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to one where an adult has a more predominant role, new questions need to be
answered. Should the adult indoctrinate learners about personal and moral val-
ues as the bag of virtues approach proposes (Chazan, 1985) Or should he or
she be a neutral facilitator who does not interfere or reference personal or exter-
nal values, but helps young people clarify their own values and engage in the
valuation process such as “Values Clarification” argues for (Raths, Harmin, &
Simon, 1978) For example, should the facilitator seed the Zora virtual city with
particularly controversial cases to foster debate and be an advocate of moral
content and a model of moral behavior or only a process facilitator? When and
how a facilitator should intervene if participants decide to take an intolerant
stance about a particular social, religious or racial group?
(3)
Diversity
. Since the goals for this study were to expose children to an environ-
ment in which conflict would emerge and interesting discussions about identity
would happen, even more important than the curriculum was having a self-
selected, highly motivated, and diverse group to work with, as was the case
of the summer participants, who were screened during the application pro-
cess. Although it was a diverse group in terms of ethnic, racial, religious, and
socioeconomic composition, all participants spoke English and were first- or
second-generation American. Thus, there all shared core characteristics and val-
ues, expectations, and demands, which made the work possible, even with such
a diverse group.
(4)
Project scale
. The experience presented here is a small-scale intervention with
only 11 participants and a mentor. Thus, there were no technological problems
resulting from scalability, neither major issues in terms of self-organization
and management of the experience. The small scale of the study allowed
participants to be in control of most of the decisions regarding the virtual com-
munity without the need of institutionalization of policies. Since the virtual
community was small, it was relatively easy for participants to reach consen-
sus. What will happen when scaling up? What mechanisms need to be put in
place?
(5)
Type of contact with participants
. Participants in the summer camp were self-
selected, highly motivated, and went through an application process, namely,
they all wanted to be there. Researchers had direct access to them and their
families and were able to work with most of them face-to-face as well as online.
This type of contact facilitated data collection via videotaped interviews and
assured a 100% return rate in all questionnaires. Participants felt lucky to have
been chosen to participate in Zora and were happy to attend the summer camp
and to contribute to the research at the time this study was done in 1999, virtual
worlds were not as popular as today.
(6)
Assessment
. In terms of evaluating the experience, the ethnographic approach
with a natural observation method, analysis of system logs, pre- and postques-
tionnaires and a final extended personal interview was used. In order to avoid
what Papert calls “technocentric questions,” the evaluation was centered on
what young people did with Zora and not what Zora did to them (Papert, 1987).
