-related stuffs and didn’t realized time was slipping by. F1: I kept checking the time at first because when I’m playing once in a while you can see the time says that oh, 10 minutes... oh, 15 minutes... and I don’t have any idea... I think I took close to one hour at the end? I thought I will actually finish faster than that! F12: I can’t remember because I didn’t check but it was definitely longer than expected I think. I had Skype on actually to chat, so people were annoying me and I just like... ignore them. I was like ‘Keep quiet, I’m doing Second Life!” So you can say I was pretty intense about it! 4.7 Challenges in the Game The students formed 2 disparate groups in their opinions of the level of challenges in the simulation. The majority of them felt the challenges were too easy and underwhelming 65 to their expectations in a game whereas a smaller group of students who felt the challenge of locating the evidence in a huge place was too daunting to begin with. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: What do you think of the challenges in the game? M1: I won’t say this is very challenging but there is still a certain level of challenge because you still have to find the thing and at first we didn’t know where it was and it wasn’t that straightforward and still it took us some efforts. I think we all had fun, at least I didn’t hear anyone complain during the game. F13: Maybe because I do it alone, maybe it’s harder. Cos you have to navigate like find yourself and try to get used to the place …it’ll be harder doing it alone in such a big place but the mission is quite simple. But it can’t be too challenging either because if too challenging, you’ll go ah, “I don’t want to play anymore.” M5: I am quite neutral to it. In a sense that you know what you needed to do, and the difficulty level was ok, it was not difficult but it was not easy either. So the satisfaction you could get out of it was there, that means you won’t feel like “so what do I get out from this, its so easy,” because its not. When you finished it, ok wow that was quite something there right? M8: Yes, because I thought the map was so big. When I started, there were two sides I could go so I thought, this is not easy but in the end, I realized that there was just two parts in the map, and we found things like the toilet and the dumpster. Then realized wow it was not that easy to locate things in such a huge place in SL after all. M6: A little underwhelmed by the lack of challenges, maybe for my level. That’s the kind of thing I like, where I get stuck. If it’s too easy, I kinda don’t like it. At the starting point, I could tell that it looks very well built and elaborately built and a lot of hidden undertones, I expected to spend at least like a couple of hours actually. 4.8 Strategy and Sense of Competition in the Game When the students encountered each other, a certain level of trust and alliance evolved almost immediately despite their lack of knowledge of the identity of the other avatars. Some of these alliances were clearly articulated to each other while some were forged in implicit, unspoken situations. 66 Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Did you had any discussions with any other avatar you met, like how you wish to play the game? M9: Yes, it’s funny you mentioned, because we didn’t say it out by typing or whatsoever but we just went ahead without any discussion. Just a very simple strategy like you go this corner and I will go this corner so we can save time. And like maybe you visit this building and I visit that other building, or something like that. M5: We did have a strategy going on but it sort of self-evolved, we didn’t planned it intentionally. I guess reflecting on it, not planning may also be an disadvantage, because if the map entailed more than 20 buildings and that’s gonna take 2 to 3 hours and you may lose track of where you or the other party have already checked. F7: Yeah, we did sort of come up with a strategy… we were like “Ok you take the toilet and then I go take the front end.” kind of thing. Though we didn’t say it out exactly, but we’ll tell each other where the thing is whoever finds it. M1: We did it like a team, we did split up to find where the agent is, then once one person found it we will tell each other where to go and direct the person to take photo together etc. We literally typed this out just so we are sure. F14: I am not sure about that. Because it also depends on how this person I met is coping with the controls as well. So if she is, I mean, it’s good to have some form of strategy, so like one of us go right, the other one go left. But the thing is can we find our way back again? We didn’t talk about it but it sort of naturally formed a strategy of you come back to share what you found? Although such strategy of alliances are common, it appeared some of these unspoken strategies may not turn out the way it was supposed to be, especially when trust is assumed on one party and the other party failed to align with the assumed strategy or alliance to keep up with the game. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Can you describe how was your game experience with the other avatar? M4: I thought when I first met the girl, she was supposed to help me. We were chatting, and chatted about our discovery that we can actually click on objects and kept chatting. It was exciting and it really gave me a sense that we have to work as a team because we were both lost when I first started. But in the end, I was disappointed that she didn’t work as a team and ventured off on her own. Initially, I thought she will wait for me because she was lost and just standing outside the toilet, so I went to walk one round the whole place. Then when I came back she was gone, then I was like... where did she went? Turned out Iater someone told me at 67 the end point she already done and gone. Oh well... she’s just another mercenary, like some of the games I played before. As the game progresses into the exploration of the entire simulation, it was also observed that an invisible form of competition existed amongst themselves. In the game context, it might just be a simple objective of locating the toxic evidence but it ultimately became a race to be the first person to discover (the evidence) and to be able to share this information with the others. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How was it like finding the toxic evidence with another avatar? F4: There’ll be a competitive streak there…I’ll find it then tell her, I found it! It’s also an achievement thing. Even if you don’t get a tangible result, you just feel it would be better. It’s a self-esteem thing maybe it’s just my character. But who wants to play a game when people tell you where to find it right? F15: It’s gonna be cool to say hey I found it faster than the other person. And I’m into the exploring kind. M3: I had this strong urge or feeling that I want to be the one showing her the way and not the other way round. Maybe I am just being aggressive. But I just want to be the one to do it first. I can’t explain why either. While some of the students felt the need to be the first to uncover the evidence, they might have encountered challenges and took some time to locate the evidence behind the one and only shutter. Their sense of competition seemed to have taken over their avatar and they did not offer help nor did they allow the situation to be convenient for other avatars who emerged onto the site after them. This was observed in one of the few local chat transcripts at the location of the evidence site: Source: Local Chat Transcripts [23:12] F4: okay i got it thanks! 68 [23:12] F5: You taken the snapshot? [23:13] F4: LOL we look ridiculous in the shot so cute! Uploading! [23:13] F5: faster go [23:13] F5: someone else here, don’t let them see it [23:14] F5: Close the shutter, hurry! Figure F7: Multiple student avatars encountering each other in the evidence site 4.9 Affordance of Activities Not Possible in Real Life Avatars in SL are all empowered with the ability to fly or run at speeds which do not cause exhaustion like how it would in reality. The affordances of the virtual environment of SL also allowed them to leverage on flying to speed up their attainment of the objective in exploring the plant. After a few minutes into the game, most students were noticed to have continued the game by foot, using walking or running as their mode of movement instead. As speeds and movements of avatars can be unpredictable in being contained or controlled 69 individually during interaction with one another, communications was hindered when avatars flew too fast or too far. This usually results in their avatars gone out of sight uncontrollably or out of the boundary for visibility of local chats. In the observations, these students who are still in their early experiences of flying in their avatar forms were highly challenged in managing their control of the camera views during flying. Eventually, most of them gave up on flying and decided that by moving about on foot, they might not be able to move fast but they will at least be able to ensure they explored the place thoroughly to attain their explorative objectives. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Tell me more about your modes of movement in the game. M3: I used only running in the game. MuttonCutter was using flying and I couldn’t catch up with her! Flying is too fast for me and I can’t control the flying. I also couldn’t fly upwards. I was afraid I will be left alone so when I saw her flew off I wanted to catch up with her and just kept running after her. Initially I was using walking but walking was too slow so I had to use run to go after her. F6: In a mission, I think it’s a chore to move and do other things. You have to fly, then you have to type so you can’t really do both at the same time but when you’re lost, then unfortunately it’s very much needed cos you need to move fast. Walking in a big place takes forever. But flying can be a pain too when you cannot control the crazy speed so running is still ok. At least, you can still move fast! M4: I was running most of the time. Flying was a little clumsy. If the space is open like University Hall, then its quite easy to fly because there was a lot of space to fly. But in that place there was not a lot of space to fly, in fact I can’t fly up for some reason. There were limits? Oh I see. Anyways, even flying horizontally was a bit weird, it was not smooth so I thought I just run all the time, walking is really too slow. At unihall is still ok to walk maybe because its smaller? In real life, of course we can’t run so easily, its different. Yes and No to running, if you asked me, that is not considered running, more like jogging! F1: At first I was walking. Then I was thinking okay it’s easy to control specifically if you walk right like my neck tells you can control yourself to keep walking. Then I get irritated because it’s so slow so I went back to running. So basically it’s walking and running. Flying was too crazy for me, I don’t know what I am looking at anymore. F8: I didn’t walk because it was slow. Fly, I think I will get lost if I fly. You kind of get lost easily cos you can’t see properly when you fly too fast. I think it was okay to run but just that sometimes the running was not enough to move fast. 70 F5: It’s awesome because you can fly and you cannot do that in real life. But I told my friend not to fly because I cannot follow her. It’s not natural to fly but it’s cool. It makes the game more exciting. It has the element of urgency inside like when you fly so you can fulfil your mission faster. I walked most of the time though cos I need to stop and explore, we don’t want to miss anything right? Students were also observed to use their avatars to test out the consequences of what could happen to their avatars in some parts of the simulation game. A few students who managed to find a way to access the roof had attempted to jump off the building without flying, only to realise that a fall would be simulated without any physical consequences to their avatars. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: What happened on the roof top? What did you do? F4: I was so happy to find a way to go up the first building’s roof. I tried flying over to the other building cos I thought oh, there’s another roof over there so maybe the evidence is over there. So I thought I can fly over then I just sort of fell down off the roof! Freaked me out suddenly cos I couldn’t fly over! But nothing happened, I just felt like I was floating to the bottom. Coz in the virtual world, you really won’t die or even if you die, you’ll just be reborn somewhere else? What could possibly happen to your avatar? M5: So what I did was I explored when I was standing in the fumes, to see whether I will deal any damage or something like that then I moved so I realized that nothing happened! So that seemed very weird to me because why are all the fumes all in one line and not all across? So I tried walking in and out of the fumes a few times, was actually hoping to see something happen. They also tried and tested the simulations and controls of the machinery within the buildings and attempted to see if what appeared to be hazardous to humans could possibly have any reactive consequences to their avatars. A few of them were observed to have walked to and fro into the pollutant-filled fumes emitted from the chimney, seemingly expecting to see a chemical reaction to their avatars. Most of them were also found to have attempted to meddle with the controls of the machinery in the buildings and intentionally 71 coming into contact with the simulated hot liquid metal in the machinery, in the hope of seeing some consequences played out to their avatars (see Figure F8). Figure F8: Student avatars meddling and exploring interactive machinery within the plant The final part of the assessment required the students to choose 1 out of the 3 options (see figure F9), to be tested out for its consequence so that they can subsequently write about their immediate and critical reaction to the experience. Some students were actually found running away frantically from the site when “Option 1: The Vigilante” was activated (See Figure 10). By choosing this option, their avatar will ignite a massive explosion (see Figure F11) in the plant with the accompanying activation of a warning chat message, “Run for your lives, Explosives Activated!”. Avatars in the vicinity upon realising the explosion nearby also panicked and hesitated momentarily if they should also flee as witnessed from the warning message in the local chat. However, when the students realised seconds later that the explosions will not have any hazardous effects on their avatars, they started to repeat their activation of the explosions to derive fun and entertainment out of it. 72 Figure F9: Student avatars gathered at the option billboards to select and tryout the 3 consequences Figure F10: Student avatar attempting to escape in panic after ignition of explosion 73 Figure F12: Bird’s eye view of explosion to annihilate the plant in Option 1: The Vigilante 4.10 Assessment of Students’ Learning Objectives and Outcomes The students would have completed their final simulation in the 3 options and fulfilled their virtual experience of the simulation game. Thereafter, their most critical assessment however lies in the reaction papers6 they need to submit in direct pertinence to their experience in the simulated environment. The following learning outcomes were revealed in the interviews of the afterthoughts of their reactions papers that were submitted for assessment. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Tell us about the option that you have chosen to write out of the 3. M4: I chose the first option, to blow up the place. I thought the confused chicken is stupid. As for the third option, I thought that’s what everyone would choose, the politically correct one. But after reading about the India case study, might as well I be the extremist here, since this is SL and you have no worries about what you can do. I wrote that how can you not blow up the place when you are there, you are 74 already there and you would wanna be reckless and just wanna blow it up immediately lest it gets worse in other’s hands? Anyways, I tried out all 3 options and did thought for a while before I wrote this out. M6: I chose option 1, the vigilante. The choice was very obvious for me, I chose it right away. When I did tried the bomb option, I tried to distanced myself, because instinctively I tried to back off cos it’s a massive explosion! But I stood away from it to observe it in the distance. And just for the fun and observation, I tried it a few more times just to admire it since nothing gonna happen to me and nothing was destroyed in the environment, it was simulated explosion only. The students might be clear-mined to know the difference between the virtual state of the situation and a real life scenario, but because of the exposure to the experience, they also brought into consideration more self-imploring and hypothetical possibilities into their consideration in their reflections written in the submissions. Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: Which option did you choose? Why? F16: I chose option 1, destroy it before it gets worse. In some sense, because it was a game, I did not think of the consequences so much like the fact that it could have exploded, and all that is compared to if it was real life, just trying to stay objective to the cause of my mission here in the game. I thought if something could happen to me or like in trying to help, in that sense I could actually make the situation worst, you know. But I thought I should write that there was a need for us to remember the consequence if this was for real. This has devastating effects when it’s serious, for real. The students had to base their reflective essays on the experience they went through and as it is revealed here, there was an unforeseen display of intense empathy and sense of ownership towards a responsibility felt for the real victims in virtual reference to the experience they had just experienced. There was a clear display of independent, critical analysis of individualistic perceptions, values and beliefs that sums up their experience. 75 Interviewer: Can you tell me how did you write your reaction paper6 based on your option? M3: I wrote that this answer is something you will never find in a textbook, it was very personal and more of an ethical and moral answer to what really happened here and what should be done if it was you, something you would do personally to make things right. I was really thinking through how the state and civil society needs to work together and I supposed the plant is the private sector here that the state should work with to create some form of transparency, to be able to account to the public. A new and robust governance needs to be revolutionised here to ensure such accidents are first prevented and then the people compensated. It is complicated but it really sets all my considerations into perspective immediately. M5: I chose Option 3: the faithful agent but I felt that all 3 options are not good enough really. Because you are aware of the situation, what if the government and agency decided to mask off all these information that you surrender? Then who would help to acquire this justice for the agent and suffering people that has been killed in action? So I personally felt that a good approach would be ensuring that you hold on to a piece of this information and you don’t hand over them entirely. That’s what I suggested, you keep the original copy to yourself and hand them a makeshift copy first and if they don’t do anything, you just blow this open in the media and make them responsible. Just like how wikileaks did it. F9: I think, coming from a micro view, just one incident is not enough to conclude that the government is corrupted yet by destroying a plant is a bit too much. I wrote very critically that something might be wrong here but sometimes because the government has so many arms on so many different levels, it may be somewhere along the arms of the government that is corrupted, or it may be a private corporation commissioned to build the plant is the one corrupted. But if you blow up the plant, then what happen to all the pollutants? It’s just going to drop down hitting on neighbouring areas. We’re supposed to represent something deeper here. You might get what you want but you end up spending tax payer’s money to pay for the damage that’s been done. We have to be critical and careful about this situation and weigh out a lot further before making that 1 decision. The reaction papers6 were immediately submitted by the students to the lecturers for assessment the following day after the exercise. In past experiences with previous cohorts of students, the lecturer has received mostly predictably prescribed answers found from the stipulated readings in their submitted reaction papers6. From the educator’s perspective, this experience with reference to the same industrial references and its contents has allowed students to reap a very different level of personal comprehension, analysis and evaluation in its learning outcomes. 76 Source: Interview Verbatims Interviewer: How were the students’ reaction papers6 in this case as compared to the previous cohorts? Sofia Morales: Firstly, I could see there was a very different level of enthusiasm and excitement in the topic of discussion which showed in their submissions. We could see a vast difference in their writings not just in latitude but also in attitude. Past cohorts of students have turned in mostly predictable and ‘canned’ answers which you can easily derive from the published readings and critiques from case studies. The purpose of the assessment of the reaction paper6 was never to seek a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer to contemporary social situations but to assess their ability to apply independent and critical thinking to governance issues. In this cohort’s submission, almost all the submissions were unique in their own right because they have not just critically address the issues that are being exposed here but also written the reaction papers6 in a very personal yet reflective way. Interviewer: What do you think this experience has done for the students? Sofia Morales: I think we could see them being empowered with this ability to assume a decision -making position, to be exposed to the sensitivities of the discussed issues when they applied a lot more of their personal values, their independent interpretation of the factors. Subconsciously, perhaps they became highly critical and considered a lot in weighing out the ‘what if’ consequences involved by comparing with what is really going on out there in the world. This is a much personalized experience out of the classroom that the module can never achieve in a typical discussion because even previous role-play exercises were always enacted, needs a rich imagination to visualise and often difficult to be affected emotionally. I hope the takeaway for the experience will encourage them to always take an initiative to be critical, to stay objective and to develop independency in deriving conclusions of social issues in governance. 77 5.0 Discussion and Conclusion The earlier chapter has largely isolated and presented all the emerged themes from the qualitative data that were possible significant factors of presence and provides insightful information about the phenomenon in leveraging on the unique affordances of the VLE. Despite all the implementation challenges, the learning assessment has received mostly positive responses and achieved a satisfying level of learning outcomes that were set out at the start of the semester. As described by the lecturer from the results of the enhanced learning outcomes, it was reported to witness a transformation in quality, increased enthusiasm and obvious diversity in critical opinions in the submitted reflection essays, which were all not prevalent in past cohorts’ learning experience. The lecturer has acknowledged that the experience have shown students’ heightened sense of awareness of the consequences of such a likely accident. Students also appeared to be sensitive to the affected parties involved, addressing the relevant stakeholders’ impacts and have mostly displayed support of activism in preventing such industrial accidents as simulated in the game. From the interviews, the students’ rationale were explained with deep understanding and detailed analysis, made up of critical references to their culture, values, attitudes, evaluations and independent judgement. This was evident in their explanation of the rationale of their choices and how they would recommend an appropriate and detailed action plan to rectify the situation, when empowered with the ability to effect a change. The students in this cohort also appeared to be subtly entertained, engaged with the simulation game and are observed to be generally satisfied with the learning process in a VLE like SL. Except for the communication issues that were observed, most students have shown to been either largely 78 immersed and engaged with the assessment tasks involved, particularly within the presence of other avatars in the same environment. It is important for this study to highlight the significance of technical support that has been provided to students before and during the actual simulation game assessment week. This is because no educator should assume that students, deemed as digital natives of today, will all possess a homogeneous set of games knowhow and to be able to thumb through the virtual environment immediately when they are required (Moore & Pflugfelder, 2010). A key success in helping out some of these students’ fish-out-of-water situations included the first lecture conducted as an orientation to the new VLE, which has helped immensely in injecting meaningful game knowledge, positivity and confidence in using the SL interface and its navigation. Such a provision of technology bridging will equip any students (no prior knowledge or experience) with some basic survival skills in the MUVE while those already familiar with digital gaming environments will also get a first glimpse or experience into the VLE. The students displayed a plethora of emotional reactions to their avatars prior to the simulation game exercise while personalizing their avatars. It appeared that most of them were aesthetically influenced and engaged by what they can see through their avatar (van Vugt, et al., 2007), despite their consciousness of reality and that their avatar is after all an artificial representation of themselves. When fueled by their friends’ acknowledgement of their real identity, some students can be seen further exemplifying their personality and characteristics. This was exacted through their avatars’ physical appearances to look unique and they would also assert their influence (example: choice of common avatars or movement in a group) over the group confidently, much like what they would do in their 79 real lives. As much as the students think their avatar is a mere artificial extension of themselves, they have inevitably harboured hopes that their digital forms will show characteristics of their reality in the midst of its engagement, despite the avatars existing in a state not possible in reality (Mennecke, et al., 2011). This was a clear exemplification of Murray’s theory of human’s active make-believe of the fantasy state and McGonigal’s “Pinocchio effect” discussed earlier, the choice of the avatar by the students can be clearly seen as a significant factor affecting the engagement of learning in a serious game as it became the most important visual projectile. This projectile would provide the idealised and fantasized state of its controllers(Garris, et al., 2002; Gee, 2005; McGonigal, 2012). Upon their entrance into the simulation, the immediate dark and gloomy simulated atmosphere was evidently observed in their enthusiasm to complete the task. This was intensified with the mediated instruction of a clear assessment requirement for their avatars to assume a role. This role they are playing is of particular significance in exploring which would culminate in completion of a mission filled with controversy. Such narrative instructions might be brief at first but provided meaningful and engaging impulses for the students to derive enthusiasm that can propel a game to an exciting start (Moore & Pflugfelder, 2010). To add on to the engagement, the suggestion of wearing toxic protection masks in the environment brought more realism in the simulated environment when there were uncontested assumptions that their avatars could be physically affected. Such interactive elements of engagements naturally emerged as one of the key features in affordances that the VLE has uniquely facilitated to enhance the learning experience. It also became timely that the features of mystery, excitement and fun were introduced in the game appropriately to first engage them immersively and thereafter allowing other 80 academic assessments to follow. Earlier, Zyda has theorised such important significance and necessity for an enticing and entertaining factor to engage the students before the learning directives sets in for the ultimate learning outcome (Zyda, 2005, 2007). In similar digital games like these, learners go through similar cognitive stages of learning through “assimilation” and “accommodation” as established by Jean Piaget (Piaget, 1999). In this context, “assimilation” represented the knowledge the students have earlier with their technological background particularly with experiences in other games, which exist as representations of cognitive blocks. When they enter the simulation as a new experience, they undergo a process of “cognitive disequilibrium”, a process where their existing cognition of how games is being played is challenged (therefore the disequilibrium) and undergoes “accommodation” (Piaget, 1999; Van Eck, 2006). “Accommodation” is described as the adjustment of existing cognitive structures (of their knowledge in games) to fit in the newly introduced information. Some of the students entering the environment went through this “cognitive disequilibrium” and were observed to adjust themselves to the new environment in states of “accommodation” as observed in their initial state of discomfort, confusion and baby steps into the simulation game. The students started encountering other students in their avatars and communicated with each other, where knowledge of the new environment are imparted, learnt and shared. The MUVE of SL has provided an environment that has enabled this constant “disequilibrium” where communications can be mediated through the presence of other players of the game to be deliberately immersed in a state of “accommodation” of new knowledge. In the initial foray into the environment, there were observations of sense of togetherness and camaraderie to help each other overcome this “cognitive disequilibrium”, 81 despite their lack of knowledge of each other’s identity. Such an altruistic behaviour evolved from the effects of social presence and co-presence displayed a promising potential for collaborative communications and that social learning is highly possible to be mediated in a MUVE. The social presence has cultivated a strong sense of willingness to engage in communication of learning from each other using text chat with its rich medium within a MUVE thriving with multiple people of diversity. This has also further cemented the student’s sense of “being there”(Biocca, et al., 2003) and their sense of social presence and co-presence with other avatars have significantly contributed to their learning experience(Lee, 2004; Lee, et al., 2011). Despite the potential of interactivity with other avatars, communications with one another in the VLE within the MUVE proved to be the biggest challenge the students faced in the learning process. Often, due to the vast space within the environment visible to the player, the communications were difficult despite the affordance of the environment for them to stretch their avatars’ extremity by the fantasy modes of movement. Students were found making futile attempts to contact each other while flying or running, not realising their enhanced modes of movement (travelling at great speed covering longer distances) as the unique affordance in the environment, turned out to be the bane of their communications. Communications were suddenly handicapped or prevented by their avatars’ distance from each other when they veered too far off from each other due to flying. In some situations, it disengaged students momentarily when they felt lost, disconnected and alienated in a strange new environment when their communication through messaging was not reciprocated. Co-presence of other players became a salient factor that has significant impact to students’ feeling sense of loneliness in the VLE. Contrary 82 to the hopeful belief that the affordances of such impossible extremities are beneficial to game-based learning (McGonigal, 2003, 2011), it has, in fact, revealed a flaw in the design of the VLE where it can hinder communications and weaken the natural occurence of copresence and social presence, reducing the mediated communication that was required. In a group communication scenario, it was discovered that avatars existing in communicative group of more than 2 often can result in “cognitive overload” (Huang & Tettegah, 2010). Confusion and chaos ultimately set into a common chat conversation when abundance of smaller or non-related conversations were simultaneously going on, which can cause eventual disengagement and disruption to the flow of the game. The optimal group mode of completing the assessment seemed to be geared towards 2 avatars at most, for the most effective communication. Like most game play, competition with one another was also found to be more intense and explicit in bigger groups and implicit when in pairs. Despite the lack of a reward to be the first to complete tasks, they found it compelling and natural at the same time, to relish satisfaction from the sense of accomplishment by becoming the first person to complete the objective to the game. Such invisible sense of competition became a crucial “intrinsic motivator” in engaging game players to sustain game play thus the occurrence of flow in games. With such elements to encourage flow and desire to compete with one another, it also meant that learning could be essentially designed to be competitively engaging at the same time within a MUVE like SL (Becker, 2010; Cheney & Sanders, 2011; Frasca, 2001; McGonigal, 2011; Prensky, 2007). On the presence of other avatars in the VLE, students who were interviewed expressed their immediacy to see another avatar that will make them less lonely or that it gave the simulation game more meaning of “being there”(Biocca, et al., 2003). Indeed, most 83 of them who did it alone expressed that their experience could have been better if they have met someone else and worked on a strategy or help each other complete it. Those who have completed the game with friends have expressed the equivalent amount of trust and sense of bond as their real life relationship, resulting in positive learning attitudes as reflected in their direct references to their relationships in reality. On the other hand, it was also discovered that some of the students took on a surprisingly functional perspective of NPCs and their significance as a necessity within the game to achieve their objectives. Despite knowing that NPCs are artificial intelligences made to respond to selective or limited interactivity, these students, as predicted to react similarly as past studies (Shapiro, et al., 2006) from other research, were able to treat such an addition as an extra dimension of interactivity. However, this addition was perceived to improve engagement in the game, by feeling more “connected” to the environment and its players through social and co-presence (Lee, et al., 2011). With today’s NPCs becoming more advanced in its interactivity with the players, it was evidently clear people are becoming increasingly demanding and responsive to artificially-enhanced NPC in lending more realism to the game. This discovery was contrary to the past established studies that people were more inclined to invest emotionally with only human controlled avatars (Shapiro, et al., 2006; Toro-Troconis, et al., 2010). Some of the students felt that the simulation game could be more engaging with more challenging tasks and that the tasks were too simple and thus felt underwhelmed after it was completed. This could be because the game was not primarily geared at the cognitive development of knowledge from experiential learning but more designed towards engaging them affectively to incite empathy to a real life incident scenario, made to assess their 84 development for critical thinking. The biggest challenge in the design of the game has been the crafting of the VLE to confront challenges and to solve problems without overwhelming them so much that they would give up trying (Hung & Van Eck, 2010). In spite of their attempts to achieve the targeted objectives with their expectations to complete in a short time, almost all the students lost track of time whilst immersed in the virtual simulation game. These were obvious signs of intensity in their focus to complete the tasks and some have revealed their extension of stay within the game (unknowingly). The other reasons in extending game play beyond the needed time included exploring what they did not cover earlier or even helping other avatars despite their initial intention to complete it in the fastest possible way. The affordances of this game has displayed their intense focus, distraction from real world and loss of sense in time as conditions for flow in a game (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Malone, 1981; Malone & Lepper, 1987; Toro-Troconis, et al., 2010, p. 114). One of the more popular affordances provided by SL which the students often indulged in is the extremity of avatar movements by flying, running and walking, without getting exhausted. It appeared that in their grasp for control and communication with another, affordances like flying became a bane to their avatar’s interactivity instead. Most of the students eventually resisted flying and opted for running or walking instead so that they can sustain the control of both communications and maintaining their line of sight in the environment. In this way, it served to contribute to the engagement to the task and flow in the game. Control within the environment and its interactive elements (movement) was shown here as an emphasized factor to sustain the flow in the simulation game (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Malone, 1981; Malone & Lepper, 1987; Toro-Troconis, et al., 2010, 85 p. 114) and also associated with factors leading to increase one’s sense of presence in a virtual environment (Witmer & Singer, 1998). The key aspect of the design in the VLE using SL was the affordance to expose students to a hazardous environment without the real life consequences. Based on a real life industrial study, it was difficult to incite empathy through traditional methods of learning via reading industrial examples or related publications. The 3 options provided at the end of the simulation serves its function of providing a guided perspective in polarized states of decisions, only as a guide, particularly to allow students to wield their ability to use the affordances of the simulation to exact consequences of the selected choice of action. The MUVE of SL has afforded the student’s closest experience to a real situation using 3D visual immersion and also empowered them the possibility of effecting changes by testing out consequences of choices of actions. Most students made good use of such affordances in SL and tested out all three options of the consequences that were provided. A small minority chose to execute only one out of three options due to their strong personal beliefs of the morality behind the consequences. The consequences of these options were obviously put to critical evaluations by the students which suggested high levels of reflective thinking that has consequently translated into positive learning outcomes when there were signs of better or more creative solutions to the problems in their submitted essays (Kiili, 2005). What the simulation game has achieved is firstly, design the simulation of an environment and engage the students (using the factors of presence, flow and engagement) to be affectively invested in the game play and thereafter be able to emote empathy for a real life case study (Garris, et al., 2002). Such intended reflective learning can only happened at the end of the game where the tasks were fulfilled and consequences were tested out, 86 because the assessment of the reflective learning required them to break away from their game play experience, to think and write about the consequences (Henriksen, 2006). This would mean that the reflective thinking and writing process would end the “immersive experience and disbelief” in the game. It was also a relevant and important closure for the game to be completed with the learning outcome of a sense of social activism in their reflective submissions (Henriksen, 2006). There were some notable limitations that occurred during the course of study in the simulation game. As revealed from the lack of chat transcripts in the MUVE, it became evidently clear that some students were intentionally shying away from being observed, resulting in their resistance to communicate publicly in the chats. Some of them have also revealed their intentional communication via alternative modes using mobile chat applications (eg. whatsapp), limiting the communication to only the available captures that was taken during the course of the game. This lack of screen communication can also happen in other possibilities as mentioned in the 4 scenarios mentioned in page 60. During one of the observations of a group of avatars, the simulators for SL was experiencing unanticipated technical maintenance and all 4 avatars in the simulation at the time were forcibly logged out from their connections to the simulator. This resulted in immediate disorientation when they returned subsequently because some of them did not managed to teleport back to the original location they were last at or had experienced difficulties connecting back to SL. Most of the affected students emailed the school administrators for help and had to postpone their activity to a much later time which caused some communication breakdown and a major disruption to the flow and momentum of the game. It was evidently important to acknowledge that such disruptions during a learning 87 assessment could be detrimental to the learning experience and that a contingency plan to evacuate the students to another simulator should have been anticipated for such emergencies. Another limitation that occurred in the course of this research was the lack of male respondents to match equal amount of female respondents. As the ratio of subscriptions to this academic module is predominantly female, the male respondents fell short with only 16 instead of the intended 20, a number filled up easily by the majority of the female students. It is therefore possible that the study might reveal a slight tendency to be more representative of the female gender of the entire sample. The design of this simulation game has afforded the learners to effectively participate within a MUVE and to reflect upon their actions, relationships and consequences in a variety of possibilities. It is the hope that such an experience will be reinforced by the ability to empathise or experiencing the sense of ‘being there’, not just on their own but with others. The learning experience should also include providing the necessary room for personal reflection. This study of immersive simulation games has been a bold attempt to fuse the concept of serious games with considerations for significant factors of presence, engagement of users in flow and affordances of environment, during game play. Such a challenge of the design of a VLE in a MUVE like SL will help educators in higher learning understand the communication, affordances and capabilities that a MUVE like SL can achieve in effecting learning. Leveraging on the key affordances of simulation, the simulation game hopes to achieve empathy through immersive environments that is handicapped or limited in most traditional methods of education. Such empathy experienced in the simulation will be beneficial for the students to comprehend on a multi88 perspective and deeper level as “active participants and not passive observers” (Prensky, 2007) and consequently be able to apply independent, critical thinking to contemporary issues of governance. 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Background Story of Game: You are an environmental officer tasked to follow up on a case of an anonymous informant's sighting of malicious toxic dumping in a plant that (seemingly) manufactures machinery parts. Unfortunately, you have recently lost touch with your undercover agent where his last contact with you was his revelation of a new discovery of hidden evidence of the inappropriate/illegal toxic dump. Your MISSION: You have to comb the entire plant (be very curious on everything around you) to possibly search for whereabouts of your undercover agent to seek and uncover the hidden evidence of the toxic discharges + documents of the plant that he might have discovered in the plant. You will have to accomplish the following: *Click on the Toxic Mask box at the venue to retrieve your protection gear before entering the plant!* (item will appear in inventory after accepting it, right click ->wear it) 1) Uncover the identity of the undercover agent and the toxic dump evidences. Then discharge his noble duties by posting/revealing his NAME to the agency via the FB page of the agency. 2) To document this discovery of the agent and evidences, you have to take a snapshot of your avatar in the front(pls include interface in snapshot to ENABLE visibility of your avatar name in it) TOGETHER with the toxic evidences by sitting on the poseball at the evidence site. To do so, click the snapshot icon (bottom last button) of the left panel of the viewer, check the box that ‘shows interface in snapshot’, then click refresh your shot before clicking 'Save' as a .jpg or .png file in your local drive. You need to upload this snapshot to the FB page to leak this evidence to the agency immediately...! 3) Proceed to locate near a public lavatory in the plant where on its left you will see 3 options for you to conclude your exercise. Think carefully of your options of what you would do as an individual empowered to make this important decision at the plant, then apply your chosen decision provided and follow/watch/react accordingly. Write your Reaction Paper(to be submitted by 9 Apr 2012 during your lecture) based on this experience, your personal feel, evaluation, justifications or any reasons of your choice. [...]... that in their study of avatars in virtual environments, players can embody their virtual representations in a deep way which included “avatar characteristics, body visualizations and movements/gestures” This virtual embodiment has significance in tasks that are goal and activity based (Mennecke, Triplett, Hassall, Conde, & Heer, 2011) Additionally, data findings from research on CMC between avatars often... other educational phenomenon like game-based learning and digital game-based learning established by the likes of James Paul Gee and Marc Prensky respectively Gee, referred to learning games as “problem solving spaces” that enables the learning of individuals in a variety of domains, skills and disciplines (Gee, 2009) If built with the correct features and implementation, game-based learning environments... importance of the players’ allowance and tolerance for failure during the learning process becomes paramount in leveraging on such affordances of the learning environment Before we go further into the affordances of the virtual simulation as a game made for learning, it is crucial for us to understand the nature of the medium of digital games, its capabilities and its representation Janet Murray introduced... examine 3D virtual environment as a gamebased learning environment as a viable resource for such educational purposes The design of the simulation game will attempt to encapsulate the factors leveraging on the exploitation of presence in an asynchronous mode of learning for multi- users in a virtual environment Considerations of other factors of heuristic design will also include the psychological influences... dimension of possibility (Garris, Ahlers, & Driskell, 2002) Challenges in the games can be strategized in a variety of creative avenues in sustaining engagement in games With meaningful goals being explicitly indicated in the design of the game, players of the game could be introduced to the engagement of challenges gradually to attain the ultimate goals through a blend of balance in ambiguity of results and... occurrence, insights into behaviours, communications or phenomenon that can be explained by theories in an inductive manner(Lazar, et al., 2010) The fieldwork here included accounts for ethnographic observations of participants in their 3D virtual avatars during the simulation game exercise, transcripts of avatars’ chat communications in the virtual environment and the solicitation of qualitative data via in- depth...California’s Davis Medical Centre to language learning with The British Council to cultural heritage learning of Singapore in Temasek, innovative researchers in the virtual education frontier have pioneered and paved the way for the vast possibilities of virtual education in MUVEs like SL (Rufer-Bach, 2009) In the last few years in education, the gradual acceptance of educational games in the... study of a simulation game made for learning One of the more pedagogical tools educators draw upon is the case method approach Through the case method of teaching, students can try to further understand teaching contents based on related research in various publications and the internet Developed in 1870 at Harvard University, the case method of teaching has been practised and associated particularly... examine and study the affordances and the influences of a virtual learning environment in a 3D MUVE, SL, using a virtual game simulation concept with various communication considerations designed as a serious game To sum up the discussion, the main research questions the thesis seeks to address are as follows: RQ1: What factors of presence are significant in the engagement of learners in a serious game?... internet, particularly serious games like “Darfur is Dying” 5, they can also provide an avenue for learning through activism for social change of a real situation in Africa The learning objectives of a serious game like “Darfur is dying” has encapsulated various dangerous consequences that can happen to the specific playable characters while carrying out familiar, domestic tasks These were devised and designed ... was alleged that in their study of avatars in virtual environments, players can embody their virtual representations in a deep way which included “avatar characteristics, body visualizations and... even voice of the virtual graphical appearance of avatars It was argued that such social factors of CMC played a more substantial role in the factors influencing “trust, attraction and friendships”... they can also provide an avenue for learning through activism for social change of a real situation in Africa The learning objectives of a serious game like “Darfur is dying” has encapsulated various