Creative Collaboration in Online Virtual Worlds

这是一个探索性的研究，在那里的大学（UOT），一个正式的学习环境构思，创建和运行完全由玩家在虚拟世界There.com的发挥和创造性的合作的融合。UOT拥有147名教师，27名工作人员和1869名学生会注册成员，既是一个大型合作项目，也是一个分布式学习环境。实地考察将主要通过参与者观察、访谈、分析玩家创建的虚拟物品、虚拟协作环境和工具（如论坛）以及调查工具来进行。这个项目建立在研究者以前的研究基础上，该研究确定了“涌现性作者”和“生产性游戏”的现象。“与之前认为游戏本质上没有生产力的假设相反，这项研究发现，高度参与的玩家可能会有动力过渡到创造力和生产力的模式，特别是那些受到与社区密切联系的启发的玩家。因此，参与文化生产的过程中，球员们被激励着开始往往是复杂和具有挑战性的合作，创造性的努力。这项研究将使用混合方法，包括从管理员，教师和学生那里收集的定性和定量数据，以分析玩家在在线虚拟世界中发起和保持创造性合作的具体方式，以及玩家如何利用，颠覆和增强网络游戏软件的工作相关的任务。这项探索性的研究将提供洞察力的研究人员在计算机-支持协作工作和相关领域，以了解游戏和工作之间的协同作用，以及如何将其应用于与工作相关的协作任务。这将包括如何使用网络游戏软件中的技术和工具来加强工作场所的创造性协作和知识共享。 结果将包括一套初步的设计准则和假设，在此基础上，更大规模的研究可以在未来。

This is an exploratory study of the convergence of play and creative collaboration in the University of There (UOT), a formal learning environment conceived, created, and run entirely by players within the virtual world There.com. With 147 instructors, 27 staff members and 1869 registered members of its Student Union, UOT is both a large-scale collaborative project and a distributed learning environment. Fieldwork will be conducted primarily in-world through participant observation, interviews, analysis of player-created virtual artifacts, and extra-virtual collaboration environments and tools such as forums, as well as a survey instrument. This project builds on the investigator's previous research, which identified the phenomena of "emergent authorship" and "productive play." Contrary to prior assumptions that games were inherently unproductive, this research found that highly engaged players could become motivated to transition into a mode of creativity and productivity, especially those inspired by a strong connection to their communities. Thus engaged in a process of cultural production, players were motivated to embark on often complex and challenging collaborative, creative endeavors. This research will use a mixed-methods approach, including qualitative and quantitative data collected from administrators, instructors and students, to analyze specific ways that players initiate and maintain creative collaboration in online virtual worlds and how players leverage, subvert and augment networked play software for work-related tasks.This exploratory research will provide insight for researchers in computer-supported collaborative work and related fields in order to understand the synergies between play and work and how those might be applied in work-related collaboration tasks. This will include how to use techniques and tools from networked play software for enhancing creative collaboration and knowledge sharing in the workplace. Outcomes will include a preliminary set of design guidelines and hypotheses upon which larger-scale research could be based in future.