Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Community Service. However, these planned activities were just ideas—as with
the other projects, the activities were designed to be emergent (i.e., based on the
interests of the citizens).
In addition, each activity was designed with three parts—the first part related
to the individual youth, the second part to the Clubhouse, and the third part to
the whole Zora virtual city. For example, if the activity was about music, for
the first part, the citizen might create a playlist of his/her favorite songs and
post on a message board in his/her house. For the second part, the members of
the Clubhouse would work together to create a display of their favorite artists
and albums. In the final part, participants would visit the Zora city center and
create a display of the favorite artists from around the world, including links to
radio stations that Clubhouses might have. As another example, if the topic was
about food, in the first part, the participant might post his/her favorite dish and
recipe on a bulletin board in his/her virtual personal house. In the second part,
the members of the Clubhouse would work together in the virtual Clubhouse to
make a display of food that represents their region of their country. In the final
part, participants would visit the other virtual Clubhouses and vote for their
favorite dishes in the global “Zora Kitchen.”
Finally, we wanted to encourage collaboration in Zora, not competition, so
we designed a recognition system to motivate members to work and learn with
each other. Each part of the activity, as described above, was linked to a level
of recognition for that citizen. If the individual activity (Part 1) was completed,
he/she was recognized with a planet in their account. If the Clubhouse activ-
ity is completed (Part 2), he/she will be recognized with a sun. If the global
activity is completed (Part 3), he/she will be recognized with a galaxy. Users
cannot see each other's amount of recognition, though Tufts administrators can.
This recognition system was intended to be used to celebrate the accomplish-
ments of the group—for example, a Clubhouse who has strong completion of
Part 2 will be able to request a new 3D model to be added into the object
library.
Although our planned activities are important, we encouraged each member
and each Clubhouse to create and post their own activities to have fun together
and learn about each other's culture. In addition, we provided an online form
through which members could suggest activities. The members' whose sugges-
tions were implemented were recognized within the body of the activity for
their contribution.
From a technical perspective, as originally designed, each week a new activ-
ity was released online within Zora, to be accessed from the “Activities” page
in Zora, with the user alerted about the new activity on the Zora “Home” page
(i.e., so that it would be seen upon log on). Because the activities were released
in this way, it did not matter when a member started with Zora—they could
catch up with the activities through his/her personalized account. However, par-
ticipants were able to use Zora whenever they wanted and they did not have to
just complete the activities—the Zora world was always open for exploring and
building.
