Course Description

This course will offer historical and experiential answers to the questions, What is an “avatar”? and, What are Virtual Worlds? The success and promise of on-line “virtual worlds” has recently garnered much publicity. In 2008, the prominent technological forecaster (Gartner), asserted that 80% of internet users will have an avatar by 2011, collaborating and engaging in community- and business-related activities in this brave new world. This has easily come to pass, depending on how one defines the term, “avatar.” How are human communities and human relationships developing in and about these new sites and modes of human interaction? This course will explore the historical, technological, and cultural roots of today’s virtual worlds, beginning with Plato’s “allegory of the cave” and ending with recent research into social relations occurring within virtual worlds. Class meetings will take place on-line, within the virtual world of Second Life. Students will be expected to complete an “in-world” orientation upon creating their avatar, and also an additional in-class orientation exercise. Students are expected to prepare readings for discussion, to complete papers (one optional project may be substituted for a paper), forum entries, and to make a presentation about a “field trip.” Other presentations will also be required of students.

The course reading load will be about 50 pages per class meeting on average, with additional pages when a book is assigned. “Optional” readings listed will be for use in writing the final paper, a topically-oriented paper. All mandatory course readings not drawn from the three books will be made available online, through the resources directory of COLLAB. Please see the “Hardware Requirements” in the syllabus (available through the link above)—students must be able to run Second Life on their computers to take the course, as all class meetings will be held in the virtual world of Second Life.                   

Course Objectives

After completing the course, students will be able to:

• articulate and historically contextualize the philosophical, cultural, and technological changes that have accompanied the migration of human interactions to computer-mediated environments.
• navigate one virtual world in particular, Second Life, the dominant 3-dimensional virtual world in existence.
• write analytic essays about virtual worlds using evidence drawn from course materials and from personal experiences within virtual worlds.
• write a final paper that uses the ideas introduced in course materials to critique some chosen aspect  of Nick Yee’s book, The Proteus Paradox (2014)— alternatively, students may opt to undertake a course-long project or study of virtual worlds (either singly or as part of a group), while creating an accompanying portfolio (individually) that traces the development of the student’s thinking as it relates the project or study to the ideas and evidence introduced in the course (that is, the portfolio writing will be cited throughout)