MSTU 5000 - Possibilities of Virtual Worlds

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MSTU 5000 - Possibilities of Virtual
Worlds Teachers College, Columbia
University Anthony Cocciolo cocciolo_at_tc.edu
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How do we do research in Virtual Worlds?

• Discourse-analysis-based ethnographic work (e.g.,
  Steinkuehler, 2004)
• Communication and space interaction (e.g., Clark
  Maher, 2003)
• Motor-Behavior, Eye Gaze (e.g., Garau, Slator,
  Bee, Sasse, 2001)
• Virtual Worlds as Simulated reality, Public
  Speaking (Slater, Pertaub, Steed, 1999)
• Survey Research of Demographics, Motivations
  (e.g., Yee, 2006)

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Survey Research in Virtual Worlds

• Yee (2006) conducted study of demographics,
  motivations, and derived experienced of N30,000
  MMORPG users.
• Advertised survey on websites that cater to
  MMORPG users, but survey not administered in
  MMORPG itself.
• Can we increase response rates (and selection
  bias) by including surveys directly within the
  MMORPG?

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Second Look What is it?

• A tool for deploying surveys directly into
  SecondLife
• Includes web-based interface for designing survey
• Also includes web-based interface for viewing
  survey results
• Survey is deployed using the chat interface

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How it works

• Copy Second Look to your inventory
• Drag and drop Second Look to wherever you would
  like to administer your survey
• Click Second Look to Design your survey
• Have people take your survey
• View results

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Presence in Second Life
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Designing survey (1)
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Designing survey (2)
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Ready to Administer
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Taking the Survey
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Viewing results (if owner)
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Second Look Architecture
MS-SQL PHP
llHTTPRequest()
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Current Limitations

• Answer choices must be a-e (5 options).
• No feature for open-ended, true/false, or
  Likert-scale
• Limited previous and next question control via
  chat interface
• Security No authentication (user login)
  depends on the UUID of the object for security
• No feature to go back and edit survey after
  created

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References

• Clark, S., Maher, M. L.  (2003).  The effects
  of a sense of place on the learning experience in
  a 3D virtual world.  In Cook, J. and McConnell,
  D. (Eds), Communities of Practice. Research
  Proceedings of the 10th Association for Learning
  Technology Conference (ALT-C2003), 82-101.
• Garau, M., Slater, M., Bee, S., Sasse, M. A.
  (2001). The Impact of Eye Gaze on Communication
  using Humanoid Avatars. CHI 2001, March 31-
  April 5, Seattle, WA.
• Slater, M., Pertaub D., Steed, A. (1999).
  Public Speaking in Virtual Reality Facing an
  Audience of Avatars. IEEE Computer Graphics and
  Applications, 19(2), 6-9.
• Steinkuehler, C. A.  (2004). Learning in
  Massively Multiplayer Online Games. In Y. B.
  Kafai, W. A. Sandoval, N. Enyedy, A. S. Nixon,
  F. Herrera (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth
  International Conference of the Learning Sciences
  (pp. 521-528). Mahwah, NJ Erlbaum.
• Yee, N. (2006). The Demographics, Motivations,
  and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively
  Multi-User Online Graphical Environments.
  Presence, 15(3), 309-329.

Thank you!