Studying the ethics and integrity of the metaverse

Cognitive, sensorial, and physical reactions to digital environments

As people we spend most of our time interacting with objects, services and environments that substantially affect our capabilities, socio-emotional behaviour, well-being and participation in society. In recent years there has been a shift in how social interactions are developed, nurtured and evolved. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the evolved daily life routines of millions of people across the world, sparked the development of technologies that support education, work, entertainment and socialization within digital, virtual environments.

We are all very aware of how platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Docs, Mural, Miro are fostering ways to collaborate, work and educate people from different areas of the world. Similarly, in the fields of social interaction and education, a paradigm shift is happening. The access to various technologies is enabling a new cohort of individuals to benefit from more connected and collaborative ways of learning, teaching, socialising and living a digital life through smartphones, tablets, wearable devices and (very soon) augmented reality glasses and virtual reality glasses.

Several tech companies recently invested a considerable budget to develop media, entertainment and learning content within digital and virtual environments. They are currently named as the Metaverse, the Omniverse, and the Multiverse, just to cite a few. These digital, virtual environments, together with their correlated technologies (e.g., VR/MR glasses, wearable devices, etc.) can provide novel sensorial experiences by sparking new cognitive, sensorial, and physical reactions compared to what people can experience with other mainstream consumer electronics. However, little research and knowledge sharing has been done on the culture of accessibility, inclusion and integrity across media, entertainment, and learning content within digital, virtual environments.

By considering the cognitive, sensorial, and physical reactions that can trigger new behavioral and social responses to individuals who use digital, virtual environments, I am working together with Prof. P.J. Clarkson from the Engineering Department at the University of Cambridge to develop a new research field that studies the ethical and integrity implications of the Metaverse (www.metavethics.com).

Research, training, and advocacy

The mission of the SEIDE initiative is to strengthen the engagement with the community by accelerating the dissemination of cross-disciplinary research outputs while helping organizations to make positive change and translating research knowledge to influence policy makers and international standards organizations.

The Sustainable Ethics for Inclusive Digital Environments (SEIDE) initiative will focus on three core offers.

1. Develop, curate and disseminate cutting-edge research knowledge through consulting and community engagement activities. We are an international community of researchers, scientists and expert professionals that investigates and disseminates cutting-edge research on the ethical aspects of inclusion, diversity, equity, access, safety and privacy to support organizations to design the right digital and virtual tools, technologies and content for people around the world.
2. Provide educational training to organizations that need to quickly evolve by being human-centred and ethically compliant. With a bespoke training program, SEIDE empowers trained professionals with a seal of excellence from the University of Cambridge – SEIDE program that will allow to promote and assess the ethical compliancy of digital and virtual environments.
3. Advocate for the creation of new standards, policies and legislations at an international level. Through the partnership of researchers and a network of experts in standards development and policy making SEIDE will influence, advocate and develop new policies and standards that help organizations to adhere to the Sustainable Development Goals by building ethically compliant digital and virtual environments for education, entertainment, work and socialization.

The Sustainable Ethics for Inclusive Digital Environments initiative at the Digital Education Futures Initiative (DEFI) at Hughes Hall – University of Cambridge is grounded on scientific foundations and aims to further develop studies, conversations and opportunities to consult as with businesses that have particular needs to assess and validate products and content delivered through digital, virtual environments for education, entertainment and work purposes.

We strongly believe in the power of bridging the knowledge generated from academic research to the policy making and business sector to help organizations to build more inclusive, safer products and services that make a positive impact for the people across the world.

Horizon scanning with Dr. Fawaz Abu Sitta

“Think of something that’s impossible today which, if it happened, would change everything in the education system”

This was a key question presented by Dr Fawaz Abu Sitta during his lecture at the Faculty of Education last week, his first since being introduced as a visiting fellow to DEFI and Hughes Hall Cambridge earlier this month. Dr Abu Sitta has joined DEFI through the end of 2023 to conduct horizon scanning that will help DEFI to anticipate, understand and influence the emerging possibilities in education. In other words, to help us spot signals of change which may soon shift from the impossible to the possible.

Dr. Abu Sitta is a UNESCO Chair for anticipatory systems and Foresight Research Director at the Centre of Futures Studies. He holds many other posts in the UAE and around the world. He co-authored the first edition of the Dubai e-Government Model, which laid the foundation for the Dubai Government Digital Transformation.

As shown in this photo, Dr Abu Sitta worked closely with Dr Imogen Casebourne, research lead at the DEFI Innovation Lab, during his visit to Cambridge. They continue to collaborate between Dr. Abu Sitta’s visits to take forward the aims of his visiting fellowship.

Futures of Education: Plausible Scenarios

The first of these educational sessions was held at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, on Thursday, 10 November. Dr Abu Sitta spoke to a broad audience of education PhD students, post-docs, professors, and others, to help them consider aspects related to the education sector, such as:  

• Principles, methods and tools of futures thinking
• The power of imagination and creativity over knowledge and data when building images of the future
• The key changes that might shape the futures of the sector
• Plausible scenarios and preferred futures

Dr Abu Sitta led students through a discussion of 10 potential key drivers that might shape the futures of education, while training them to use the Axis of Uncertainty to map the plausibility of each scenario.  

Future signals that could impact education

For the Horizon Scanning project, Dr. Abu Sitta has identified several signals for investigation as to their potential impact on education: 

When Dr Abu Sitta discussed one of these signals, Collapse of Language Learning, in the Futures of Education workshop, he used a compelling video from Google in order to illustrate the possibility that technology could one day help reduce language barriers: 

The workshop participants may not have been fully convinced by Google’s ambition however, while they agreed that this type of translation would be high impact, they were less sure that it was predictable when measured on the Axis of Uncertainty:

It is perhaps interesting that the workshop participants felt the two most predictable influences on the education systems would be MOOCs and Pen and Paper. While the former is certainly an affordance of digital technology, the latter shows that traditional technology may continue to influence learning and education well into the future.  

Further workshops will be announced as Dr. Abu Sitta confirms his schedule in Cambridge for 2023. To keep up with Dr. Abu Sitta’s work at DEFI, sign-up to our mailing list and put Horizon Scanning in the message box.

New collaboration with Dr Ingunn Ness and Dr Rupert Wegerif

Dr Ness is also a co-editor and contributor to the new book, Dialogic Pedagogy, Creativity, and Learning –along with DEFI founder Rupert Wegerif.

The main editor of the book is Olga Dysthe, pictured below receiving the King’s Medal of Merit for her work on dialogue.

Preparing for an uncertain future

Dr Ness started her presentation by stating that “one of the main purposes of an education system is to prepare students for an (uncertain) future. This was music to the ears of a DEFI audience, as it matches a key idea from our recently-published DEFI Future Skills report – the perception that the uncertainty will affect life in the future more so than in the past.

According to Dr Ness, the curricula in Norway has been updated to address this challenge, with creativity, collaboration and communication skills emphasised. However, she then pointed out a key question and the driver behind her research: In order to teach for creativity, we first need to know: what is creativity?

What is creativity?

Put simply, creativity is “to create something new,” says Ness, and, “we need disciplinary knowledge to have new ideas which we can be creative about.” She would return to this concept of disciplinary knowledge later in her presentation.

She went on to break down creativity into “Little c” – personal, “what if” breakthroughs – and “Big C,” which includes major, society-level breakthroughs. Dr Ness would like to see young learners encouraged to explore their little C creativity, so that they can generate Big C ideas later on.

As she continued reflecting on creativity, Dr Ness highlighted a tendency to distinguish between artistic creativity and scientific creativity, despite the underlying similarity. While acknowledging that creativity can differ across groups and domains, Dr Ness contends that Einstein and Picasso would have had nearly identical psychological processes!

Case study – Stimulating creativity through polyphony

As Dr Ness took us into the work behind “The Room of Opportunity,” her passion for the topic shone through. In fact, she admitted that she collected more data than was necessary, as she was so excited to observe and capture the work being done by the study groups.

Her study looked at 6 phases of group work, which can allow the group to move from a challenge or need through to a solution. As seen in the graphic below, the first three phases combine to build the knowledge platform, fulfilling the need for disciplinary knowledge which Ness referred to in her thoughts on creativity.

The second half of her model is where the ideas are developed. And yet, Ness identified that it is the three central phases – Polyphony, imagination, idea formulation – which form the “Room of Opportunity.” This metaphorical room is where groups can spend time, moving through the two or three of the phases repeatedly, while the creative process generates ideas that may lead to a solution.

Quite simply, groups wanting work together and build knowledge will need to have openness, curiosity, respect, trust and psychological safety. Ness used Kahn’s (1990) definition of psychological safety as “to feel safe in the team and not afraid to contribute,” then simplified this further to “not afraid of asking silly questions.”

Facilitating creative processes

In her third study, Ness stepped away from the six-phase model to look at how creative knowledge processes are facilitated. Her first observation was that imagination and creativity are stimulated by tension, both between disciplines and group members.

Therefore, she outlined four complementary roles in group dynamics that, when balanced across the activity, can create useful tension and facilitate creative thinking.

A model for student dialogue

The result of her work with students is the STEPRE model. As with the adult groups, there are six phases, but the names have largely changed. Polyphony remains, of course, and Ness explained that the polyphonic tasks allowed students to “practice creative knowledge processes” through dialogue. Polyphonic tasks also allow the teacher to practice letting go of control, which Ness pointed out is losing control of the student group.

Conclusion

In under an hour, Dr Ness managed to take her audience through nearly 70 slides, introducing herself and Bergen, Norway, exploring the basics of creativity and future skills, then looking at her research work with both career and student groups. That she was able to explain both the foundations of her work and results of her research in such a short time is a credit to her own dialogic skills as well as her expertise of the subject matter!

Dr Ness closed by reminding the audience that her phase models are meant as inspiration and a way to structure dialogic teaching – not as a rigid model – something that she demonstrated by presenting both the six-phase model for professional groups and the STEPRE model for use in schools.

She also pointed out that education needs to provide training not just in how to engage in creative dialogue, but in how educators and group leaders can create a framework for dialogue. And finally, she mentioned another book of interest to the DEFI audience – Creative Learning in Digital and Virtual Environments.

We greatly appreciate Dr Ness’ time with our group and, as Genevieve says below, look forward to her next seminar!