Reflection for the 15th week.

Reading list:
1. Koster, R. (2004). A theory of fun for game design: What games aren't. Gamasutra, December 3.
2. Gee, J. P. (2004). Learning by design: Games as learning machines. Gamasutra, March, 24
3. Garneau, P-A. (2001). Fourteen Forms of Fun. Gamasutra, October 12.
4. Prensky, M. (2001). Fun, Play and Games: What Makes Games Engaging. Chapter 5 in Digital Game Based Learning. NY: McGraw Hill. (From the author's website)
5. Falstein, N. (2004). Natural funativity. Gamasutra, November 10.

Summaries:
Koster, R. (2004).

Kowster 's article is not colorful as the other pieces. He focused on a limited model of game: superficial graphical pattern vs. abstract logic underneath. In his discussion, fun is an important element of games. But he did not really develop fun and game in a harmonious pattern to help readers understand his points. To Koster, fun is an abstract that is hard to be defined, and fun is a phenomenon. He kind of discussed that fun is contextual. It will happen when several elements get in the right place: right time, attitude, engagement, etc. He also discussed that fun is a result of evolutionary process. However, his ideas about fun were spreaded widely but only circling around the periphery of the issue. What is fun is not clear in the first place in the article. I think this is actually the bottom line of this article without which it is hard to understand the author's stand.

Gee, J. P. (2004).

It is a fact that many individuals keep purchasing new video games. this article was trying to understand the question how do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games? On one hand, some good games seem to be designed only for adept gamers. This is an explanation only helps us see a certain part of all gamers, old and new. On the other hand, the answer could be good games' designers applied profoundly good methods of getting people to learn and to enjoy learning. The author argued that under the right conditions, learning is biologically motivating and pleasurable for humans. Then, the author applied a list of good principles of learning that have been built into good games (computer and video) to explain, with examples of real video games, the practice of learning in games. In the end, the author discussed his observation that very few educational games apply the principles of learning. On the contrary, non-educational games for the young are using many good principles. This debate is worth to be extended to the administrators and researchers.

Garneau, P-A. (2001).

The goal of this article is to make a complete list of entertaining activities, forms of fun, at present in order to provide a tool kit for game designers. Garneau suggested that effective game design is the result of mixed forms. But combination of too many of these forms may do the opposite. It is a matter of balance. I tried to classify these fourteen forms of fun using the categories proposed by Falstein. Physical fun: Physical Activity, Competition, Application of an Ability, Immersion; Social fun: Love, Social Interaction, Comedy(?), Power; Mental fun/psychological fun: Immersion, Intellectual Problem Solving, Thrill of Danger, Creation, Advancement and Completion, Beauty, Discovery, Competition. There are a couple of forms classified repeatedly into different categories.

• Beauty: That which pleases the senses
• Immersion: Going into an environment different from one's usual environment by physical means or by use of one's imagination
• Intellectual Problem Solving: Finding solutions to problematic situations that require thought
• Competition: An activity where the goal is to show one's superiority
• Social Interaction: Doing things with other human beings
• Comedy: Things that make one want to laugh
• Thrill of Danger: Exhilaration coming from a dangerous activity
• Physical Activity: Activities requiring intense physical movements
• Love: Strong affection toward somebody
• Creation: To make exist that which didn't
• Power: Capacity of having a strong effect, of acting with strength
• Discovery: Finding something that wasn't known before
• Advancement and Completion: Going forward in, and eventually finishing, an activity
• Application of an Ability: Using one's physical abilities in a difficult setting

Prensky, M. (2001).

Like Garneau, Prensky also developed a list of elements that make video games engaging.

• Games are a form of fun. That gives us enjoyment and pleasure.
• Games are form of play. That gives us intense and passionate involvement.
• Games have rules. That gives us structure.
• Games have goals. That gives us motivation.
• Games are interactive. That gives us doing.
• Games are adaptive. That gives us flow.
• Games have outcomes and feedback. That gives us learning.
• Games have win states. That gives us ego gratification.
• Games have conflict/competition/challenge/opposition. That gives us adrenaline.
• Games have problem solving. That sparks our creativity.
• Games have interaction. That gives us social groups.
• Games have representation and story. That gives us emotion.

In addition to this list he pushed further to relate the observation with learning and work. Like most of the articles for this week, Prensky focused on fun and play. He defined fun as the great motivator. The role of fun in the learning process is to create relaxation and motivation. Relaxation enables a learner to take things in more easily, and motivation enables them to put forth effort without resentment. He argued play as the universal teacher. Work and play are always overlapping with each other. Learning (children): similar to Falstein, Prensky applied the evolutionary view in understanding play. "Play is our brain's favorite way of learning things". Work (adult): more play will improve our learning and performance; making work playful reduces stress, and actually increases productivity.

How to transfer the abstract fun and play into actual experience through digital games is the central focus of this article. Prensky proposed six structural elements of games based on which the games can be engaging. Rules: are what differentiate games from other kinds of play; Goals or Objectives: differentiate games from other types of play, as well as from other non-goal-oriented games; Outcomes and Feedback: are how you measure your progress against the goals; Conflict/competition/challenge/opposition: are the problems in a game you are trying to solve; Interaction: interaction of the player and the computer vs interaction with other people (inherently social aspect). Representation: means the game is about something.

For the rest of this chapter, Prensky touched on wide topics on digital games comprehensively. He discussed different forms of interactivities (toys, narrative stories, and tools), talked about categories of games (Action Games, Adventure Games, Fighting Games, Puzzle games, Role Playing Games, Simulation Games, Sports Games Strategy), listed principles of good computer game designs (balance, creation, focus, character, tension, and energy). Then he discussed aspects that are affecting engagement of digital games (the rationale for this part is still to help designers for good game design): culture, age, gender, violence, language (or genre?).

Falstein, N. (2004).

Palstein saw the question of what makes a game fun as an elusive and subjective one. To answer this question, Falstein took an approach finding the underlying root of humans' fun. He tracked back to ancient time and even earlier to find evidence from human revolution. His point is that all human entertainment, including games, has a central premise of learning about survival and reproduction and the necessary associated social rules and behaviors. This learning is a life-long activity for humans, especially in the "modern fast-changing global culture". He classified humans’ fun into four categories (physical, social, mental, and blended). "By tying game play to these key aspects of hunting, gathering, exploration, social interaction and status, and pattern perception we can capture the interest of large numbers of players and make games more fun". Falstein tied his discussion with applying the fun theory, natural funactivity, into game concepts. Basically, I find this approach of understanding both gamers’ behaviors and game design reasonable and easy to master.

Focus question:
What are the possible reason(s) why more people do not play digital games?

It is necessary to see what kinds of people play games. To talk about gamers, there are people who are addictive to games, including the game fans and people who have video games as the most important entertainment in their life. There are also people who just occasionally play some games just for killing time. As we read and discussed, people play video games for fun. The video games are attractive and challenging. For those online games, gamers may also play for socializing, but not necessary. The population who play games has certain common characteristics. Here I try a couple of them. I do not have evidence to support my argument. My points are developed from my observation. So it might be biased, in which case more discussion might be generated. One characteristic is the majority people in the gamers' population are in young age: children, teenagers, and college students. The other characteristics is that they can afford to play: time (they have plenty of time) and money (sometimes money is not that important since there are many cheap or free games).

However, the fact is there are more people who do not play video games regularly than those who do. People who do not play games regularly do not possess either of the two characteristics mentioned above. These could count for two reasons. The third one, I think, could be people in this camp actually find that real life activities, sports, party, reading, movie, traveling, etc, are much more entertaining and have more fun than video games which is in-door activity and/or require to sit still for a long time, etc.

My questions from the readings and questions for Discussion in class:
1. From readings we can see professions have been thinking deeply about how to generate good concepts for games and design good games. Is there any case study of research testing those elements or principles in designing educational games? What are some limitations?

2. Is there any statistical information of the distribution of the gamers? What are some common features they share, like age, profession, education background, socio-economic status?

Reflection for the 14th week.

Reading list:
1. Avery, A. (2005). Beyond P-1: Who plays online?. Digital Games Research Association 2005 Conference: Changing views- worlds in play, Vancouver, 16 - 20 June 2005, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Digital Games Research Association.
2. Paras, B., & Bizzocchi, J. (2005). Game, motivation, and effective learning: An integrated model for educational game design. Digital Games Research Association 2005 Conference: Changing views- worlds in play, Vancouver, 16 - 20 June 2005, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Digital Games Research Association.
3. Yee, N. (2007). Motivations of play in online games. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 9, 772-775.

Summaries:
Avery, A. (2005). There is a wide range of phenomena that need to be discovered for the impacts and roles of virtual games in people's life, behavior, and social construct, both offline and online. Alix focused on serious gamers of online games. He wanted to understand what actual elements of video games that people like (I think this is more useful for game developers/designers than educational researchers) and what kind of games people play most. Then people could know what kind of preference gamers hold when they play games and help to predict the games they like or dislike. Because of the way they collected data, the study only reflected people who play games regularly (from two hours per week to 25 hours per week). the findings could also be used to predict the characteristics and preference for players who do not regularly play games. As summarized by Alix, there first four popular archetypes of gamers were Warriors (like to fight in combat and other military themes), Narrators (like to imagine and think), Strategists (like to play with complex strategies and master over game and other players), and Interactors (like to compete and cooperate with other players).

However, as Mike mentioned in the forum, even one possesses many characteristics of a gamer, he or she could still not be a gamer because of many other reasons, such as motivation, attitude toward games, and personal experiences, etc. This fact reflects the limitation of this study. The reasons of the limitation could be the population the research tried to study. Or the limited research method which only depends on self-reflection of individuals.

Paras, B., & Bizzocchi, J. (2005).
Paras and Bizzocchi, on the other hand, took the path of the motivations of gamers and tried to integrate their findings with a model of educational game design. They focused on the flow theory and reflection on learning process. They proposed a sequence to discuss how learning happens via gaming: games, play, flow, motivation, and learning. In this sequence, motivation is the joint of gaming and potential learning. On the other hand, the authors talked about active learning phenomena that could link gaming with learning. Reflection based on active learning is not new and has been well discussed and learned by researchers. However, the essay is soft in discussing the possible explanation of how games could be designed to meet educational purpose. It is good to link flow, motivation, and reflection with gaming experiences. But without solid research on the topic and the model, valuable and valid issue of this model will be remained questionable.

Yee, N. (2007).
Yee's essay also talked about motivation issue in gaming. The essay started from the fact that millions of players are active in MMORPGs daily. Obviously, this is a phenomenon deserving more understanding and modeling. Yee applied factor analysis method developing a motivation model for gamers. A sample of 3000 MMORPGs' players were selected for this study and a forty questions survey was conducted for data collection. Yee classified the motivations into ten subcomponents (Advancement, Mechanics, Competition; Socializing, Relationship, Teamwork; Discovery, Role-playing, Customization, Escapism.) under three main theme: Achievement, Social, and Immersion. Besides, Yee also discovered the demographic variables (age, gender, and usage patterns) and their relationship with motivation. Male players scored significantly higher on Achievement while female scored significantly higher on Relationship. The pattern study also confirmed that the pre-existing depression or mood disorder are common among users who develop problematic usage with online games.

Focus question:
How does your gaming demographic and your reasons for playing fit in with the research?

I think my current experience only deals with participating virtual community, such as forum, but gaming and it does not have any educational purpose embedded. To answer this question, I can only reflect from my former experience with video games. The games I played were offline ones. So there is definitely no "social" motivations related. I see my case could fit in either stereotypes of "warrior" or "strategist" depends on the games I played. Or, if applied the model of Yee, I may fit more in Achievement. For the gaming demographic, my case support Yee's finding that Male players scored significantly higher on Achievement.

My questions from the readings and questions for Discussion in class:
1. In Paras and Bizzocchi's article, they mentioned "Looking at the 'effort' expelled during the learning process will help determine whether learners are motivated." By using "effort", did the authors mean the energy and time the players put into gaming? or something else?
2. Still in the same article, the authors mentioned "While in flow state, the learner is completely motivated to push their skills to the limit." I just wonder is this push-to-limit always happen when individuals experience flow? Is this push-to-limit phenomenon necessary in flow experience?

Reflection for the 13th week.

Reading list:

Rosen, D., Woelfel, J., Krikorian, D., & Barnett, G. A. (2003). Procedures for Analyses of Online Communities. JCMC, 8 (4). Available at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue4/rosen.html

Williams, D. (2006). On and off the 'net: Scales for social capital in an online era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 11.

Ling, k., Beenen, G., Ludford, P., Wang, X., Change, K., Li, X., Cosley, D. Frakowski, D., Terveen, L., Rashid, A.M., Resnick, P., & Kraut, R. (2005). Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10(4).

Summaries:
Rosan, et. al. (2003)
This paper started with a comprehensive review of research methods scholars have been using to study online communities on social aspects and structure of online interaction, spatial movement, nature of users' coordination, impression, and emotions. Rosen et. al. studied the phenomena of online non-threaded interaction, specifically chat-room conversation. The tool they used for the study is Catpac(TM) package. They chose SciCenter, a three-dimension online environment, to carry out their study. the purpose of SciCenter is to provide cyberspace playground for teens to create knowledge space in after-school programs. Data showed that mentor for the conversation dominated the interaction. According to the semantic network analysis, there was obvious gender difference in the content of chatting record. But one thing was shared by both males and females participants: their interest in scientific research seems to increase in three-dimension virtual world.

Williams (2006)
Noticing that the Internet accomodates different way of social interaction with a parallel and conjunct manner with offline life, Williams proposed a framework based on social capital (SC) to measure bridging and bonding for online and offline contexts. The scale he introduced was Internet Social Capital Scale, or ISCS. In this study, Williams treated social capital as outcome. In this article, Williams criticized that the perception and research approach for old media like TV is not applicable to Internet which is interactive and mobile in nature as a communication channel. Williams developed a two-dimension scale pairing bridging & bonding, and online & offline. He used criteria based on Putnam's work (2000) to develop bridging SC measurement. The criteria are: 1) outward looking; 2) contact with a broader range of people; 3) a view of oneself as part of a broader group; 4) diffuse reciprocity with a broader community. Also he discussed criteria used for developing bonding SC measurement as: 1) emotional support; 2) access to scarce or limited resources; 3) ability to mobilize solidarity; 4) out-group antagonism. Here is the list of final scale item (* adapted from Cohen & Hoberman, 1983).

Bonding Subscale

1. There are several people online/offline I trust to help solve my problem.*

2. There is someone online/offline I can turn to for advice about making very important decisions.*

3. There is no one online/offline that I feel comfortable talking to about intimate personal problems. (reversed)*

4. When I feel lonely, there are several people online/offline I can talk to.

5. If I needed an emergency loan of $500, I know someone online/offline I can turn to.*

6. The people I interact with online/offline would put their reputation on the line for me.

7. The people I interact with online/offline would be good job references for me.

8. The people I interact with online/offline would share their last dollar with me.

9. I do not know people online/offline well enough to get them to do anything important. (reversed)

10. The people I interact with online/offline would help me fight an injustice.

Bridging Subscale

1. Interacting with people online/offline makes me interested in things that happen outside of my town.

2. Interacting with people online/offline makes me want to try new things.

3. Interacting with people online/offline makes me interested in what people unlike me are
thinking.

4. Talking with people online/offline makes me curious about other places in the world.

5. Interacting with people online/offline makes me feel like part of a larger community.

6. Interacting with people online/offline makes me feel connected to the bigger picture.

7. Interacting with people online/offline reminds me that everyone in the world is connected.

8. I am willing to spend time to support general online/offline community activities.

9. Interacting with people online/offline gives me new people to talk to.

10. Online/Offline, I come in contact with new people all the time.

Williams proved the validity and reliability of the scales by using a sample of 884 volunteers dominated by white males across the US. Williams discussed that the entry and exit SC cost for all Internet communities is relatively lower than offline ones. This help to partially explain why people turn to online community. At the end Williams proposed some potential problems that ISCS can help to explore, such as Do online groups provide the same kinds of psychological, emotional, and practical support as their real-world counterparts, even without the power of face-to-face interactions? Do Internet users feel the kinds of reciprocal bonds that would lead them to contribute to their online communities?

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Cohen, S., & Hoberman, H. M. (1983). Positive events and social supports as buffers of life change stress. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 13 (2), 99-125.

Ling, et. al. (2005)
Ling et. al. investigated the contribution for online communities using social psychological theories, especially social loafing and goal-setting. I agree with their vision that online activities are part of social phenomena. Social psychology is primarily a behavioral science. Its goal is to determine unambiguously the causes for social phenomena and explain them. I think this article started with a strong rationale to interpret the phenomena of online communities with social psychological lens. This current study was an integration of four field experiments. The hypotheses of the four experiments are:

• People will contribute more to an online community when they think their contributions are likely to be unique and when they like the community more. (supported)

• Users will contribute more when the personal benefit or the benefit they provided to the community is salient as a result of their contribution. (supported)

• Members' contribution will increase more if they receive messages that enhancing the salience of intrinsic motivation compared to members who receive messages that do not enhance the salience of intrinsic motivation. (not supported)

• Members with assigned challenging/specific numeric goals (supported) or individual goals (not supported) will contribute more (rate more movies) compared to members with non-specific goals or group goals.

• members with exceedingly difficult specific goals will contribute less than the ones with difficult specific goals. (weakly supported)
  

Focus Question:

What do you see as *the* most important impediment or problem for online socializing?

My answer could be limited, because I do not have many experiences of online socializing. The answer is more like prediction. Actually, Akesha raised many good points for problems of online socializing (http://msucep956.blogspot.com/). I have one more thought to add to the list.
The most important problem for online socializing could be the lack of authority. I mean there is no structure or social resources to help people to trust the information they get, the individuals they encounter online, or the relationship they have online. As Williams discussed in his article, the cost of social capital to entry or exit the online community is much lower than in offline ones. It is easier for individuals to join online community and get involved on their call. Individuals have bridging experience more than bonding experience in online experiences. I doubt people can really get bonding experience in online community. Even it happens, it should be experience extended from a relationship from offline life. The authority line vanishes in online community. Even though there are administrators in online community for either technology support or community regulation, they have less power affect online socializing. In a community with less orders, socializing could have a ceiling effect because of the lack of trust. I see this is the most important problem for online socializing.

My questions from the readings and questions for Discussion in class:

The readings for this week are fairly new and could represent some trend of research of online community. My question is for researchers of online community, is there a debate for if or not researchers should perceive the online community as part of people's real social life? Another question is related to my discussion of the focus question. Is there any research studying the credibility of online socializing and the trust issues of online communication? If there is, what instrument the research used and theory the researchers applied (social psychology, personal psychology, or communication theory, etc)? What is the finding?

test post for clip_brainstorming

clipped from en.wikipedia.org One of the most important things to do before a session is to define the problem. The problem must be clear, not too big, and captured in a definite question such as “What service for mobile phones is not available now, but needed?“. If the problem is too big, the chairman should divide it into smaller components, each with its own question. Some problems are multi-dimensional and non-quantified, for example “What are the aspects involved in being a successful entrepreneur”. Finding solutions for this kind of problem can be done with morphological analysis.^^ Brainstorming is a group creativity technique that was designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. The method originated in a 1953 book called Applied Imagination by Alex Faickney Osborn, an advertising executive. Osborn proposed that groups could double their creative output by using the method of brainstorming.[1]

Reflection for the 11th Week.

Articles Read:
Main Course pt.1
Wallace, P. (1999). Group dynamics in cyberspace. The psychology of the Internet (pp. 55-83). London: Cambridge University Press. [Read this eBook - MSU authorized users]
Main Course pt.2
Williams, D. (2007, in press). The impact of time online: Social capital and cyberbalkanization. CyberPsychology & Behavior.
Side order
Nie, N.H., & Hillygus, D.S. (2002). The impact of internet use on sociability: Time-diary findings. IT & Society 1(1),1-20. Available at http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/itandsociety/v01i01/v01i01a01.pdf

Summaries:
Wallace, P. (1999). pp.55-83
In this chapter, Wallace elaborates the ideas of belonging, loyalty, and commitment of group behavior. The discussion starts with observations of new groups formed through online forums departed easily in a short time. But there are evidences of "groupness" emerged among the huge number of forums and chatrooms online. Early on 1993, there were research showed the dynamic made participants bond together have something to do with information seeking, personal experience connection and community senses. Basically, the idea of group has the elements of a population of participation of participants and communicative activities through which participants influence each other. There are instinct difference in how participants of groups influence each other between face-to-face group and online group in which participants never meet each other face-to-face. the authors developed their discussion in a way of understanding the influence mechanism of real life group and then compareing with the online case.

Conformation has been observed in real world for group activities but drop dramatically in online group. According to Wallace, that is because individuals perceived they are equal in power and knowledge with other online partners. (Comments: As a result of physical absence, this may be one of the reasons that why people feel much sager and freer when they are online.) So, there are some essential difference in what the strength make the basic group norms work in online or offline context. Because the established channels, in face-to-face groups, to learn accepted behaviors by observing others or collecting nonverbal signs are not available in online context, participants have to apply different channels to learn conventions and customs while they are online. However, the different ways people learn conventions online are always connected with virtual habitats in real life. Instead of a whole new set of rules, the ways online are evolved from real life niches, developed from real life into online environment, a part of people's life, which, together with face-to-face life, makes a whole. The channels are mainly constructed with verbal cues and signs. In a more serious level, the online community has to be regulated by certain sub-groups for an orderly environment to maintain normal functions. When individuals are online as a group member, they show groups polarization tendency depending on whether the individuals feel like they are a part of the group.

The disappearance of geographical limitation make the possibilities of people's finding the groups of interest infinite.

Compared to open system group behavior dynamics, work groups dynamics also shows different patterns in face-to-face interaction and online interaction. It is important to understand the mechanism and to take the advantages of the effectiveness of virtual work groups. This is very important and practical for various organizations. According to Wallace's observation, online groups behave differently during discussion with a more skewed bias. Also, minority can express freer about their ideas in online discussion than those offline counterparts. Another major findings for workgroup meeting online is that the brainstorming activity practiced online is more effective for more ideas than face-to-face ones where individuals have to take turns to address their ideas and have their ideas-development be interrupted by others. (This could be very supportive for the group project.)

Williams, D. (2007, in press).
To understand in a more comprehensive way what online activities can impact on individuals' lives, especially online and off-line social capitals, and psychological profiles. To observe the outcome of social networks, Williams applied the concepts of "bridging" and "bonding" to observe the outcome of social networks: bridging--inclusive social capital, new resources of social network, little emotional support; applied to people with different backgrounds and weak relationships, inch deep mile wide. Bonding--exclusive social capital, strong emotional support; applied to people with less diverse backgrounds, and strong relationship. Closely connected with previous studies, the result provided a set of inter-correlated evidences. The study found significant correlation of bonding social capital with offline time and bridging social capital with online. What examined by Nie (summarized below) was supported. The other meaningful findings from this study were that internet encourages online social capital; offline, actually, had higher outgroup antagonism than online; women were more likely to lose their offline social capital if they spent more time online than men; higher level extroversion people shown much less possibilities of loneliness online while lower level extroversion people felt increasing loneliness.

Nie, N.H., & Hillygus, D.S. (2002).
This article focused on identifying possible impact of internet on sociability, specifically sociability based on face-to-face interactions. The authors started with the hypotheses that internet changed the allocation of individuals' time usage. The authors used a time-diary based survey in which participants responded with recall on six time blocks of "yesterday". The study was conducted with a large sample size n=6146 with a with age range from 18 to 64. The findings supported the hypothesis that more time online at home or during weekends had the cost of less time socializing with friends and families. Another hypothesis on efficiency, assuming internet may provide technology to make people engage more in social activities, was not supported by any findings.

Focus Question:
What do you see as *the* strong pull towards online socializing?

Well, it depends. It depends on what levels of socializing we are talking about, what is the participants' background, such as age, education, and even vocation, and what are the purposes or motivations of the individuals' being online. It is not just a result of some simple feature of the online environment. Among the tons of activities people can do online, such as shopping, distance learning, information searching (news, medical information, information for goods, academic articles...), entertaining (YouTube, online music...), or gaming, etc, socializing could be the only goal and activity some individuals are working on, or it could be a by-product from other online activity, such as gaming and entertaining. For both face-to-face and online socializing, the essence is people are meeting with others and seeking the sense of belongings as part of human needs. For some people, their motivation of online socializing could be just meet with others, as an extension of their face-to-face life. For some others, their online socializing is more motivated by their eagerness to meet with real person, most of the cases are strangers. I will develop my discussion for the case in which people only experience online socializing without meeting the real person, person from work, or strangers.

From my own experiences and readings of the course, I will argue there are three basic attractive factors possessed by online socializing. One is the infinite possibilities offered by online socializing through which individuals can develop their interests with like mind on a much freer level, a level that individuals can meet their groups of interests at anytime during the day, anywhere they travel, without fear of violating conventions created in face-to-face socializing. The second is that individuals are free from any commitment to any online socializing relationships or groups, which is not possible in face-to-face socializing. They are safer to develop their socializing experiences and free to connect or disconnect with any social groups online without hardness or embarrassment they may likely to face in face-to-face socialization because of the customs and conventions. The last one is that, while online, individuals are not facing the pressure of the socially constructed "self" in face-to-face environment, the fixed impression of who they are, what they are good at, what they are not good at......

My questions from the readings and questions for Discussion in class:
1. Even though William provided some background information about social capital, it is not clear enough to understand to concept. In different fields of sociology and business, the concept of social capital may vary. But it is necessary for us to discuss the understanding of social capital under the online socializing context.

Reflection for the 10th Week.

Articles read
Turkle, S. (1995). Aspects of the self. Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 177-209). New York: Simon & Schuster.
Turkle, S. (1995). TinySex and gender trouble. Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet (pp. 210-232). New York: Simon & Schuster.
Sherman, R. C., End, C., Krann, E., Cole, A., Campbell, J., Klausner, J., Birchmeier, Z. (2001). Metaperception in cyberspace. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 4(1), 123-129.
McDonough, J. P. (1999). Designers selves: Construction of technologically mediated identity within graphical, multiuser, virtual environments. Journal of American Society for Information Science, 50(10), 859-869.

Summaries

Turkle, S. (1995). Turkle applied a large number of interview data and real life experiences of individuals to answer different questions of constructions and reconstructions of the self in virtual life and real life. She clearly directed her discussion with the idea that different virtual locations on the Internet provide explanations to different questions related to the construction of the self. Both of the chapters applied MUD to demonstrate the observation and develop the discussion.
Chapter 7. In this chapter, Turkle applied large amount of comparison discussion of real life and virtual life behavior and the psychological features of the self. Specifically, Turkle applied young adults dominantly for the cases to show her ideas of aspects of the self. Among the cases showed in this chapter, most of them are cases of college students whose development of the self is not completed and is heavily correlated with their experiences at younger ages. To Turkle, online environments like MUDs are parallel opportunities to individuals' real life. MUDs works like a laboratory for people to construct their identity. Just like people play in real life, people play on MUDs in a toy situation. On MUDs, the interactive text-based online environment, first impression management changes the way it works because of the disappearance of physical interaction. As a result, impression is formed by words exchanged on screen. MUDs enable individuals to practice different aspects of their identities online; and most of the practice is on psychological level. Turkle applied psychosocial moratorium to discuss that virtual environment can function to offer adolescent moratorium for young adult to develop their identities. However, knowing the self in more aspects does not really help individuals to solve psychological problems, not like psychotherapy does. Getting into good or bad in MUDs depends on the extent of healthy self. At the end of this chapter, Turkle skillfully directed back to real life case of her own as an example of identity shifting. This implicitly showed that the psychological experience we have online and the identity shifting experience between online and real life experience are not new to individuals. The virtual environment actually provides us a playground for a much larger scale of practice.
Chapter 8. This chapter discovered two other widely practiced actions on MUDs -- gender-swapping and virtual sex. Virtual cross-dressing is complicated because the mindset male or female forms in their real life is unconsciously applied. However, in MUDs environment, these gender roles, which are so ingrained that individuals ignore them naturally before, surface to be one of the biggest psychological awareness that have to be dealt with and worked through. Turkle Shakespeare's comedy characters Rosalind and Celia for further discussion of gender-swapping. The awareness of gender can be wakened by online activity or comedy. Also gender can be constructed intentionally by people in online activity or comedy. Closely related to gender, sex is another aspect of the self that has been practicing by individuals in virtual world. Turkle's discussion touched the fact that MUDs provide a stage where people with different age and gender would experience different psychological practice for different purposes. MUDs cannot change the psychological development stages of people. It is a self adaptive playground on which the activities can only be constructed through the interaction of the individuals and others in specific MUD communities. In addition, Turkle also raised the problem that players in MUDs mixed their real life with cyber life. At the end of the chapter, Turkle clearly described the present situations and attitude (Utopian, utilitarian, and apocalyptic) press holds towards the new way of life, the life influenced by virtual life. Turkle discussed with vision that the past history dominated by real-life-only communication cannot help modern people to understand thoroughly the phenomena and guide behavior in the new way of life. The new way of life is a complicated phenomena carrying all the social problems in real life. Just simple aspect or comment on good or bad of the life is not constructive to help us get through this silent revolution of way of life. We need to understand the challenge it brings and evolve actively with it.

Sherman, R. C. et. al. (2001). This article could be add to the collection of comparison of face-to-face and cyberspace communication. The article focused on the difference of face-to-face and text-based communication for impression management. As other article also mentioned, cyberspace communication applied limited techniques to generate impression: nickname, self-description, and paralinguistic cues. This study specifically focused on homepage communication. For this channel, different presentation pattern occurs. Not like face-to-face and text-based (dyadic meta-accuracy) communication, homepage has a one-way communication pattern (generalized meta-accuracy). This study investigated perception accuracy difference for face-to-face and homepage communication. The findings showed there was more discrepancy of homepage creators' assumption of the positive impression held by preceptors than it actually is, compared with face-to-face interaction. The authors discussed the possible reasons of the discrepancy by introducing "spotlight effect" and "illusion of transparency". In face-to-face interaction, these two biases could be easily adjusted because of the feedback mechanism in two-way communication. However, it is not likely in homepage which is a one-way communication channel. For the findings and the focus of an experimental study, this paper raise some good point for the field.

McDonough, J. P. (1999).This paper applied the focal point onto designers of computer-mediated-communication (CMC), on their effect of online social world and CMC participants' identities construction. The author began his discussion with social relationship of designers in the company, their power structure and communication. The author proposed a detailed analysis on designers' inscription of users. The research applied is a case based qualitative study. The author discussed that designers influence users' identity construction via designing environments consciously and unconsciously oriented by their own identities and social locations. More specifically generalized by the author, the designers are typical western culture dominated: white, male, and middle-class.

Focus Question
Take an issue in any of these readings and talk about how you have seen it play out in your second life experience (with others).

Not like MUDs where the users or players can only finish tasks or communicate within a small community, SL is a much more open system where users can build different objects following their own need or interests, create their own avatar more freely, and access different domains and meet a wide range of people as they travel through SL cyberspace. In this sense, SL is a playground where we can basically behave very similarly to our real life activity, of course the communication technology available on SL limits our behavior. The designers of SL work more like technique support than monopolize the space.

Another thought is that if an individual construct his/her identity or online persona in environment like SL, intensive online exercise is required. The individual has to be heavily involved. Otherwise, it is not likely one can really develop or try out different aspect of the self online. For the cases discussed in Turkle's book, all of them are intensive players. According to my current experience for a short period of time on SL compare with the online record in the cases in Turkle's book, I do not really have the sense of discovering certain aspect of myself. While I am on SL, I tend to apply my real life standard and behavior to communicate with others (actually strangers except for our classmates). Also, I do feel the gender mindset functioning when I approach to different avatars. But I am not skillful enough to tell the real gender after different avatars, not mentioning the avatars in none-human-shaped creatures.

My questions from the readings and questions for Discussion in class
1. McDonough is very strong in his statement that it is very important to study designers in order to understand thoroughly the identity within the CMC context. Could his research findings really help designers be aware of their situation and thus influence the CMC environment? To what extent and in what aspect understanding designers can help us understand CMC users' identity construction?
2. None of the articles for this week considers the technology competence and its influence on identity construction in cyberspace. It could be an important player deciding users attitudes, progress, and actual behavior in cyberspace. To understand online identity, what is the relationship between the level of technology competence and identity construction behavior?

Reflection for the 8th week.

Main Course
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. Introduction
Wallace, P. (1999). Your online persona, the psychology of impression formation. The psychology of the Internet (pp. 14-37). London: Cambridge University Press. [Read this eBook - MSU authorized users]
Suler, J. (2000). Identity management in cyberspace. Available online at http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/identitymanage.html

Other Readings
Suler, J. (2000). The Integration Principle. Available online at http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/integrate.html
Suler, J. (2000). Personality Types in Cyberspace. Available online at http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/persontypes.html

Summaries
Goffman, E. (1959). Goffman introduced his book with constructive reflection and discussion on communication among people, such as reasons of why people acquire information of other s and ways of how people express themselves. Expression making and impression receiving are two-way interaction between individuals who give or give off and individuals who interpret them. When communication happens with the presence of face-to-face interaction, the situation is influenced or even defined by the parties' activity. One important point Goffman made is that individuals express themselves not only via verbal assertions (more controllable information), but also through non-verbal actions, such as gestures, eye-contact, tones, facial expression, and other body language (less controllable information), where individuals are able to manipulate the former, but not so to the latter. On the other hand, as witness, people who receive the information will be "likely to check up on the more controllable aspects of the behavior by means of the less controllable" (pp.7). Then Goffman further his discussion to small group settings. He explained that in order to reach a consensus, a "working consensus", that everyone at least agrees on temporarily, each participant is "expected to suppress his immediate heartful feelings" (pp.9). In addition to the assumption that all participants take part in different conversations have their own projected definition of the situation, or schema?, there are chances that various disruptive events happen during communication. People usually apply precautions to prevent the occurrence of the disruption. Also people may apply practical jokes and social games to balance the embarrassment of social life. While reading this article, I get many information supporting that communication is an active cognitive process.

Indentity is the object on the focal point in discussion of "I" or "we" in cyberspace. What we have read in Goffman's article is not all applicable to the present context. As mentioned by Turkkle in his book, Life on the Screen, this new space is "changing the way we think, the nature of our sexuality, the form of our communities, our very identity". What the less controllable behaviors mentioned by Goffman are fading or disappeared in cyberspace. Even though we call it the virtual world, we have no means to present ourselves in front of others physically in cyberspace. Thus all the physical facial expression, eye-contact, gestures or body language are now invisable. The communication still possesses some main content happenting in face-to-face conversation but the channels to experess or be impressed are limited. However, more not less of complexity has been generated by the cyberspace communication. Nowadays, in addition to face-to-face, or phone-to-phone communication, we have screen-to-screen communication, and communication models constructed with a mixture of all mentioned above.

There are different theoretical explanations for persona, one important entry is from Carl Jung. Persona is one element of a person's psyche. As discussed by Jung, persona is what we presented to the outside world. Actually, it is not really ourselves. It is a mask, a mask showing different aspect of our social identity.

Wallace, P. (1999). By explaining real life cases, Wallace interpreted the features of human communication. She applied cool and worm to explain how we feel in face-to-face communication. Similar to Goffman, she observed many non-verbal features people always use in face-to-face communication. By presenting two case study, Wallace discussed the difference of emotional intelligence presence in real life and onlinie space, where it is less acute. Wallace also observed that along with people's familiarity with online communication, as they use it more frequently, social emotional mileage goes futher and people have been developing different ways of expressions, such as online lexicon, and graphic accents, etc. This observation can be connected to last week reading of readership in cyberspace. With all these, online interaction is warmer and more socioemotional acceptable. Then Wallace began to discuss gender and age as two fundamental identity features which are specifically important in initial impression on online communication. In the social cognition and categories, Wallace took a similar way as Suler, explaining social reasons why individuals get together in the same online community. For the rest part of the article, Wallace discussed the phenomena of chat room, home page and email, where she focused on how these works and what kinds of activities are happening there. However, this part focused more on phenomena with less solid psychology discussion directed by developed theories.

Suler, J. (2000). Suler took a breath in interpreting identity issues occurs in online/cyberspace activity. The author applied a psychoanalytical in some part of the article. Instead of presenting multiple examples in cyberspace community, Suler proposed five factors to help readers understand identity in cyberspace. The first is the balance of dissociation and integration. The cyberspace actually provides us a flexible environment where we can personalize the packets of our own characteristics that we are comfortable to present to the external social interactions. Of course, in cyberspace, we all are conscious and unconscious in every moment we are awake. The fact is that we do not know who we are as a complex creature. Cyberspace provides the opportunity to develop certain aspect of who we are and some aspects of our identity that are not identified or noticed in face-to-face activities. To this extent, cyberspace is a land where we discover ourselves while we discover "others". However, for the mental health sake, it is significant to maintain integration of the selfhood. Here Suler introduced his explanation for "Integration Principles".
Suler pointed out that the self as a whole is greater than the mechanical sum of all the parts. As it might be accepted by people that all our activities on cyberspace are overlapped and connected, cyberspace does help to realize that an individual can present different identifications seperatly or even exclusively. In this process, cyberspace has its advantages. For example, individual can enjoy the relaxation without stresses happens in face-to-face settings; and the support offered and received by community on cyberspace may be welcomed and not available in exactly the same way in place other than cyberspace. But again, Suler emphasized the importance of integration. He focused on the connection of online and off-line living, which I think is a way touch the root of the issue of selfhood in cyberspace and physical-social space, the integration of the individual. He provided six suggestions for practice of achieving integraion:1. Telling online companions about one's offline life; 2. Telling offline companions about one's online life; 3. Meeting online companions in-person; 4. Meeting offline companions online; 5. Bringing online behavior offline; 6. Bringing offline behavior online. As we can see, different people have been practicing different suggestions on this list. But not all of them.
Connecting with the first factor, Suler move to the discussion of positive and negative charged psychological energy. The author showed positive attitude towards cyberspace because it can benefit individuals to discharge their negative energy. In the third factor, the issue of identity is raised by means of level of fantasy or reality. Online, individuals have different opportunities to present the real self or just an imaginary persona. This factor is tricky to get through. In the fourth factor, Suler brought up discussion of consciousness and control, which is more depth psychological oriented. The last factor is very constructive by analyziing different media of online life with their corresponding reasons why different people select different media.

Focus Question
Do you see any of the ideas of the readings resonating with your “construction” of your 2nd life identity?

I think people in different stages of this action of construction may resonate differently. But there should be something in common. Goffman's framework of human communication resonate to my case in face-to-face communcation. When I reflect my self on second life, I find his observation is very useful for me to interpret the difference I find between face-to-face communication and that of online. Also, I find Suler's discussion on chosen media happens to me contextually. Wallace's observation on usage of graphic accents and online lexicon vocabulary is very familar in my online activity, also her discussion on gender resonated in my conscious communication with the strangers in second life world.

Questions for Discussion in class

1. Does the action of integration proposed by Suler change the feature of cyberspace behavior? To what extent people are really, consciously and unconsciously, concern about the mental health in the cyberspace age?
2. More cognitive energy may be applied for online communication because of the specific interaction interface, or the media. Does this cognitive process help us understand and discover more of the selfhood compared with face-to-face interaction? If that is a possibility, why it is that? Is it because this cognitive process provides us opportunity to be consciously asare of some part of our behavior and persona that we ignore in face-to-face communication?
3. Cyberspace communication generated different cognitive process than face-to-face settings. But when we talk about this, even in our readings, we have the assumption that the online communication is non-visual and a lot of times non-audio, such as second life. With the presence of visual and audio media, then will the psychological or cognitive difference between online and face-to-face communication change? If yes, why? If not, why?
4. While we understand that there are some common psychological and behavioral characteristics shared by people with different ages or genders, there always are differences as a result of experience, culture, occupation, education, etc. Is there any study shows impact of occupation and employment position on people's hanging out on cyberspace? What are the most popular activities adults do online?
5. Persona, the maske of the ego, which is the center of human consciousness, is on the focal point of this week's reading. With the enhancement of cyberspace readership, in what ways online experiences may help or contribute to people's discovering themselves and transformation.