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- Convenor:
-
Patrick Alexander
(Oxford Brookes University)
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Short Abstract:
This panel will explore the emerging educational provocations of virtual reality/augmented reality platforms in the wider context of the metaverse. The panel will consider how anthropological theory can help to better understand the educational prospects of this new frontier for human interaction.
Long Abstract:
This panel will explore the emerging educational provocations of virtual reality/augmented reality platforms in the wider context of the metaverse. The panel will consider how anthropological theory can help to better understand the educational prospects of this new frontier for human interaction. Drawing on examples of ethnographic research in metaverse spaces, panel members will consider how education happens in the metaverse, and what is the political economy of metaversal landscapes where big tech interests rest in tension with grassroots and community-initiated world-building. The panel will also explore the implications of AI for education in augmented reality contexts, before offering a critical discussion of how traditional models of schooling may be radically unsettled as virtual and augmented realities become a normal part of everyday life for young people. Panelists will be encouraged to draw on the long history of anthropological research into education and its institutional manifestations in order to consider how educational interactions, of whatever kind, may grow and take shape in the metaverse. A byproduct of this discussion will be a consideration of the methodological implications of doing research in virtual and augmented reality contexts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 26 June, 2024, -Austin Pickles (University of the West of England)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will employ autoethnographic methods to investigate identity, culture and social conventions in the 2017 social VR game, VRChat. The findings will further our understanding of cultural context in social VR and it's impact when introducing outside audiences to the metaverse.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will investigate the culture and social conventions of the 2017 social VR game, VRChat. In addition, it will explore the impact of this cultural context on how individuals interpret identity within a metaversal setting. The open source nature of VRChat has allowed for the rapid growth of an underground metaversal culture, one akin to corporeal cultures in its depth and complexity. In addition, the development of increasingly immersive VR technologies has enabled individuals to subsume themselves into a metaversal society, often reinterpreting aspects of their identity around cultural conventions unique to VRChat. This paper will employ autoethnographic methods to reflect on how players leverage the platform to construct metaversal identity, establish norms and build communities. Observations and interviews will provide insights into the unique ways individuals interpret metaversal identity and culture, and how these social conventions often differ from corporeal ones. In addition, I will touch on metaversal identity through the lens of immersion and body synchronisation. The findings will establish the metaverse’s potential to enable self-expression and community, as well as further our understanding on how cultural discount may contribute to divisions between the established social VR community and the upcoming consumer target market. Furthermore, understanding these divisions will allow educators to make adjustments for new players, thus facilitating accessible education in social VR spaces.
William Kelly (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on long-term research of leisure and entertainment practices in Japan, this paper explores the ways in which bodies (virtual and real) are socialised for participation in digitally-mediated leisure and the wider role that learning plays in mediating engagement in the context of virtual play.
Paper long abstract:
The greater affordance of leisure time in Japan over the last several decades – i.e. through the gradual restructuring and shortening of both school and work weeks and incremental increase in the numbers of official holidays – has often been accompanied by considerable anxiety, that free time be used constructively and well and not simply squandered. Within the context of leisure and entertainment pursuits, this has led to guidance about what might constitute the healthy and wholesome use of free time and a culture of socialising citizens and in particular the young, for “safe” participation in leisure. Drawing on long-term research of digitally-mediated play, including, initially, karaoke-singing and, more recently, video games and virtual worlds, this paper reflects on the ways in which bodies, both virtual and real, are socialised for participation in digitally-mediated leisure and the wider role that learning plays in mediating engagement in the context of virtual play.
Patrick Alexander (Oxford Brookes University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore the emerging findings of a youth-led experiment in metaverse learning, funded by the British Educational Research Association.
Paper long abstract:
Virtual Ecologies of Learning: Re-Imagining Education in the Metaverse
Abstract:
This paper will explore the emerging findings of a youth-led experiment in metaverse learning, funded by the British Educational Research Association. The contemporary moment is a watershed for educational practice, both in terms of technology and political economy. Critical pedagogy (from Friere to bell hooks) and critical traditions in the sociology of education (from Althusser, to Foucault, to Ball), provide a theoretical underpinning for thinking education beyond the traditional modernist school. In the latter stages of the covid-19 pandemic, we are at an important moment for considering how virtual spaces work as alternative educational spaces complimentary to schooling, where young people can have agency to reimagine for themselves the future of education.
This project has two aims: 1) to map previous and current practice for virtual, youth-led, critical pedagogy; 2) to pilot an innovative form of virtual educational interaction. Through face-to-face and virtual workshops, the mapping component of the project led to piloting how young people (aged 17-18) can use safe virtual spaces – specifically, the virtual worlds of the metaverse - to re-dream the future of education. This presentation will outline the findings so far and important implications for practice in school