Doing What I Do Best: Thinking Different – Part One

It has been exactly six months since my dissertation defense. Where has it gone?

The first three months it seemed I had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. My immediate goal was to restore a sense of holistic balance to a life that had been very OUT of balance during the proposal-data-dissertation phase. It was during the second three months that I have been able to find my particular voice and determine what I can offer the world with my research and experience. The question then becomes, “Where does it fit?”

As an educator, I am passionate about learning – not what is learned per se, but the identity and heart of the learner. While I don’t have the research background – at this moment – to offer anything more than an opinion, I believe that we all have innate interests and talents that give a hint to our “calling.” This isn’t a calling in any religious sense, as much as it is a basic genetic wiring for a particular vocation. For example, when I was very young (<10 years old), I would sit at the kitchen table and take apart watches using my mother’s eyebrow tweezers. I was fascinated with how the watch worked (this was back in the days of wind-up watches), and how it could be taken apart and put back together. I was a geek before geeks has a name!

My problem wasn’t a lack of ability or interest – it was cultural. When I was growing up career women became nurses and teachers – not mechanics or geeks. There was an identity conflict between what I showed an innate ability to become, and what accepted cultural norms were in place. When it became time to enter college, I was one of only two women in the architecture program at my university. The gender pressure, plus my own insecurities about my ability to compete, caused me to leave the program – and the university. I was years before I returned to school.

While my identity conflict seemed to be monumental for a teenager growing up when I did, what about the conflict that arises when the individual has a more “noticeable” separation from the cultural norms of the society where they are raised? What happens when our innate wiring goes against sexual preference or other norms?

This discussion will continue in Part Two of this series. I welcome others to join in this conversation – not as comments – but contributors to a collaborative discussion on the subject.

All Dressed Up (with a PhD) And Nowhere To Go

Congratulations, Dr. Wise…

I bit my lip, teared up just a little, and thanked my committee for helping me through five long years of study that culminated in my PhD in Educational Leadership and Innovation. Like other new graduates in 2011, I was entering an employment market that held no real promise for the future. Our hands are shaken, we are given pats on the back for being academically superior, and we step out into a sea of unemployment that crosses both academic and corporate boundaries.

I hoped my journey might be different. My background was in technology and media. I had a graduate degree in the area; I could work in systems, analysis, and eCommerce, yet I always gravitated back to how people learned and how technology could be used in that process. I was always as concerned with developing people as I was improving processes, always cognizant of the balance between what was possible and what was practical. Entering a PhD program with a corporate background kept me focused on results: I needed to be innovative and merge my expertise in technology with my academic work.

And so I did.

My work focused on streaming media, digital storytelling (video), narrative, and music. I researched the interplay of real and crafted identities of musicians who perform live in Second Life (the 3D virtual environment). I listened for their stories, wrote about them not only as artists and small business people, but performers on a stage that removes boundaries not only in how we communicate, but in how we share…everything. While all of my subjects were in the US, they were geographically disparate. Their musical styles reflected the regions where they lived, yet on a global stage these boundaries dissolved.

My research was innovative, crossed disciplines, was entrepreneurial, and added to the expanding body of research about human behavior in virtual spaces. It has an application not only in media, learning and development about how we conduct business, it can be applied to education and learning in teaching everyone about becoming global and thriving in a very diverse world.

I am ready for the next step: To bring value to any organization (academic or corporate) that has a place for someone with my unique blend of skills. Please visit my website, http://www.debwise.com, for more information.

I am ready…are you?

Deborah Wise, PhD

dr.deb@me.com

What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

How appropriate I should be updating my blog on Mother’s Day. As someone who had made the study of identity and psychosocial development part of her life’s work, I realize that after all the dust has settled and I look back on my career and accomplishments, my role and identity as a mother is the role of which I am most proud. I have been honored to have a front-row seat to the life performances of three of the most amazing women on the planet, and consider myself truly blessed to be counted among their friends, now that they are adults.

My journey as a PhD student has had many detours and near misses. There were personal hurdles, financial hurdles, and stress the likes of which I have never experienced before. By far the most difficult obstacle was the passing of Monte Wise, my children’s father, and the person to whom my dissertation is dedicated. His passing left a both a void and a challenge, to live “Life as Art” in everything I do.

My dissertation defense is May 20th, 2011. It will be the culmination of five years of study, and many months of data collection and writing. My manuscript is entitled, Life as Art: The Interplay of Real and Crafted Identities Among Virtually Performing Musicians in Second Life. It looks at amazing people who share who they are and their musical gifts across the Metaverse, and how that experience has changed their lives outside of the virtual space. To collect data for this study, I drove 2500 miles, much of it in bitter temperatures, snow, and wind. I then flew another 2000 miles, to interview and film subjects and collect data, that resulting in the manuscript that the rest of my career will be founded on.

Now that there is a light at the end of this academic tunnel and there may actually be a day on the horizon when I am not consumed with study, I am at a loss: What follows a study like this? I had assumed I would teach, but I have found that using the words “virtual world” in a cover letter or CV seems to send potential employers running. When I presented the results of my virtual world course in entrepreneurship at an international conference last fall, the general consensus was, “That is very innovative; just not at my university.” Apparently, being on the leading edge of what will become commonplace in just a few years is a little too unsettling for “conventional” academics.

My research crossed several academic disciplines. First, it addressed issues of identity formation and how interactions in a virtual space can have affect change in how the persona behind the avatar sees him or her self. Second, the study addressed the idea that interaction and feedback, which is inherent in game design, can actually help people learn, using an experiential simulation. The subjects in this study learned to perform virtually, as there was no such thing as virtual performance (in 3D) prior to Second Life. Lastly, this was a study in entrepreneurship, as these musicians realize actual income as a result of their performance. They build a fan base, release music for sale, market themselves, and have a global audience. Where else can that be accomplished without leaving one’s own home?

For all you search committee chairs in Communications, Entrepreneurship, or Innovative Technologies: Newly-minted PhD, looking for a place to be innovative, dedicated, and passionate about social media, virtual worlds, and what will come after them, as a way to change human behavior. All serious inquiries welcome.

Data Collection on Identity Interplay

January has been a frenzy of data collection in the hopes of finishing my PhD by April 15. This would be enough of a challenge if my subjects were all in the same geographic area as I am but they are all over the US – six different states. In order to observe the physical/virtual interplay for my dissertation, Life as Art: The Interplay of Identities Among Virtually Performing Musicians in Second Life, I needed to observe my subjects performing as avatars, from the vantage point of a human. Two weeks and 2800 miles later (part of it stranded in a small hotel to wait out a massive snowstorm), data has been collected on three of the subjects, with data on the other three to be collected within ten days.

The data collection included a one-hour videotaped interview, asking the subject about their level of transparency with their avatar persona. Some of my questions had to do with the avatar as the subject’s voice on particular issues, how the subject’s real life identity might be embodied in the identity of their avatar, and then the question that seemed to stump them all: How embedded are you in your avatar persona? This addresses the subject-object orientation framework by Kegan (1994) that determines to what extent the individual personalizes what happens to their avatar. If someone were to critique the subject’s performance in Second Life, how does that affect the physical identity of the individual, if at all? How separated are the identities of the real vs. the virtual individual?

Interestingly, it didn’t matter how long they had been performing in Second Life; all of the subjects I have spoken to up to this point are embedded in their avatar persona. Some are more clearly transparent than others but they all feel so connected to their virtual selves that whatever happens to their avatar happens to them personally. This is consistent with the hypothesis I present in my dissertation and is somewhat unique to artists and musicians, who become more subjective over time because of the extremely personal nature of the product they share with their fans.

The Sweet Smell of Success

Recap on Virtual Entrepreneurship

The course developed and taught for the University of Colorado Denver was a great success. If you haven’t seen the video, it can be viewed below. My previous post described the course and the video describes the objectives but the real surprise was in the survey results from the students. Mind you, this was a condensed course – it wasn’t abbreviated. There was a lot of work to complete in a very short time frame (8 weeks) and the students were sure to let me know they didn’t appreciate the amount of work. At the same time, the results of the course, and the value of virtual worlds in learning cannot be denied.

On a scale with a high value of 6, the Virtual Entrepreneurship course was compared to the average score for courses taught within the business school as a whole (where my course was housed) and also compared to the average score for courses taught throughout the campus. Scores in key areas support the further development of courses using virtual environments:

Heading                                 VE Course  Business School   Campus

Course as a learning experience     5.5           4.7                      5.0

Courses compared to all others      5.3           4.5                      4.8

This isn’t a statement of value…it is one of perception. Students in Virtual Entrepreneurship were engaged throughout the course, they saw the results of their cumulative knowledge, and they were able to build new knowledge – all the things experiential learning should do. If they felt they learned something, then perhaps we should redefine what “traditional” learning encompasses.

Setting Priorities in Order

Long time, no see…I have been working on a number of projects that have kept me from blogging and for that, I apologize. Let’s get up to date and if you have subscribed to my blog in the past, please contact me and let me know what you are up do; something akin to having “virtual coffee.”

I have been working on my dissertation proposal. Somewhere along the line, I got the silly notion that if I wrote something, my dissertation committee chair would look at it, think I was brilliant, and move me right into committee approval, I would get immediate approval from the human subjects research folks and I would be on my way. Wow…was I naive . My chair may indeed think I am brilliant but he is more brilliant than I am, and I am in multiple revisions of my proposal at this point. To be sure, each new revision is better and makes my proposal more sound, but it has taken much longer than I expected to have something worthy of committee approval. Those of you who have been through this can feel my pain .

The time hasn’t been wasted. Over the last several months I have designed a course in Virtual Entrepreneurship that occurs completely in the virtual world of Second Life, and the results of teaching that class have been phenomenal! First, I have to thank the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Denver School of Business for even letting me teach a course like this, letting me have complete latitude in delivery, and supporting my desire to make a teaching niche in the area of virtual/online learning. They are an amazing group of people. I also have to thank the students, who were in various stages of their MBA program, for taking the chance to become avatars and start businesses. It was a lot of work, it was a short time frame, and their work was fantastic. In fact, I have been asked to present a paper about my findings at the Canadian Council for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (http://www.ccsbe2010.info/) conference in Calgary at the end of October. To accompany the paper, I have created a YouTube video of the class. It is made for educators, so it is a little longer than most of the video I produce:

This has “spawned” more courses in virtual worlds and even several three-course trilogies for certificates and professional development that are all delivered online (not necessarily in Second Life). There are courses in Entrepreneurship, Working in Diverse Teams, Project Management, Teacher Professional Development, Money Management (this last set is going to be directed at the needs of high school students who really have no idea how to manage money, even as they graduate high school). These classes can be offered by any institution, with my group providing all teaching, delivery, and reporting. If you represent a learning institution and are interesting in knowing more about these courses, contact me by replying to this post.

In other breaking news…I am no longer working with the Global Energy Management program at the University of Colorado Denver. My attention has switched to teaching and developing courses using online best practices and social media through the Bard Center. You can contact me there or though my website, http://debwise.com.

The Long Road Home

Anyone who has followed my work might recognize I have been silent since the beginning of September. While I don’t usually mix my academic and professional blogs, the story of the last few months can be found at http://houseofflames.wordpress.com. In brief, my former husband and the father of my children passed away suddenly and while life is returning slowly to normal, it certainly caused a pause in my own life and work. The holidays brought some closure and a determination to find my way back to my own purpose, regardless of how many days I have left on this Earth.

At the same time, I have now finished all my PhD coursework and have submitted a working draft of my lit review and also my proposal. Once my advisor has a chance to look them over, I will move to my comprehensive exam and then my formal proposal submission. Once those are complete (hopefully by March), the Internal Review process begins. My expectation is that this will be a lengthy process for a couple of reasons:

1) Unlike many other studies, my focus group has already crossed the anonymity barrier in Second Life. Most of the musicians I will be interviewing regularly share their personal identities with their Second Life audiences because they see the environment as a marketing channel. It is almost commonplace to have an artist provide a link to a personal/professional website or to a page where a CD might be purchased. My goal is to provide many opt-out opportunities for my subjects, and assure them that anonymity isn’t the same as confidentiality, which will be protected in all cases.

2) Because my study revolves around the interplay between real and virtual identities of performing musicians, a visual comparison of appearance and performance styles would add to the body of work on the subject. This means traveling to the physical location of the subject, and filming/streaming their performance in real life, while filming/streaming the same performance in Second Life. These cross-streams will enable audiences in both the physical space and Second Life to see the other in real time. This higher level of disclosure may or may not face opposition from a board that is dedicated to protecting the identity of subjects.

Once the approval process is complete, the House of Flames may be visiting a musician near you!

Telling The Story

If you have been following my previous posts, you know I am working toward submitting my dissertation proposal, hopefully in December 2009. Together, we have looked at the literature (I am still writing the review), and now I am examining my methodology and study design in the hopes of submitting my proposal and human subjects application at the same time.

Lit Review Update: The lit review has been grueling! I have gathered all my books and articles, and after 32 pages I realize I am nowhere near finished. Each time I introduce the name of another theory or school of thought (i.e., postmodernism), I have to explain the thought and include at least a couple of citations. This is happening a lot, with ancillary research at each turn. I imagined trying to describe the avatar of one of my subjects as a mixture of Joan Baez and Janis Joplin but then realized I would probably have to explain who Baez and Joplin are (were) if I used their names. This is going to be a long journey.

As for the methodology, I had previously decided to do an ethnographic case study. There is some difference of opinion on how many subjects I need (I originally thought I would try and study nine subjects but now realize that seven is a more realistic number). In any event, my work will be qualitative and will document the lived experiences of my subjects.

Miles and Huberman (1994) say qualitative data “is sexy.” They say this because rather than analyzing mountains of numbers from masses of subjects (only to conclude statistical information), qualitative researchers convey the way the steps on the old cabin creak under the weight of the visitor or how upon crossing the same threshold that five generations of family members crossed, one I greeted with musty air that is heavy with years of fireplace ash, pumpkin pies and tobacco. Qualitative researchers are storytellers; they are charged with placing themselves (and their readers) in the heart of the everyday lives of their subjects.

No Summer Vacation for Flameheart…

If you have been following my posts, you may have noticed a conspicuous absence since the end of June. Not to worry; behind the scenes things are as busy as ever! First, I began a new position within the University of Colorado – Denver as the Assistant Director of Online Learning for the recently launched Global Energy Management (MS). My role is to translate learning to mobile formats and to stream important events to the Internet.

This takes amazing advantage of my areas of expertise, as well as my interests in virtual worlds. The first month has been exhausting, as I have an hour commute and am now riding public transportation (quite a change from my home-based efforts of the last two years). This makes for some long days, and once I get home my puppy is all but on the attack ☺.

On to my research: My goal was to have my lit review finished by the middle of August, moving on to dissertation chapter three in the fall. That wasn’t going to happen with the job transition and all the reading I have to condense into something coherent to read. The idea of taking three years of reading and writing and condensing it all to 30 pages is intimidating. When I first learned about literary reviews, and the expectation of length, I didn’t know how I could write 30 pages of what amounts to referential support for my work. Now that I am writing, I have 24 pages of my lit review completed (at least a draft) and I don’t feel I have said much of anything! Knowing what I still have to complete, there are at least 10 pages left to complete.

At the same time (wow, this has been a busy six weeks), I have been asked to review an article for the journal THEN. I have written reviews, but have never blind-reviewed another person’s work for publication. This was a great learning opportunity, not only in seeing the level others are writing at but also to be able to critique another’s work. Which reminds me…my own review of Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, was published in the journal of Learning. Media and Technology. Here is the reference:

Wise, D. (2009). Synthetic World Order. Learning, Media and Technology
Vol. 34, No. 2, June 2009, 185–189

Also, check out my other blog: http://houseofflames.com. That blog covers my real-world, virtual world music and events pursuits and covers some exciting things happening on that side of life.

Procedures and Data Collection – Realizing What I Don’t Know (part 3)

In this post we will continue looking at the developmental framework of Erik Erikson.

Phase 5: Identity vs. Identity Confusion. Given what we have seen in the first four phases of identity development, doesn’t it make sense that phase five should bring us to a crossroads? Is it any wonder then how pre-adolescence is a time for a lot of turmoil, particularly if the first four phases have been less than ideal? Some of the characteristics of this phase (according to Erikson) are:

• Task identification vs. Sense of futility
• Anticipation of roles vs. Role inhibition
• Will to be oneself vs. Self-doubt
• Mutual recognition vs. autistic Isolation

Phases 6-8 are part of what Erikson calls the “moratorium phase,” with adolescent risk taking and experimentation (can you say 1960s?). These phases form the main components of psychosocial vitality and ends typically when a person reaches the age where they are ready to make long-term commitments such as marriage or children.

Phase 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation. Erikson states that psychosocial intimacy is not possible without a firm sense of identity, where the ratio of masculinity and femininity is proportional to the identity being developed. It is a time of sexual polarization versus bisexual confusion.

Phase 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation. This is where an adolescent chooses subgroups other than family with which to identify. Whether that is Boy Scouts, the football team, Gangs, or chess club, this is a time where leader-followership (with peers) is established. In its absence is Authority confusion.

Phase 8: Integrity vs. Dispair. This final phase is where a person has (typically) become a young adult, maturing to an acceptance of their place and role in society. It is a time of Ideological commitment versus Confusion of values.

Given Erikson’s framework, is it any wonder that some of us reach adulthood without successful completion of each of these phases? What if something like death or divorce interrupts “normal” development? Do we go back and complete these phases once we have reached adulthood, or are many of us “muddling” through life with an underdeveloped sense of identity. Is it any wonder then, what the draw of an anonymous, virtual world as a place to experiment with roles might offer?