Keeping in Touch (Asynchronous Session)
Featured Virtual Reality Can Increase Empathy: Insights from a Meta-analysis View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alison Jane Martingano
Virtual Reality (VR) has been touted as an effective empathy intervention, with its most ardent supporters claiming it is “the ultimate empathy machine.” We aimed to determine whether VR deserves this reputation, using a random-effects meta-analysis of all known studies that examined the effect of virtual reality experiences on user’s empathy (k=43 studies, with 5644 participants). The results indicated that many different kinds of VR experiences can increase empathy, however, there are important boundary conditions to this effect. Subgroup analyses revealed that VR improved emotional empathy, but not cognitive empathy. In other words, VR can arouse compassionate feelings but does not appear to encourage users to imagine other peoples’ perspectives. Further subgroup analyses revealed that VR was no more effective at increasing empathy than less technologically advanced empathy interventions such as reading about others and imagining their experiences. Finally, more immersive and interactive VR experiences were no more effective at arousing empathy than less expensive VR experiences such as cardboard headsets. Our results converge with existing research suggesting that different mechanisms underlie cognitive versus emotional empathy. It appears that emotional empathy can be aroused automatically when witnessing evocative stimuli in VR, but cognitive empathy may require more effortful engagement, such as using one’s own imagination to construct others’ experiences. Our results have important practical implications for nonprofits, policymakers, and practitioners who are considering using VR for prosocial purposes. In addition, we recommend that VR designers develop experiences that challenge people to engage in empathic effort.
Real Emotions in an Online Network: A Case Study of #whyididntreport Campaign on Twitter View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jinman Zhang
This empirical study explores the affective dimension of digital feminist activism. Prior studies have indicated the complexity and nuance of affects released in digital feminist practices. However, we still know little about how intricate emotional fabrics are interwoven, thus forming an emotional network that contributes to shaping the “surface” of the collective sharings around sexual violence. This study analyzes Twitter conversations under the hashtag #whyididntreport, which women have been using since 2018 to share their reasons for not reporting experiences of sexual violence. We pose two research questions: 1. what emotions are expressed in the public conversation around sexual violence on Twitter under the #whyididntreport hashtag; 2. how the intricate emotions form a network during the public sharing in the #whyididntreport campaign. To address these questions, we first apply dictionary-based sentiment analysis to extract emotional words from the Twitter data (N = 11,004) collected; secondly, we perform a network analysis to map out the entangled emotions displayed in this collective sharing campaign. The proposed study offers insights into how individuals affectively engage in digital feminist activism against sexual violence with social media affordances. It also provides an option to explore how the emotional fabrics that reflect people’s lived experiences are interconnected to form a online network that delineates the boundaries of the public conversations around sexual violence. Moreover, this study adds to the existing literature on the affective dimension of digital feminist activism by using the technique from natural language processing to understand the ambiguous but nuanced emotional sharing.
Co-designing an e-Resource to Support Parent’s Mobile Applications Search View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anila Virani
The use of mobile applications or “apps” is common among contemporary parents. However, parents find it difficult to locate quality apps that meet their expectations due to the proliferation of low-quality apps; therefore, there is a need to develop a directory of quality apps that supports parents’ search. The purpose of this study was to involve parents in co-developing a parenting app directory and to engage parents in co-designing a user interface for webpages that feature the directory. The parenting app directory was developed during focus group discussions with 18 Canadian parents (15 mothers and 3 fathers). Webpage prototypes (landing and the app description page) were created with 3 Canadian parents (2 fathers and 1 mother) using a participatory design approach. Out of 45 apps, 12 apps were included in the parenting app directory using eligibility criteria. Parents suggested the link to the directory should be shared in perinatal classes to support parents’ search for apps. When designing user interface for webpages, parents recommended less cluttered and organized user interface, fewer choices and fewer clicks to facilitate prompt app download decisions, synopsis of app features accompanied with ‘read more’ link for interested users and mobile optimization of the website. Considering the growing trends of app use among parents, clinicians should support parents in their search for quality apps. As users, parents can provide insights into creating appealing user interfaces and researchers should consider their perspectives in designing future parenting resources.
Learning Analytics at Scale in the Australian K-12 Context: Collaborative or Commercialized? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janine Aldous Arantes
Transformational capabilities of learning analytics within Australian classrooms are increasingly being acknowledged and as such, commercialised. With increasing discussion about going to scale, from prototype to product, learning analytics research is at risk of succumbing to mass commercialization. Therefore, there is a need for increased debate. The debate within educational settings is being called for, as there are increasing concerns concurrently being examined by large Australian regulators such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, about potential impacts associated with Big Data and Analytics. Drawing on sixteen interviews with Australian K-12 educators and practitioners over the course of 12 months, this paper presents a new economic model to challenge the standard notion of commercializing education. Calling for learning analytics designers and edtech companies to consider alternate forms of innovation, the paper differentiates between ‘Collaborative Learning Analytics’ (col-LA), a notion based on community building principles and ‘Commercialized Learning Analytics’ (com-LA), which is based on current modes of capitalism. The findings of this paper, afford those working and managing K-12 settings, a vehicle to promote discussion and awareness of ‘hidden’ risks made real through the use of digitized mediums in Australian classrooms.
Who Does Me This?: The Unpredictable Nature of Becoming in Deterministic Learning Environments
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brian Martin
Hamlet, a former student of Whittenburg, returns home to fulfil his destiny to become Prince of Denmark. So begins Shakespeare’s play of a reluctant revenging prince consumed by expectations of a ghostly monitor and constantly observed by Polonius and Claudius’s surveillance apparatus tumbles headlong into a tragic, almost predetermined fate. Foucault’s (1977) ontology of hierarchical observation, normalisation, and examination is analogous to the institutionalised discipline experienced by Hamlet at court. This Foucauldian reading of Hamlet positions Elsinore as a typical Renaissance court, one where princes must assume Machiavellian identities and ruthlessly exact their revenge. Hamlet, it can be argued, has limited agency in the kind of prince he ultimately becomes. The troubling nature of the surveillance brought to bear on Hamlet and the lengths he goes to in order to resist these forces unearths the perverse impacts that surveillance has on behaviour and identity. Thus, Hamlet provides crucial insights into how the spaces we inhabit influence who we might necessarily become. In this study we posit Elsinore as an analog for increasingly deterministic and surveillant online learning environments, one where ghostly algorithms guide with seemingly benevolent hands while learning, thinking and becoming are constantly observed. Like Elsinore, the surveillant learning environment operates as a social laboratory; one where identities are shaped via incomplete understandings of selves and outcomes unpredictably disturbed. Today’s learners, like Hamlet, know what they need to become; through the knowledge and power imbued in the environments in which they dwell.
