Robbins-Bell Response

After reading the Robbins-Bell article on virtual reality, ideas about new courses at McDaniel started to flood my brain. One portion of the article really made me think. This was the section about avatars. Robbins-Bell states, “The flexible avatar can allow students to experiment with personalities and roles that they might not otherwise be able to try out.” She goes on to give examples, such as a male student using a female avatar. This idea would be of great use in a sociology or psychology course. Some of the courses it would benefit at McDaniel are Social Inequality and Justice, Race and Ethnic Relations in the US, and Gender and Society.
Using a virtual world such as Second Life for a sociology course would be very interesting. A white female student could make an Asian male avatar. The female student could try to convice others that she really was an Asian male. Even though virtual reality is different from real life, the female student could see if certain biases or stereotypes hold up in the different world.
Since the virtual world is always up and running and there are people from around the globe online at all different times, students would have a chance to interact with people of different cultures and backgrounds. They could observe other avatars and see if there are any prejudice behaviors that occur online.
This type of knowledge could be very useful in our fast paced world. Since technology is always progressing, who knows what will be introduced to us next. One day there may be a career path that involves virtual counseling or something of the sort.

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