My avatar's appearance in World of Warcraft is really chapping my hide. She's a level 40 (out of 70) human warrior. In other words, a pretty experienced fighter who has slain her share of gnarly foes and gathered her share of loot and coin. And yet, I still cannot get her completely clothed. U.S. soldiers in Iraq notwithstanding, what self-respecting professional warrior would subject herself to the slings and arrows of battle with decolletage armor??? Cripes, I just recently managed to get her belly covered!
This annoyance has led me to explore the kinds of avatars available on social networking sites for children and teens. They run the same gamut as adult-oriented (I don't mean porn, I mean intended for grown-ups) sites, from tame to mildly saucy (Club Penguin's penguin-only avatars cleverly avoid controversy), and underscore a pervasive, albeit vague, sub-text of women as sex objects. Still in all, every player has a degree of choice about how s/he will be seen online, and one can select the more or the less "sexy" of the options, allowing for a degree of personal expression.
Naming one's avatar is another form of personal expression, whatever age group is being targeted. Most sites filter out crude and otherwise offensive names, but after that, one's imagination is the only limitation, like personalized license plates.
So now, everyone goes online anonymously. We use our avatars as our online faces and voices. We are identified by our screen names. We have hidden our true selves from the online universe. We can be anyone we want. We can do so with impunity, because no one knows who we really are.
I will refrain from comment on the tremendous psycho-social implications of this phenomenon. But as serious game designers, we have an obligation to be aware of our power to influence learners. We must think through how learners will represent themselves in our game world, all the while asking ourselves how our decision will affect learning outcomes.
Which leads us to the question in the title: is anonymity good for learning?
I don't have a final answer to this question, and research is needed in this area. My hunch is that the answer is: it depends. Here are some of the factors:
- is your virtual world based on fantasy or is it a mirror of the real world? Fantasy environments lend themselves to fantasy (read, anonymous) characters. Mirror worlds feel more like real life, although fictitious identities are quite possible. Simulations of real-world events and activities are not intended to reflect fiction, but reality.
- single-learner or multi-learner environment? If there is only one learner, who cares. If there are multiple learners...
- are they playing in parallel or are they a cohort? With the right rules and filters, parallel play is not impeded by anonymity. BUT...
When you are designing for a learning cohort, anonymity can be problematic. When learning together to perform together is the goal, team members need to know who in the real world they will be relying on to do what. Everyone needs to be accountable to the rest of the group. By definition, anonymity makes accountability impossible. Therefore, anonymity can inhibit performance -- and learning.
I'm serious,
Anne
