VRprofessor

Zenephobe wrote: VRprofessor wrote: Reallycuriousgeorge wrote: Asking questions on a message board doesn’t infringe on the rights or welfare of human subjects. That is a decision for the IRB. You should go talk to them. If you are so concerned about the validity of a student's approach to their research, why don't you, as an educator, contact their school yourself? Please post the results of such conversations, as I am sure they will be well worth a laugh. This is a fair question. If I contact the student's school I have two choices. First, I can ask a fairly generic question and receive an equally generic answer--an answer along the lines of "the student should file a review request with the IRB." I am already telling the student this, but, perhaps, the same answer from their local office might have some additional weight? Second, I can make the question specific to the research being conducted--such as the rersearch in the current thread. Having done that I have effectively registered a formal complaint about possible violation of federal policy that will require the school to investigate and take action. While I fully expect the action against the student would be no more than a "slap on the wrist" I see no reason to put students through a formal inquiry by their institution. Quite simply, what you see as harrassement I see as giving the student ample warning in an effort to save them from potential problems and discomfort. In fairness to your position, it is unlikely that anyone following these threads feels like turning students in to their institutions--I certainly don't. If there is not complaint the students will never get in trouble for their failure to follow procedure and will live the rest of their lives blissfully unaware that they have done anything wrong. http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html provides the basic U.S. federal requirements for research with human subjects. It is not easily seen, but IRBs are given broad authority to assure the federal government that all research conducted at instutitions recieving federal dollars is in compliance. So, even if I am a random bum on the street I am familiar enough with procedure to know that students need IRB oversight in order to conduct research. I also know that anyone failing to follow procedure puts themselves at risk of institutional sanctions.

Zenephobe wrote: VRprofessor wrote: Reallycuriousgeorge wrote: Asking questions on a message board doesn’t infringe on the rights or welfare of human subjects. That is a decision for the IRB. You should go talk to them. No, genius, that is common sense. As long as it does not violate the Community Guidelines a person is free to ask any question they want to on the forums. As has been pointed out, responses are voluntary. Nowhere in your profile or the link in your signature do you give any credentials as to your professor status, nor do you need to. However, your constant harassment of students on these forums has become tiresome, you have no right to behave as though you are somehow these individuals' professor just because you chose that as a screen name. Even if you are a professor, you still cannot claim that right. If you are so concerned about the validity of a student's approach to their research, why don't you, as an educator, contact their school yourself? Please post the results of such conversations, as I am sure they will be well worth a laugh. The LL terms of service are not the same as federal requirements for the protection of human subjects. Common sense says that you should follow federal requirements for the conduct of research. The only issue I raise with student research is the failure to meet those basic requirements. I say nothing about the research posted that appears to be following those requirements. All of us have some responsibility to assure that students make the most of their education.

Reallycuriousgeorge wrote: Asking questions on a message board doesn’t infringe on the rights or welfare of human subjects. That is a decision for the IRB. You should go talk to them.

Janelle Darkstone wrote: Ethics. Ethics ethics ethics you sure like that word, don't you? I have a word for you; perspective. Maybe you'll get the point some day. Yes, one of the topics I teach is research ethics so it is rather important to me. I have no idea what message you are trying to convey with the "perspective" link. Are you saying that I shouldn't worry about a student failing a course or getting booted from uni because there is slave labor in the world?

Pierre, We fundamentally agree. Our one difference is in the value of a survey question database. It is recommended practice in statistics education to make use of real data from existing sources rather than pretend data made up for chapter exercises. The notion is that real data requires the exercise of real thought resulting in real learning. q For research papers the student who insists on using survey data and lacks proper supervision is learning nothing. With a database of responses to properly constructed questions there is a chance that the student will need to learn some problem solving skills to determine which questions can be used to address their "research" questions. As for the rest, well they won't learn any more than they would have pestering the forums for answers, but the forum folks can more easily ignore the repeated requests for survey participation.

My only objection to the posting of survey requests is that they are primarily last-ditch efforts by students short on time who are too lazy to go to the library. In about 7 out of 8 such postings I complain that the student hasn't gotten IRB approval for their survey as evidenced by the absence of more-or-less standard boiler plate language in the postings asking for folks to participate. (I won't even get started on my rant about asking people to answer potentially sensitive questions on a public forum. Talk about an ethical nightmare.) I am very sympathetic to those who go through proper channels and are making an effort to conduct their research in an ethical manner--even if their survey/research is of poor design--they are at least observing the general standards of ethical research practice which is a lesson unto it self. About 1 in 8 research request postings are such. In another thread a couple of months back I suggested the idea of a "survey question data base." Someone with some knowledge of survey design could develop a large survey instrument and make the anonomyzed response available in an online data base. Students making last ditch efforts at term papers could be directed to the database. No one responded to that idea, but it was posted late in a thread that was getting old so I'm not surprised. Any comments on the idea here?

Reallycuriousgeorge wrote: Responding to your questions: 1. NC State 2. Women and Gender studies 3. No, but I will be presenting my data to my professor 4. This isn't an experiment, its just gathering information To everyone else, thanks for the responses, please keep them coming and I really appreciate you taking the time to look at this post. Thank you. Your answer to #4 is flat out incorrect. See: http://research.ncsu.edu/sparcs/compliance/irb/ for correct information. ALL research involving human subjects requires institutional review. Surveys have a lower threshold for approval than experiments, but all require institutional review. Furthermore it appears that your institution requires taking/passing the CITI training course before undertaking research. RE #3 I hope your professor gives you the scolding you deserve. Students should not be conducting research without faculty supervision. Please see your professor for further instructions before you attempt to gather more information from human subjects.

Reallycuriousgeorge wrote: Hey everybody I’m a student doing a research project on the gender bending experience in online gaming and I would like to ask anyone who is interested some questions on the subject. You don’t have to answer all the questions just the ones you are comfortable with. I have some questions: What university are you affiliated with? What department/class are you conducting this survey for? Do you have a faculty supervisor for this research? Do you have approval from your institutional review board to conduct research with human subjects?

OP it is usual and customary--not to mention good manners--to explain why you are conducting a survey. Are you working on a school project or do you have some other purpose? If not for school, who is paying you to conduct the survey? If you are working on a school project you are very likely to need approval by an institutional committee charged with overseeing research to make sure that researcher are conducting their research ethically.

Before posting a survey you should have received institutional approval from your IRB that assures research is done in compliance with laws and ethical procedures.

Your college/university will require that you receive institutional approval prior to conducting surveys. Search your uni web site for phrases such as "human subjects protection" or "institutional review board" for further instructions.

I don't think that education is SL is dead, but it never lived up to the original hype and now folks are very disillusioned. In my opinion the failure was (and largely remains) an inability for folks to understand how to use SL. The dominant model has been that a university would purchase a sim (or two) and make exclusive use of that sim for their students. When this model failed lots of folks came to the conclusion that education in SL was doomed to failure. I think that is the wrong conclusion. I think that the type of education envisioned by the pioneers was too tied to model of a physical campus. Or the successful uses don't quite justify the cost. When I look around I see a variety of uses (or desired uses) that are largely short-term or that would be much better served by a common, open campus. That is, there are many educational uses of SL that cannot cost-justify even the rental of 1/8th of a sim and/or that are best served by a common campus open to students from around the world. I know that at least a handful of educational users are using public sandboxes or other public places for their educational uses. It is wonderful that such spaces are available for educators, but it is, in my opinion, not the best solution for educational use. I was fortunate to stumble on the Virtual Classroom sim (see link in my sig) which provided the perfect solution for my need and I think provides a useful model for the future of higher education in SL. The campus is open to any educator with a need and who is willing to work and play well with others. This makes it idea for both short-term users (as I am now) or new users (as I was not so long ago). One of the best things about SL is that it provides an opportunity for students to meet each other across time zones and national borders. But not if students are cloistered on individual university sims or mixing haphazardly with the population of SL. Sadly the private funding for the virtual classroom is all but gone (one, possibly two more months). The good news (for me) is that I have until Fall 2014 to find some sort of replacement. I, like many before me, will no doubt find public spaces that I can use or possibly a short-term rental that will meet my needs.

Griffin Ceawlin wrote: I don't recall anyone asking about getting permission to conduct research ever before. Refreshing! I'm not sure if there is a LL contact that you should direct your inquiry to. Suppose you could call or fax them. I did find this in the Wiki: Opinon surveys Generally, you are allowed to collect information from other Residents via notecards, comment boxes asking for suggestions, or other means, as long as it doesn't violate the Community Standards or Terms of Service. This means, for example: You can't start dropping notecards on random Residents around you—that would be spam—but you can post a sign on your land that asks people to click it to take part in the survey. Or at least, ask someone personally if they're interested. There are many ways to encourage other Residents to participate in sharing their opinions with you, and as long as any exchange of personal information is clearly voluntary and includes explicit consent of the person giving the information, there shouldn't be a problem. I suspect directing your IRB to the above and telling them which part is relevant, should satisfy them. I seriously doubt you will get a direct response from anyone at LL. I cannot imagine that they would care as long as you don't annoy anyone to the point of griefing.

I run SL on a bunch of different computers with varying degrees of success. While you can run on a less capable machine I like something with an i3 processor and a GTX 550ti NVidia graphics card as my low end desktop. Depending on where you go you should be able to get something like this for under $600--the biggest expense being the videocard itself and an upgraded power supply to run it. (A basic i3/i5 desktop with a GT630 video card should be less than $500--it will work at low and probably medium settings.) The big advantage of a desktop is that you can save up for upgrades. My i5 desktop was capable at low and medium with short draw settings using the on board graphics. I started with a large enough power supply so I didn't need to upgrade that. About 3-4 months later I was able to buy a 550ti class graphics card. Laptops will run you more money. I am happy with my gt550m graphics card and the gt650m should be better. I'd want an i5 in a laptop and I would expect to pay about $700 - $1200 for such a system. Shop around as prices on laptops seems to be wildly variable.

I have only looked at a handful of the starter avatars, but they have all had the modesty skin where the undergarments are part of the skin so they cannot be removed. You will need a new skin. Most (all?) of the private newbie welcome areas (Caledon, NCI, Helping Haven, etc) have free stuff including naked skins.

My personal minimum specs are an i3 based computer with and an NVIDIA GTX 550ti video card. That seems to run medium settings quite nicely. Pretty sure I could run high settings on quiet sims, but I don't try. You can run with lesser hardware with varying degrees of success. (I run at low settings with a GT 520 card, and lesser CPU, but no dancing and frame rates are modest). If you want to go to ultra settings you'll want a much better video card and probably an i5 series (or amd equivalent) CPU.

Educational users have been asking questions about this as well. For those who don't want/need the ability to shop/travel/whatever for their educational goals there are many cheaper options--even with educational discounts. I am guess that someone at LL realized that educational users gave SL some credibility that it could use as part of a general marketing campaign. When I got here a bit over a year ago I was very aware of the "over 300 educational sims in SL" or some such as part of their advertising. I know that the claim made it easier for me to put forth the effort to look into educational opportunities in SL. There are no longer anywhere near 300 educational sims present in SL and I am guessing someone in marketing figured out that it was hurting efforts to attract folks to SL who legitimately want to look into the platform for non-sexual uses. Or folks who want some legitimate activities in SL to explain why they are in world so much. Or maybe a lot of students get converted to long-term users? Whatever the case, only a few educators are coming back based on the discounts.

Something I have wondered about, does having avis on your sim (in your store) increase the chance of folks finding it via searches or such? I ask because of the number of stores that have camping chairs. My guess is that these are designed to raise some sort of usage statistics and move your sim/store up the search results ladder. I'm curious as to whether my guess is right or not.

Back to the original topic: LL is missing some sales potential if they don't include a wide variety of looks on their "pick your first avatar page." Simply: a lot of folks are going to be newbs for days or weeks before they do much with their look so more variety in the look of the first page avis would seem a bit more welcoming to a lot of folks. It is hard to get started in SL under the best of circumstances and if things are going poorly and your avi looks foreign to you, you have one more reason to never come back. Someone mentioned that more choices are available after you get logged in--some newbs will likely find those early, but many will spend their time learning to walk, talk, or go places before they start to explore alternative avi choices. There are some folks still coming into SL for things like classes or meetings without any intention of staying long-term. Most will leave anyway, but some who would have stayed could easily be turned off by a lack of avi that looks kind of like them. More variety on the first time screen would be helpful to attracting long-term users.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: Hi Rosan, By limiting participants to voice or in-person, I believe you're going to skew the results of your research. Most SL participants do not use voice for reasons, and with ramifications, that I think are of fundamental significance to our culture. Not only to the SL culture but in a manner that would impact any reasonable research projects.

I agree with everyone who said something along the lines of "it depends." Try to get them chatting about their look and see if they are doing the best they can with freebies or if they have found a look they really like. If they are just getting by, an offer to take them shopping should be well received. If they are happy with their look move on to the next topic.

For a variety of reasons I make a poor research subject so I won't be volunteering--but I appreciate that you have ethics board approval.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: HeatherArch wrote: Oh, good grief. Please tell me that your grade does not really depend upon a bunch of random anonymous Internet strangers?! First the bad news: standards have fallen so far that soliciting survey responses actually survives peer review and gets published in second and third tier journals. Haven't seen in it first tier journals (yet). It is highly unlikely that the instructor suggested or required a survey. Depending on the student's field of study the survey could result in an "F" for the paper as the survey does not include informed consent suggesting it was not approved for public consumption.

Czari Zenovka wrote: VRprofessor - I would love to chat with you in world sometime. It sounds like we have similar experience, and opinions, on this topic. Education is one of the passions of my life and I live meeting like-minded people in this respect. Looking forward to it.

I have occasionally discusssed research problems directly, but most of the time I limit my criticism to the failure of students to obtain proper informed consent--this is one of three basic ethical principles that is taught even at the undergraduate level. (Informed Consent, Confidentiality, and approval by an institutional board--the absence of informed consent is symptomatic of a failure to obtain institutional approval.) In the U.S. these ethical requirements are also legal requirements for every individual at any institution that obtains federal funding--which includes almost every college or university in the U.S. (These requirements are also held in high regard by most colleges/universities in other countries as well.) As I said in some thread somewhere the students we see on this message board will probably get no more than a slap on the wrist if they are caught violating these requirement. But the potential for serious consequences is there. Failing the paper, failing the course, getting kicked out of school are all within the realm of possibility. Many of the students we see are clearly not working under the direction of a faculty member--at least not one who is familiar with research protocols on human subjects. If students are not working under the supervision of a faculty member we can pretty safely assume that no one is messing with the professor's instructions.