From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments
Part 9: Biased Creation Processes
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| Image by Elias from Pixabay |
In Part 8 of my Dispelling Myths, Navigating Ethical Labyrinths, and Applying Design Principles in the Metaverse series, I explored the first of the mysterious ethical labyrinths of instructional design for immersive environments, that is the most common problems that arise from research interpretation. The first commonly noted problem was the novelty effect-- the immersive environment was a one-off or very new experience. Newer experiences cause higher performance scores with learners. The novelty effect, however, can wear off. Few studies push past the novelty. The second problem is that media comparison studies often pit very different instructional approaches against each other, creating a massively unfair cognitive comparison; in short, they compare different cognitive workloads. Unsurprisingly, the immersive environment is often set up to comparatively win. The third common problem is missing design theories and models. The fourth common problem was problematic data in terms of assessment, collection, and sample size.
Here in Part 9, I will explore a second ethical maze addressed in this series are challenges with
creation processes, specifically with immersive experience content
and the subsequent publishing of results.
Content creation
Because immersive experiences environments are entirely digitally
created, behind the scenes are the content creators. Research has
noted that immersive experiences and social media share the same
landscape of influencing. Immersive experiences can influence through
emotions by misleading, inducing, manipulating, personalizing, and
distorting reality (Mhaidli & Schaub, 2021). Simultaneously, the
immersive environment is suspected to possibly both foster positive
feelings (Li et al., 2024) and to overwhelm the learner’s senses
(Makransky & Petersen, 2021), both elements which might lower the
learner’s resistance to influence.
Thus, the same technology touted with the potential to deeply impact
learners can be used in campaigns to influence or prejudice learners.
Procopiou (2021) proposed that the stimulating environment of
immersive experiences could make learners “more vulnerable to the
extremists’ and terrorists’ recruitment approaches, propaganda
and radicalisation methods” (p. 31). Undoubtedly, the researchers
in the Stanford VR class described having a “jarring experience”
when realizing that their learners had depicted the Moon landing as
fake (J. Brown et al., 2023, p. 1). Noting this concern, these
authors further argued that the high development burden of making
misleading immersive experiences should prevent them from being made
under anything but the most purposeful of circumstances. Said another
way, they felt that only bad actors would put forth the effort to make something
elaborate and false. However, the declining cost of immersive
experience development and immersive experience’s primary use as
social (meetings, events) hints that it does not require flawless
builds to influence. This suggests that the perceived development
obstacle will not remain for long.
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| The Virtual Museum of Palmyra |
On the other hand, there are examples of immersive experiences being used to counter real world narratives perpetrated by bad actors. In 2015 and 2017, violent extremists destroyed parts of the ancient city of Palmyra (Barnard & Saad, 2015; Unitar, 2017.) Virtual reconstructions began immediately (Denker, 2016). There has been some comment that the digitization by European and American institutions constituted a form of colonization of Syrian heritage (Samad, 2020).
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| Source: https://www.avinteractive.com/news/virtual-augmented-mixed/morehouse-college-launches-groundbreaking-classes-virtual-reality-10-03-2021/ |
In some cases, immersive experiences technology fails to be representative of its intended users. When Morehouse University adopted immersive experiences, there were concerns that black learners and faculty avatars were poor representations. D’Agostino (2022) quoted Muhsinah Morris, a chemistry professor at the institution, who pinpointed the problem, “Representation matters because of the memories that you create…You are still a person behind that avatar” (para. 33). Millron (2023) referred to these problems as “inelegant and downright crude attempts at representation” (para. 4).
Technological companies have been under scrutiny for a retinue of privacy invasion problems. But there are also concerns that these companies' main purpose is profit, not education and what that could lead to. Nir Eisikovits, philosophy professor and founding director of the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts at Boston contented that there is a future possible overlap of privacy invasion and immersive experiences’ learner data, when he stated, “If you can monetize how much time I spend on a YouTube video or if you can monetize your Google search, imagine how you could monetize your biometric responses to stimuli that you viewed in virtual reality” D’Agostino (2022, para. 24).
The dominance of a few players in the shrinking immersive experiences technology market is also cause for concern. Developers have had to work within constraints to get published on the the Meta Quest 2 VR headset (Lang, 2024; Armstrong, 2023). Platforms and companies like Microsoft’s AltspaceVR and Magic Leap that did seem poised to continue in the immersive experiences market have abandoned their efforts. When major companies dominate the content creation market, they can choke out smaller, independent, and open-source options. Issues with lack of competition and fair choice are detrimental to the success of immersive experiences in education.
References
Armstrong,
M. (2023, February 28). Meta leads the way in VR headsets. Statista
Daily Data.
https://www.statista.com/chart/29398/vr-headset-kpis/
Barnard, A. & Saad, H. (2015, August 31). Palmyra Temple was
destroyed by ISIS, U.N. confirms. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/world/middleeast/isis-militants-severely-damage-temple-of-baal-in-palmyra.html
Brown,
J., Bailenson, J., & Hancock, J.* (2023). Misinformation in
virtual reality. Journal
of Online Trust and Safety,
1(5).
https://doi.org/10.54501/jots.v1i5.120
D’Agostino,
S. (2022, August 3). College
in the metaverse is here. Is higher ed ready?
Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/08/03/college-metaverse-here-higher-ed-ready
Denker, A. (2016, October). Virtual Palmyra: 3d reconstruction of the
lost reality of “the bride of the desert”. In 8th
International Congress on Archaeology, Computer Graphics, Cultural
Heritage and Innovation, 318–320.
https://doi.org/10.4995/arqueologica8.2015.3540
Lang,
B. (2024, April 25). Quest
Developers react to Meta Horizon OS & Partner Headset news.
Road to VR.
https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-developers-react-to-meta-horizon-os-partner-headset-news/
Li,
L., Hu, Y., Yang, X., Wu, M., Tao, P., Chen, M., & Yang, C.
(2024). Enhancing pre-service teachers’ classroom management
competency in a large class context: the role of fully immersive
virtual reality. Humanities
and Social Sciences Communications,
11(1).
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03538-9
Makransky,
G., & Petersen, G. B. (2021). The Cognitive Affective Model of
Immersive Learning (CAMIL): a Theoretical Research-Based Model of
Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality. Educational
Psychology Review,
33(3),
937–958. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09586-2
Mhaidli,
A. H., & Schaub, F. (2021). Identifying manipulative advertising
techniques in XR through scenario construction. Proceedings
of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445253
Millron, M. (2023, September 14). The power and peril of virtual
reality in HE. Times Higher Education.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/power-and-peril-virtual-reality-he
Procopiou, A. (2022, December). Ready player bad: the future rise of
extremism and terrorism in the Metaverse. In 2022 IEEE 2nd
International Conference on Intelligent Reality (ICIR) (pp.
31-34). IEEE.
Samad, B. A. (2020). Civilizational memory: the transformation of
Palmyra as a cultural patrimony of the west. Bowling Green State
University.
Unitar. (2017, January 20). Cultural treasures in ancient city of
Palmyra destroyed.
https://www.unitar.org/about/news-stories/news/cultural-treasures-ancient-city-palmyra-destroyed
Post script:
*In looking for images for this blog post, I came across this news 👀 about Jeff Hancock: Stanford Professor Allegedly Includes Fake AI Citations in Filing on Deepfake Bill
Did you miss the other parts of this series? Here they are!
Part 1: From Myths To Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments
Part 2: The Immersive Environment Delusion
Part 3: The Case Against Virtual Campuses
Part 4: Myth: Learners Learn Faster
Part 5: Myth: Learners Learn More
Part 6: Myth: Immersive learning is active learning
Part 7: Myth: Immersion Creates Empathy
Part 8: Ethical Labyrinths, Interpreting Research
Part 9: Ethical Labyrinths, Biased Content Creation
