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Monday 5th May 2008 9:00 am

Yasmin Kafai: The Learning Affordances of Pimples in Virtual Worlds

An associate professor of education from UCLA shares learnings from her study of the annual virtual public health epidemic in Whyville.net, “Whypox.” This continues our series on the affordances of virtual worlds and 21st century learning environments.

For the last six years I have followed tween’s virtual lives, customs, and well, pimples on http://www.Whyville.net. The pimples are a prominent signal that Whypox, a virtual epidemic, has arrived in Whyville. This happens about once a year, concurrent with the flu season. Player’s avatars become infected with red pimples that grow and recede in intensity and their chat is interrupted by ‘achoo’. Life in the times of Whypox leads Whyvillians to chat and write about their experiences in the weekly newspaper the Whyville Times. Some players go as far as avoiding public spaces in Whyville while others continue with their daily life as if nothing has happened. Public health researchers have started discussing the use of virtual epidemics as a tool to trace and understand behavioral movements because unlike real life, we can start virtual epidemics that can run real time over several weeks and infect large number of participants. Whyvillians have had the privilege of this experience for many years now.

Moving Beyond Pimples

But there is more to pimples than meets the eye. During the outbreak of Whypox Whyvillians can go to a virtual Center for Disease Control to check the daily infection status within the community and track the epidemic over time. They can also post on bulletin boards their comments, questions, and theories about the cause of Whypox, its duration, and possible preventive measures. We found that players use epidemic simulators to test various conditions and make predictions about possible outcomes. Furthermore, players have debated the building of hospitals to help infected Whyvillians, universities to learn about the epidemic or research labs to develop vaccines - all of which are great starting points for engagement and learning about public health and science issues. More recently a laboratory was added so that Whyvillians can now investigate the composition of the Whypox virus and design vaccines for their protection.

Talk Trumps Pimples

As it turns out when we surveyed Whyvillians about their Whypox experiences, more than two thirds complained about the interruption of chat but only one third about their pimples. It’s not that Whyvillians don’t care about the look of their avatars. To the contrary: with over 33000 avatar parts designed by, sold or traded to other Whyvillians we know that self-expression matters in Whyville. Virtual epidemics like Whypox give us new ideas for how to engage tweens interactively in an informal yet serious manner in learning about infectious disease unlike what they can experience with reading textbooks or watching videos. Conversation about shared experiences and interests is what truly drive community in virtual worlds. It is here that we should focus our attention as learning researchers and designers and investigate the particular affordances that events like Whypox and associated activities have to offer for digital media and learning in virtual worlds.

Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity, Unexpected

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