Scenario II – Role Play and Simulation

This scenario of learning differs from the first scenario as the students and teachers use the VHD environment as a means of simulating a real conflict and disaster environment. The main objective of this arrangement is to facilitate training for disaster management as a set of field studies. Role-play and task association for each role can be utilized only if the OpenSim functions are understood and properly used.

The scenario setup required special avatar appearances to simulate the real tenants of a refugee camp or conflict zone. Separate textures were developed for designing suitable clothing for the user roles as part of the VHD project. Customised clothes and avatar body-parts were developed and archived so that the role-players can use those through their avatar inventories. Fig. 5.14 shows the designed avatar shapes and clothes for refugee tenants (female and male avatars). Fig. 5.15 displays the avatar shapes and officer uniforms of two key roles in a disaster management activity: an aid worker and a camp official.

Since the system control on avatar customisation is difficult, the students who engage in the role-play should show a strong level of self-regulation to meet the expected learning objectives for themselves and other participants. Students are expected to refrain from changing their given role appearance throughout the session; this was achieved through relevant policies on avatar activity management (SR and EM). VHD project staff used two approaches when allowing students to role-play: i) having a defined set of accounts for specific roles which students use temporarily; and ii) asking student avatars to load related role inventories and objects (clothes, body shapes, etc.) which map their avatars into the associated roles. It is important to note that depending on the selected approach, the management policies on avatar appearance can be different.

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Figure 5.15: Disaster management official avatars – British Red Cross Aid Worker (left) and Refugee Camp Officer (right)

The scenario characteristics relate to the EM-High and SR-High configuration of the user interactions. Students in this scenario have to follow a highly self-regulated environment interaction as constrained by their assigned role-plays while the VHD training environment enforces a set of strict policies on environment management to simulate the disaster and humanitarian aiding activities as in the real world. A selected set of policies from each major function area are shown in Table 5.8.

Each of the policies was examined using function network topology with Gephi to understand the functional interactions and conflicts for their implementations. For this scenario example a different area of policies from the above list– avatar mobility - is used for this discussion to explain the benefits the VHD staff obtained.

Since the objective was to let students practice as they would in a real environment the avatar mobility activities were subject to control by the VHD staff. The view of the VHD lecturers on avatar mobility (fly and teleport) is that if the students are given the opportunity to teleport or fly, they may not intuitively experience the time taken to resolve a dilemma situation or an emergency that arises in a far corner of the camp and the consequences of their delayed actions due to the physical constraints.

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Category Management Policies

Land Mgt.

Students should not terraform the learning environment Students should be placed in the required locations

Student must refrain from accessing restricted areas (if defined for a learning activity)

Avatar Activity

Mgt.

Users should refrain from flying/teleporting to simulate real mobility Students should follow the role-play guidelines and refrain from changing their avatar appearance

Students should not misbehave in the environment User

Mgt.

User names can be based on Role-plays

Users should be given appropriate privileges for Role-plays Users may not change their given home locations

Content Mgt.

Students should not alter/move learning content Students should not create content objects

Students should not alter/move the environment content Group

Mgt.

Students should not change settings of their assigned groups Students should not change their assigned groups

Students should not alter group owned objects or land

Table 5.8: A set of policies for VHD use scenario 2 management

In order to experience and intuitively learn about the practical constraints that one could experience during aid working, students must follow the realistic mobility options such as walking, running or crawling. Similarly, they have to follow dedicated routes such as camp gates, aisles between the camp tents, and avoid barbed wire fences and other barriers. They can also learn about refugee mobility and the queuing strategies that they should use in case of an emergency need.

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Figure 5.16: The ego-network of Avatar Teleport obtained from the tool

Fig. 5.16 shows the ego-network representing avatar teleport with a depth of 2 levels. Fig. 5.5 presents the same ego-network of avatar fly that VHD researchers used for their work. The ego-networks of each function indicate the related functions or settings that can be used to manipulate the student teleports between places and flying in the VHD Island. Depending on the various OpenSim user roles and VHD land ownerships such as estate owner, region owner and parcel owner, avatar mobility can be controlled within the owned land. Furthermore, the groups in OpenSim can affect the policy implementations on their lands. More challengingly, depending on the roles practiced, students may be given parcel ownership for roles such as Refugee Camp Officials or Lead Aid Workers on their camp installation parcels; moreover, they can be associated with a group defined for similar role categories.

In brief, for controlling avatar flying, the lecturer has to consider 4 functions that control user flying and 6 interactions between those. To control avatar teleport and associated settings, they have to consider 7 functions with 13 interactions. The behaviours of these interactions, as shown in by the colour coding, can be supportive or unsupportive for the required control. Moreover, the contextual implementation of the policy in OpenSim should be noted. For example, if the VHD learning session encourages flying then the VHD staff have to toggle the appropriate set of functional interaction (green links to be true, red links to be false, and orange links as needed) whereas to restrict flying, they have to toggle their selections for each function the other way around. The guidance tool was used to understand these options by the academics involved in running the VHD environment.

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