Acts of learning with avatars in a virtual world

Beskrivelse

This paper shall exemplify how avatars transform from pre-designed templates to personalised and professional avatars held in high esteem by a group and guild of avatars and actors. These are activities that are considered to be complex acts of reflection (Dewey, 1933). It is hard work to become a skilled, professional, high-level avatar. It may take months, and only then can the avatar perform at its highest ability without any constraints. This chapter will also investigate why the actors willingly and enthusiastically engage in such time-consuming, demanding, difficult, often boring, and very often complex acts of reflection and learning. It shall also determine whether there is anything we can learn from such games.

Suggests that we should study in situ and in field-studies the acts of reflection and sense-making strategies of the actors playing with their avatars in the advanced virtual worlds. In this way, we may draw inspiration as to how to design virtual exploratories targeted for informal and organizational learning.