EAGER: Creative Activity and Development of IT Skills

这项探索性研究是一项横向的、多世界的研究，通过三个不同的虚拟世界比较女性的创造性实践及其对信息技术技能获得的影响：Second Life、There.com和OpenSim。这项可能具有变革性的实验性研究的目的是更好地了解创造性实践在女性IT技能发展中的作用，女性发展这些技能的动机和过程，以及她们在多大程度上参与到IT职业生涯中。这项研究将使用定性的方法，包括参与者观察和采访，以及对玩家创建的数字文物的分析，以考察虚拟世界中女性的创造性实践和技术技能获得之间的关系。这项探索性研究在三个方面创新：首先，它是一个纬度，通过提供对多个“虚拟世界”类型世界的文化实践的比较分析，对虚拟世界中的在线文化研究做出了重大贡献。其次，它提供了关于妇女在网络世界的做法及其与IT技能获得的关系的潜在变革的新知识，与K-12女孩和STEM技能相比，这是一个研究较少的领域。第三，它将帮助我们确定在虚拟世界中学到的技能在多大程度上影响着女性生活的其他方面，例如她们在IT领域的一般能力和自我效能，或者她们在现实世界中的职业选择。由于这项研究试图了解虚拟世界中女性通过创造性实践学习IT技能的具体动机，它将为扩大女性在计算机领域的参与提供有用的指导方针。它还可能成为大学后女性劳动力发展战略的基础，这些女性正在通过非正式和同行学习社区发展IT技能，这些社区可能会被用于现实世界的职业生涯，这一现象已经在目标群体中紧急发生。

This exploratory research is a "latitudinal," multi-world study that compares the creative practices of women and their influence in information technology skills acquisition across three different virtual worlds: Second Life, There.com, and OpenSim. The aim of this experimental, potentially transformative research is to better understand the role of creative practice in development of IT skills among women, the motivations and process whereby women develop these skills, and the extent to which they are being parlayed into IT careers. The study will use qualitative methods, including participant observation and interviews, as well as analysis of player-created digital artifacts, to examine the relationship between creative practice and technical skills acquisition among women in virtual worlds. This exploratory research innovates in three ways: First, it is a latitudinal that makes a significant contribution to the body of research on online cultures in virtual worlds by providing a comparative analysis of cultural practices across multiple "metaverse" type worlds. Second, it provides new potentially transformative knowledge about the practices of women in online worlds and their relationship to IT skills acquisition, an understudied area as compared to K-12 girls and STEM skills. Third, it will help us determine the extent to which skills learned in virtual worlds are impacting other aspects of women's lives, such as their general competency and self-efficacy with IT, or their real-world career choices. Because the research seeks to understand the specific motivations of women in virtual worlds to learn IT skills through creative practices, it will provide useful guidelines for expanding female participation in computational fields. It may also form the foundation for a workforce development strategy among post college-age women who are developing IT skills through informal and peer-learning communities that could be parlayed into real-world careers, a phenomenon that is already occurring emergently within the target group.