Partnerships in the metaverse

Abstract

Many European universities have explored different online formats to support collaboration between students. Ideally, group interactions should support the forming of partnerships between students and positively impact the learning process. We explored the nature of such partnerships when students’ online interactions take place in a metaverse, where individuals are represented by avatars and interact in a three-dimensional virtual space. We wondered whether this environment might help students to build on each other’s abilities to cooperate and collaborate. This article presents a study on student learning involving students working in groups with other students, university teachers and IT experts from different European universities. We set out to explore the opportunities and the risks when project work takes place in a virtual world. We highlight how the different group members responded to each other, when they worked together in partnership. Utilising digital ethnography as our methodology we explored the experiences of participants during their group work and how the metaverse shaped their online identity. In our analysis we used the concept of ethics of care to focus how interpersonal relationships transfer to the virtual space. Selected examples illustrate our analysis.

Keywords

Partnership metaverse care ethics avatar social interaction

Introduction

Virtual worlds, metaverses or immersive online environments have been an integral part of higher education practices in Europe and elsewhere for some time now (Rojas et al., 2023). A metaverse can be defined as a ‘perpetual and persistent multiuser environment merging physical reality with digital virtuality’ (Mystakidis, 2022: 486). They are spaces that ought to support cooperation or collaboration between individuals and offer ways to accommodate the heterogeneity (i.e. gender, professional background, socio-economic status, culture, etc.) of community members (Schiller et al., 2023). This is important in the context of the dawning understanding in higher education institutions (HEIs) that university study is not necessarily a linear undertaking; institutions are now aware that today’s students can expect their individual needs to be recognised and responded to, and more flexible, personalised approaches to learning (Bates et al., 2008).

The development of virtual environments for learning purposes is linked to and builds on pedagogical approaches that offer open learning formats, such as problem-based learning, which have a much longer history (De Graaf and Kolmos, 2003). Group work pedagogy at university is a format a number of European universities have adopted, some in more prominent ways (e.g. Maastricht University, Aalborg University, Twente University), while many others integrate group work as a standard pedagogy. Problem-based, challenge-based or inquiry-based learning formats foreground learning through engagement with authentic questions. Students work typically in groups work where they cooperate or collaborate. Cooperation implies that ‘each person is responsible for a portion of the problem solving’, while collaboration is ‘the mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem together’ (Roschelle and Teasley, 1995: 70). Each format supports a different form of partnership that individuals commit to as part of their course work. A metaverse environment may provide the digital infrastructure to enhance and expand such group-based learning activities. However, online group work at university is not unproblematic and students can quickly feel isolated and disconnected (Chang and Kang, 2016).

In this article we present an investigation of a teaching intervention, where we wanted to find out how a metaverse supports university students’ group work and how it shapes their online identity when they are connecting with participants from other European universities. Research from Spain reports for example details, that students enjoyed collaborating in a virtual world setting (González et al., 2013). However, the students in the Spanish study were somewhat heterogeneous in age and experience and emphasised the advantage of being able to work from home, rather than detailing the changes working together onine. Our hypothesis was that the virtual environment could enhance online group work, by supporting feelings of social presence (Oh et al., 2023), since traditional online group work environments (for example learning management systems like Moodle) offer primarily written exchange opportunities. Oh et al. (2023) explain that social presence in metaverse and virtual worlds refers to the sensation of being in a non-mediated environment, shaped by the user’s interaction with the medium, content, technology and others. Immersive technologies are specifically crafted to enhance social interaction and fulfil the social needs of users. Social presence, or the feeling of being with others, is crucial for maintaining user engagement in these virtual social spaces. If social presence is lacking, other users might not be perceived as living social entities but rather as artificial objects.

In our project we termed a metaverse that was purposefully designed for our project Makerspace since the challenge for all participants was to create (make) a product. The specific task required Austrian university students and European external participants to work together over a period of 3 weeks on a challenge that they had selected. In this article we share results from a digital ethnography where we followed this learning activity and discuss what it means to bring a heterogeneous community together, and consider their needs, disappointments and successes. For our analysis we utilise the lens of care ethics (Noddings, 1984). We use this approach to explore the different dimensions of metaverses (Coeckelbergh, 2024).

The article is structured as follows: we will start with a discussion about the nature of metaverses and what such spaces have to do with real life and people’s embodied experience. We will go on to consider the concept of partnership and care ethics and then detail our results using illustrative examples of our exploration and discuss our findings.

Virtual worlds and metaverses

Virtual worlds are sometimes also referred to as metaverses; the term describes immersive online environments where people can engage and interact with others for the purpose of business, education or pleasure (Bainbridge, 2009; Coeckelbergh, 2024). The definitions of metaverse vary depending on perspective and the purpose it is being used for. The most discussed format of metaverse is a virtual world, more precisely an ‘immersive three-dimensional virtual world where people interact with each other, with software agents and using metaphors of the real world without its physical limitation’ (e.g. time, location etc.) (Davis et al., 2009: 93). The degree of immersiveness is dependent on the technology (for instance, whether augmented reality is involved) however, metaverses typically offer real time, synchronous interaction and a persistent digital environment (Dionisio et al., 2013). Players or visitors to the virtual world are represented as avatars, so they can make playful choices regarding how they are represented. A metaverse is further characterised by the offer of a virtual spatial environment that ‘allows or compels the user (or users) to have a sense of being present in an environment other than the one they are actually in and to interact with that environment’ (Schroeder, 1996: 25).

Metaverses have been used in different fields, including education, business, entertainment and healthcare. Due to its technological capabilities, Davis et al. (2009) define a metaverse as collaborative technology that is used by virtual teams whose members are spread out geographically and/or across different organisations. A metaverse can be described as an aggregated information technology tool, and collection of technologies – virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT). The technological capabilities of metaverses allow spaces to be built with different degrees of immersion (e.g. 3D, VR). Immersion is a key element to create a sense of presence in the virtual world, while the users’ sensation of immersion is often based on a variety of visual cues that can be deployed in the digital environment (Land et al., 2011).

Another essential feature of a metaverse is the convergence of the virtual and real worlds. A metaverse represents a fusion of virtually-enhanced reality and physical-persisted virtual space (Kye et al., 2021). Dwivedi et al. (2022) assert that a fused metaverse environment integrates aspects and objects from the real world with elements of fantasy, resulting in a space that merges an unreal world that is grounded in reality. In a fused metaverse environment, the gap between real and virtual worlds is reduced, making the user experience more immersive, multi-sensory and authentic (Zhang et al., 2022).

One more shared characteristic of metaverses is the digital identity of users, which is constructed in the form of avatars (Zhang et al., 2022). Land et al. (2011) explain that the effectiveness of avatar-based interaction in the metaverse is achieved through communication support provided by the capabilities of the environment (e.g. through chat, video etc.). This includes social presence, which can be detected when members of virtual teams are involved in rich exchanges of information through multiple cues and symbol sets. Social presence is supported by the sense of ‘realness’ of interacting with other people (Land et al., 2011). Communication support is further provided through an individual’s self-representation as an avatar. The willingness of team members to engage in collaboration increases if they feel they are part of a team. Manipulating avatars’ appearances in the metaverse may add to the sense of belonging (Land et al., 2011). This can be achieved, for example, through team member avatars that have similar appearances or facial features, potentially leading to team members viewing themselves as more equal in the metaverse regardless of their position in an organisation. The digital world’s combination of social presence and control over self-representation through avatars has a hyperpersonal effect, increasing social attraction among team members (Bailenson and Beall, 2006).

While metaverses offer numerous opportunities to promote social interaction, concerns have been raised with regard to trust. Trust is a critical factor for successful collaboration as it reduces the uncertainty users experience in geographically separate and technologically mediated environments. As Davis et al. (2009) found, the absence of non-verbal cues makes it difficult to establish trust in teams who are collaborating in virtual environments. The other potential challenges to establishing trust in the metaverse include short team lifespans, pressing deadlines, and limited future prospects of working together again as a group. Consequently, trust in the metaverse is primarily based on individuals’ prior knowledge and experiences in similar situations (Morrison-Smith and Ruiz, 2020). Trust can be difficult to establish in virtual collaborations as users in metaverses are diverse; hence, it is important to ensure there is space and opportunities for users to form a culture of collaboration (Davis et al., 2009). Lack of trust may result in low individual commitment, diffuse roles, role overload and social loafing (where one person puts less effort into the work than other group members) (Morrison-Smith and Ruiz, 2020).

Coeckelbergh (2024) explores the nature of metaverses and comes to the conclusion that they should be regarded as ‘representations of reality because they are entangled with our perception of the world’ (p. 30). This entangled perspective is of interest to this project where we are interested in metaverse-specific consequences that affect partnerships in education when students engage in group work activities. Coeckelbergh (2024) points out that since a person can typically decide on the look of their virtual body in the metaverse (through their avatar’s gender, skin or hair colour), the environment invites gender politics. Interactions in the metaverse bring us face to face with the politics of language, for instance the use of non-binary language, while the stories about the metaverse shape reality of and in the metaverse. Coeckelbergh explains that virtuality does not mean being free to do anything; on the contrary, it requires the virtual body to be disciplined through its real-life counterpart. Coeckelbergh also wonders how empowerment operates in the metaverse and what conditions need to be met for the metaverse to be truly empowering.

In the examples we will refer to later, we show how participants interacted in the metaverse and demonstrate that they did so with a purpose and specific goals. They formed partnerships because they shared goals (Bernal et al., 2004). As mentioned earlier, the next step is to explore the concept of partnership and its relationship to care ethics in the context of a metaverse experience. We will start with an exploration of the nature of educational partnerships in metaverses through the lens of theories of cooperation and collaboration.

Partnerships expressed through cooperation and collaboration in online environments

Cooperation and collaboration are forms of team-based learning formats that can be confused with each other, in parts because the literature sometimes refers to them as more or less synonymous (Yang, 2023). Higher education researchers have studied peer interaction intensively for some time now, for instance, by examining group pedagogies such as project or case-based learning (Kolmos et al., 2006; Stentoft et al., 2014). What these pedagogies have in common is the investigation of a problem, a challenge, a phenomenon or a case by members of a group. The nature of the work undertaken by group members may involve cooperation or collaboration, and a mix of the two has been described as the most prevalent form of group work (Jeong and Hmelo-Silver, 2016). Cooperation has been described as more structured than collaboration (Yang, 2023), perhaps because team members take on discrete tasks that when combined address an overall challenge to be addressed. Collaboration, by contrast, requires that individuals share and discuss their findings with each other, and this necessitates respect for the contributions of the other(s) (Dillenbourg et al., 1996), a commitment to the shared process of knowledge creation (Roschelle and Teasley, 1995) and ‘negotiations, discussions, and accommodating others’ perspectives’ (Kozar, 2010: 17). Those definitions about collaboration align with European core values, such as human dignity, human rights and equality to promote a stance against discrimination (European Union, n.d.). As a form of partnership engagement, group work is a process, not a product. It is a way of doing things, rather than an outcome in itself. ‘All partnership is student engagement, but not all student engagement is partnership’ clarify Healey et al. (2014: 7). Partnership does not necessarily assume equality between actors, but it requires respect of each other’s ‘life experiences, diversity, individual needs and aspirations’ (Pauli et al., 2016: 10). In a pedagogical setting it means that teachers should make efforts to recognise the nature of group work and the format they wish to deploy, and offer their students strategies for seeing the diversity of groups as a resource and not an obstacle aligning with European values to ‘combat social exclusion and discrimination’, to promote wellbeing and to promote ‘equality between women and men’ (European Union, n.d.). It means that teachers need to set up inclusive (both physical and online) environments that support such ambitions and assist with respecting differences.

Known challenges of (online) group work include a fear that other students may be ‘free-riding’, and specific to the online environment is the frustration individuals feel when they receive no feedback or delayed feedback, drawing out the process and giving rises to a sense of discontinuity (Chang and Kang, 2016). Thus, cooperative or collaborative group work requires partnerships between individuals, including students and teachers who care for each other, a kind of reciprocal giving and receiving of care (Kittay, 2015).

Partnership and care as a process

Our understanding of partnership is indebted to the feminist conception of partnership developed by Eisler (2002) and taken up by hooks (2010) in her pedagogical thought. Referring to Eisler’s work on partnership, hooks (2010: 113–114) argues that in a society structured by hierarchical inequalities along class, race and gender lines, it is difficult to think about relationships – such as that between teachers and students – outside of the model of domination. However, the alternative to domination for hooks is not an assumed equality that would deny the hierarchy in the teacher-student relationship. hooks asserts that it is possible to acknowledge inequality in the classroom without falling into the domination model, by following Eisler’s partnership model, which emphasizes mutuality, respect, care and a sensitive use of power with the aim of empowerment. For the Makerspace in the metaverse, this model of partnership supports relational care through the use of avatars, allowing participants to playfully challenge differences. On the other hand, however, it runs the risk of concealing real power hierarchies.

Caring, understood as ethical and emotional activity, is central to our understanding of partnership as a process. As defined by Fisher and Tronto, care ‘includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we may live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web’ (Fisher, cited in Tronto 2015: 3). Care is thus an activity or task, something that is done rather than simply postulated; it often involves effort and exploitation, it is not always pleasant, though it may be. Caring has cognitive and affective dimensions: It is important to know how to care and care-giving and care-receiving usually involves emotions (e.g. pain and consolation, fear and encouragement). Caring also has an ethical dimension, within the notion of the good life or the good-as-possible life. Most importantly, according to Tronto (2015: 4), caring is always relational.

Caring partnerships also require the use of a shared common language through the ‘mutual exploration of relevant ethical issues with other persons’ (Parrott, 2016: 24). Parrott (who bases his argument on Jürgen Habermas’ notion of communicative reason) explains that a caring partnership ought to set the conditions so everyone can speak and that this can only be achieved when everyone also listens.

The caring relation is also central to Noddings’ (1984, 2012) ethics of care that informs the pedagogy of the present paper. Noddings sees teaching as an encounter with another subject, the student, who has ideas, thoughts, wishes, needs and feelings of their own: ‘[t]he caring relation in teaching’ involves three steps: first, to really pay attention to the cared-for, to closely watch and listen to them and the needs they express, instead of assuming or imposing needs; second, responding in a way that maintains the caring relationship even if the needs cannot be met, as it is often the case; and third, from the side of the cared-for, it requires communication that care has been received, for example, through a nod or the completion of a task (Noddings, 2012: 772–773). Similar to Eisler and hooks, Noddings (2012) states that the caring relation in teaching may not be an equal one, but that both parties are involved in it. Thus, it can be understood as a partnership established by dialogue and characterised by feelings of trust and safety (p. 772). In line with Noddings (2012) we believe caring is not something teachers have to provide ‘on top’ of everything else; we take the view that establishing a ‘climate of care’ is fundamental to teaching and learning (p. 777). While this may be more accepted in the context of primary and maybe secondary education, care has been somewhat neglected in the context of higher education. However, the pandemic and increased instances of digital learning have given rise to a growing awareness of well-being; this also forms the background to our research.

What happens if we transfer this understanding of care to the Makerspace, so that caring for the world involves the virtual world? What is necessary to enable participants to collaborate and work together in this virtual space as well as possible? Besides caring for the technology, that is, maintenance and repair, this requires a caring relation as propounded by Noddings to be established between subjects who are present in the Makerspace as avatars.

A metaverse to promote care and welcome diversity: The HIP study

Hacking Innovative Pedagogies (HIP): Digital Education Rewilded is an Erasmus+ partnership project, funded by the European Union. It involves teams from three different universities (located in Denmark, Ireland and Austria) in the reimagination of traditional university education. The idea in the project is to offer more equity and inclusivity, a challenge many European higher education institutions need to address. The aim of the project team is to identify how the three different universities can be more transformative to help build active, digitally competent and diversity-minded European citizens (Czerniewicz, 2022). The intention is to rethink the role of new digital technology for higher education pedagogy, including creative ways that support transformative pedagogical approaches (Sharpe et al., 2010). Uniquely, the project is committed to a philosophy of listening, responding and co-creating with networked communities of teachers, students and higher education experts and to doing so in innovative ways that facilitate the ‘rewilding’ of out-of-date models of university education. Here, we are examining if a metaverse strengthens this intention.

By rewilding we mean processes that start by removing or unbundling traditional structures, objects and practices and refurbishing them with structures that are more native, fit-for-purpose and transformative for a given environment (Otrel-Cass et al., 2024). Rewilding is a response to the way many digital technologies have been merely assimilated into traditional teaching methods and learning habitats. In this project we seek to disrupt traditional approaches that have been slow to respond or lack agility to take advantage of exciting new pedagogical and interdisciplinary opportunities for 21st century learners.

Through the hacking of innovative pedagogies, this project also seeks to re-envision the current higher education ecosystem by finding ways to connect and grow patches of unique teaching and learning into rewilded habitats for transformative pedagogy. Such habitats will also seed and support digitally enhanced pedagogy that is equitable, diversity-minded and inclusive for all learners.

As part of the project, our research team set up a virtual space we called the Makerspace (see Figure 1). In this space, educators, technical experts and student teachers worked together in online teams for three weeks on a given challenge. They were asked to choose an avatar and a pseudonym to ensure anonymity and to protect personal data, which is a fundamental European right (European Parliament, online). Pseudonyms were also used to eliminate hierarchies, as participants did not know each other’s professions or identities in general. At the beginning, participants were presented with several challenges. They were given the opportunity to adapt or refine them, or to propose a new one. Participants were then asked to vote for their preferred challenge. Participants were then grouped with people who were interested in the same challenge.

Figure 1.

The makerspace, screenshot of the spot virtual platform.

The research team did not work on the challenges, they provided support to participants, for instance on technical issues. For this purpose, they created a virtual office with set ‘office hours’. Participants could simply leave a note in the office or talk to the team members directly. To be easily recognisable, research team created clearly marked avatars (wearing a wizard’s hat). Thus, they were not part of the teamwork but appeared in the Makerspace at different times to offer support.

Methodology

In this study we worked with three research questions: (1) How are interactions affected when people meet in a virtual world; (2) How do people experience these interactions and (3) How do participants identify themselves in a virtual world when given the option to choose a new identity.

The investigation was conducted as a three-week-long digital ethnography. Digital ethnography allows researchers to study lived digital cultures (Varis, 2015) and follows traditional ethnographic approaches by providing thick descriptions of people’s practices (Geertz, 1973). Digital ethnography, as defined by Underberg and Zorn (2013), is a methodology that captures real-life cultures by integrating features of digital media with storytelling elements. It facilitates the examination of online cultural realities, such as virtual communities on digital platforms, through an ethnographic lens. This approach is used to decipher the significances attributed to technology and the digital cultural experiences that both influence and are influenced by it (Hine, 2000).

Conducting digital ethnography involves the methodical observation and analysis of online interactions within specific virtual environments like chatrooms, discussion forums, or virtual reality spaces. Textual and graphical content is analysed, to understand the underlying meanings through direct engagement and participant observation (Boellstorff et al., 2012). The affordances of digital ethnography include the ability to transcend geographical, societal and hierarchical boundaries while Hakken (1999) suggests that self-identities, social relations and cyber structures are critical areas of exploration.

Given the research interest of this study on self-identity, digital ethnography allows for the analysis on how online anonymity supports individuals to adopt different personas or avatars that may differ from their offline identity. Although we did not examine our participants’ offline identities for comparison we interviewed them about the meaning of their avatar. This line of investigation permits tracing the evolution of online identity. Studies by Kendall (2002) on gender dynamics and by Gajjala (2004) on feminist online spaces show how identities and social relations are constructed and enacted within digital spaces.

We were interested in the analysis of the individual identities of our participants when they are interacting online in a metaverse. Hakken (1999) suggests this can be achieved this by paying attention to understanding social relations across three levels: the micro-level interactions within networks, the meso-level dynamics of online communities, and the macro-level relations affecting cultural and power structures in cyberspace (Garcia et al., 2009; Hakken, 1999).

Another important focus in the analysis process of (digital) ethnography is paying attention to the context (Varis, 2015). In this respect it is important to point out that the digital environment (the Makerspace) was shaped by the options the platform offered to its users. It was based on a platform known as Spot (spotvirtual.com). Figure 1 gives an impression of the look of this metaverse. Spot allows users to set up and decorate rooms within a virtual world (based on templates). Users choose an avatar, allowing them to decide on gender, clothing, hair style and colours, skin colour and age and whether they want to look like a human or something else (e.g. a robot, a cookie).

The data collection and analysis

Five researchers collected data over three weeks in 2024, from 30 participants who interacted in the online Makerspace. The data collection included: field notes, 34 screen recordings of varying lengths from the Makerspace, and 59 screenshots. With the permission of the participants, we also captured group chat conversations. The team collected and transcribed focus group interview data (n = 5), they conducted an online survey (n = 13) after the Makerspace activity, and collected complementary documents (for instance, materials produced by participants). This mode of triangulating different sources of data should achieve a more precise analysis. The project was granted permission to collect data in this way through an ethics committee and all participants were provided with information and signed a letter of informed consent prior to data collection.

The research team presented participants with seven challenges. Each participant was asked to choose one of the challenges, and in all, six of the seven challenges were chosen. The 30 participants were organised into 10 groups (challenges could be completed by more than one group, but group size was set at a maximum of three people). Participants were grouped solely based on their shared interest in a challenge. The participants included Austrian university students, as well as university teachers and IT professionals from five different countries (Austria, Denmark, Ukraine, Italy and Germany). The most popular challenge was ‘Gamification for teaching’, which resulted in the formation of three groups. Two groups focused on ‘Future oriented challenges’ and two groups investigated ‘Wellbeing through movement’.

From our data collection (field notes, screen recordings, screenshots, interviews and survey) we analysed our participants’ experiences in the Makerspace at the micro-, meso- and macro-level to identify themes in our analysis. This means, we had to zoom in and out in our analysis, discussing small details and bringing those back to the bigger picture. It allowed us to switch theoretical lenses and foreground some details while putting other details into the background to produce ‘a thicker representation of practice’ (Nicolini, 2009: 14). We will detail examples of this practice in our findings.

Findings

Defining the social setting

Social interactions including when they take place online, may sometimes involve some offline interaction. In the case of the Makerspace interaction the university students were in principle able to interact offline, while the international participants were only able to meet and engage with their group online. The university students were asked not to meet in person during the three week period and use avatars and pseudonyms, for two reasons: (a) not to change the dynamics within a group, especially if one member is not able to meet face-to-face and (b) to experiment with their identity (if they wished to do so) by using an avatar. In a survey we conducted at the conclusion of the Makerspace activities more than 60% of participants indicated that they did not try to find out each other’s ‘real’ identities. There were situations, where the participants found out about the others through the details of their conversations. However, everyone seemed to be fine to interact in this way. We designed the virtual environment, so it would be friendly and welcoming, adding plants, pictures of cats and dogs, setting up various meeting areas and a games area and also providing food and refreshments in every room (see Figure 2). This decision was based on a pilot study where the feedback included to add playfulness and nature to the virtual set up. Aesthetic aspects of online environments on users’ wellbeing should be designed to be ‘for the most part, restorative, naturalistic, engaging and richly complex’ (Gorichanaz et al., 2023: 260). In general, the goal was to create a welcoming, secure and ‘green’ metaverse.

Figure 2.

The swimming pool and a wizard, screenshot from the spot virtual platform.

Participants were also granted administrator rights, allowing them to customise the virtual space according to their own needs and preferences. However, only a few participants made use of this option. The research team was present in the Makerspace during ‘office hours’ that were communicated to all participants (usually 1 hour each day). The avatars of research team members were all recognizable since they were wearing wizard’s hats, so that the participants could easily identify the research team (see Figure 2). While some participants only communicated via the chat function, others turned on their microphones to talk to each other. Ideas and plans were captured on the whiteboard or in the group chat and some groups used additional platforms (e.g. Canva) to share information and work on documents. Our analysis of the data identified the following three themes:

Theme 1: Being an avatar – the metaverse is postdigital

Postdigitality describes ‘the assemblage of humans and more-than-human (digital) technology’ (Otrel-Cass, 2024: 1) and this means that people’s online and offline identities are intertwined. In our project, the avatars were like connecting nodes between the online and the analogue world of each person. Our participants had different reasons for their choice of avatar. One person reflected:

I use avatars in a lot of online settings already. And I actually gave my avatar the same name that I would in any online game. That name is based on a fictional character. So I tried to make my avatar sort of look like that character, that fictional character. I did have a bit of fun with some / a pirate hat and other things, mainly for my own amusement. But, but, that is, the main / so to speak reason for why my character looked the way it did. (FG2, P2, 06:23)

The way avatars looked was a very personal decision; in this case it connected the individual to another online identity. In the survey 77% of the participants stated that they chose their real gender but not necessarily their real skin colour (53%). They also commented that they did not use their real hair for their avatars (colour/style) (85%) or personal accessories (92%). One individual who had no prior experience with avatars commented in the focus group discussion:

It was fun choosing my avatar, I tried every option and chose what I felt comfortable with. It was good that there weren’t too many options but there were enough different features to choose from. I felt really comfortable with my avatar and I like that I created it myself . I chose my name because of my favorite game – Spyro, the dragon. (FG, P4, 10:43)

In this case the individual made a meaningful connection between their avatar and their life by choosing a name that had significance for them. To us it signified that the choices for their avatar’s identity were not made at random.

Another participant reflected on familiarising themselves with the virtual world and how it felt operating in the Makerspace as an avatar:

For me it was like moving in space, because at first I didn’t realise, ok, how do I get through the wall, or exactly how do I move at all. But then I realised that you can have a relationship with objects, so you can eat pizza or drink coffee. In other words, that’s what I did from time to time, simply in order to experience it and to see myself being active in the room. (FG2, P5, 04:15)

The individual commented on having an embodied experience through the avatar and with the virtual objects. It was interesting that the participant reflected on the experiences with virtual objects. The participant did not strictly only focus on the task at hand but experimented and exhibited playfulness (e.g. eating virtual pizza) to get an impression of how it felt to be in the virtual space.

The virtual embodied identities of the participants were not separate from the individuals who designed them. The avatars were entangled with the identities of the real-world participants. In deciding who they wanted to be, participants frequently chose features that either resembled their avatar in other virtual worlds or based them on their appearance in the real world. It also happened that they chose features that were quite different from their real-world identity. One participant, for example, chose to be a gingerbread man. The person commented in the focus group discussion:

I actually followed your suggestion that you can be anything, that you don’t HAVE to choose a human-looking avatar and I thought that was a good suggestion because I thought to myself that I wanted to take advantage of the fact that for once nobody knows who I am, and that’s why I chose this / I was a biscuit. So it was a cookie monster. And I found that very funny. (FG2, P5, 02:44)

This comment supported again our observation of the playful elements the metaverse offered, and the opportunity to explore different versions of themselves. This observation echoes Coeckelbergh’s (2024) point on the politics of virtual worlds and their potential to question existing norms. It was clear to us that the online presence and activities of the participants through their avatars in the virtual world, while individually different, had meaning and a clear connection to individuals’ offline identities.

Theme 2: Partner work, commitment and the continuity of an online space

The fact that online interactions between the individuals working on their challenges were asynchronous meant that people had to write to each other. They could also use audio to talk with each other. Each group had their own group whiteboard (see Figure 3) where they could either leave notes for each other when they were interacting asynchronously or use as a notepad to capture plans and ideas. In contrast to video conferencing, this provided a personalised way for people to get to know each other and interact, with the whiteboard offering permanency. What had been written on it was not deleted from one visit to the next and this also meant that if one person could not attend when others were present, they could still read what had been discussed and decided. The whiteboard and group chat were stable objects that allowed for continuity in partner work.

One participant reflected on the difference between regular videoconferences and the experiences within the online Makerspace:

In the Makerspace, we had a shared space. So I decided to put a laptop on the . . . on the table to sort of signify where my spot was. (laughs) So I kind of felt at home. And I can’t do that in a Zoom Meeting because as soon as I hang up, it’s gone. And so in that regard, I think there is some value in having a virtual environment because I feel like I’m going back to the same place. Yeah, it’s not as temporary in that sense. (FG2, P2, 40:35)

Another participant noted in the survey:

The Makerspace makes it individual, so if I’m waiting for my group to reply I can wander around and ‘eat pizza’ or play games or write on [a] whiteboard. This motivates [me] because it never feels boring in the makerspace, whereas I did feel bored in class. In other online environments there isn’t [a] tool that’s all in one place – for example, you can use Zoom for Videochat but if you want to write things down and keep a record of them, you need another tool/programme. (S1, P19)

Figure 3 shows the start of the Group 2 conversation, discussing when they might have time to meet. The conversation includes a question from one group member about any language preferences. It was left on the whiteboard, clearly legible by other group members so they could respond openly.

Figure 3.

The group 2 whiteboard, screenshot from the spot virtual platform.

Figure 4 is a screenshot of the Group 2 whiteboard showing this exchange at a later stage, where the group has decided on some key things they want to look at as a group. This is an example of cooperative working, with the group assigning tasks to each other in order to address their challenge, a shared commitment to knowledge creation through forms of negotiations (Kozar, 2010; Roschelle and Teasley, 1995).

Figure 4.

Group 2 cooperation, screenshot of the platform spot virtual.

John Little, one of the group members, appeared not to have attended a synchronous meeting where these tasks were distributed. The group left a note for him, asking if he could take on the task of ‘doing research on the benefits and challenges of the escape room concept for teaching in general’. John Little replied with a ‘Yes’ and an arrow connecting his response to the task assigned to him.

When we talked to the participants in the focus group interviews one of them mentioned:

I think it was good that I did not know who the others really were, because then I had to give 100% in my group work, because if I had known the others I might know their work style and take advantage of this (putting in maybe 70-80% effort). (FG2, P4, 23:56)

We thought it was curious that this individual felt they would be more committed if they did not know the real identities of the people they were working with. There seemed to be more at stake working anonymously during the two week period. It may however, also have been shaped by the fact that the groups knew they would reveal their identities when their products were shared with everyone else. However, groupwork also had its challenges. Some participants complained that group members did not respond or did not turn up at the agreed times. As one participant noted in the survey: ‘It’s a bit annoying that you can’t be 100% sure everybody will show up on time’ (S1, P6). Another complained that ‘communication was a bit difficult, since some people rarely responded or [. . .] didn’t send in their work’. (S1, P11). Anonymity and commitment were perceived quite differently. One participant stated they felt ‘like there’s a lot less at stake’ when working in a group with avatars.

The participants reported quite different experiences, with the cultivation of relationships between group members and the sharing of responsibilities being perceived quite differently. Partnership work and the commitment to solve the chosen challenge together with other participants in the metaverse seemed to present challenges that are similar to conventional group work (see for example Chang and Kang 2016).

Theme 3: Caring partnerships

Partners valuing each other’s contribution and demonstrating that they care about each other are features of working research partnerships (Groot and Abma, 2019). Examples of this kind of care were evident in the exchanges in the Makerspace Metaverse.

One participant reflected in the survey on interactions in the Makerspace:

I was more polite and thought more about what I should write since I didn’t know who the others in my team were in real life. (S1, P11)

Anonymity seemed to heighten some people’s care with regard to their engagement with each other. In fact, we did not observe any ignorant or disrespectful communications. Group 8, for instance, arranged to meet (Figure 5). One of the group members (Spyro), could not make that time and was only available during the evening at 8:00 p.m. (Spyro: I’m so sorry, something came up and changed my plans. Now I can’t do thursday. I only can do 20:00; Thursday at 20:00 p.m. is also fine for me (Anneliese)). One of the participants had children and responsibilities and in the chat that followed this whiteboard post they agreed to reschedule to accommodate this. One of the group members wrote: ‘I am sure we can make this work’ and the other person responded: ‘Thanks. You guys are super <3’

Figure 5.

Changing a meeting Group 8, screenshot from the spot virtual platform.

One of the participants was deaf. The person reflected in the focus group interview after the Makerspace experience:

For me, Makerspace was barrier-free. The communication worked well via chat and in the real world we would have needed an interpreter. I really liked working in the Makerspace because it was clear, direct and fast. I felt there no barriers or other kinds of discrimination and that’s a very important point!!! (FG2, P4, 41:55)

Caring about each other was a factor of communication, as another participant pointed out in their survey response:

I believe that communication in the Makerspace was filled with kindness, mutual respect and positivity. The anonymity gave me the confidence to express my thoughts. Unlike other online environments, the Makerspace had a sense of immersion in virtual reality. It was nice to do what I would do in reality. (S1, P8)

When real partnership work developed (in the sense that participants had shared goals), communication was characterised by openness and care and a degree of informality, possibly fostered by the anonymous environment. In the Makerspace, care was expressed through communications based on user needs. Just as Parrott (2016) highlights that caring partnerships need to have partners who have learned to listen and relate and use language and modes that supports such intentions.

Discussion and conclusion

Our aim in this article was to present a discussion about the nature of metaverses, real life and people’s embodiment and connect this with the concept of partnership and care ethics. To illustrate our thinking, we presented examples. We intended to rewild our own pedagogies by challenging conventional and traditional structures (use of the metaverse) (Otrel-Cass et al., 2024).

Our findings showed that more than half of participants did not find out who other group members were. The remainder found out either intentionally (looking up details) or by accident (e.g. through using audio for communication and recognising someone’s voice or guessing from the details of the conversation. Kelty et al. (2015: 475) describe seven dimensions of participation that clearly highlight the distribution of power and the autonomy that individuals are being given. These dimensions are (1) the educational background of participants; (2) the potential for individual decision making; (3) having ownership of one’s product; (4) voluntary participation and the possibility of withdrawal; (5) space for participants’ voices; (6) metrics to evaluate participation; and (7) space for emotions. The metaverse set-up provided space for many but not all of these dimensions. Participants’ educational background varied, but everyone had a university education. The participants were from different European countries and universities, with different pedagogical practices and experiences. Yet, despite those differences there was not much evidence that this created difficulties. The ability to vote for a preferred challenge and then work with other individuals who had the same interest seemed to bind different members to their groups. The outcomes and products to be delivered by the groups allowed groups the freedom to choose the preferred formats. Participation was voluntary for the 10 experts but not the 20 university students, for whom the online activity was part of their mandatory course work. We set up the metaverse to allow for a diversity of voices, but this might have been different if we had allowed for the use of video cameras. We did not use metrics to demonstrate to participants how their participation was connected to the outcome. Overall, we believe the metaverse allowed for effective communication, and this was demonstrated in some of the comments and the interviews.

We found that the Makerspace environment invited playfulness, presented opportunities, entailed disappointments and demanded commitment. The anonymous nature of the environment was imposed by the research team, and we found that it challenged existing hierarchies and promoted caring partnerships. This was affirmed through the example of the deaf student and the example of support for those with childcare responsibilities. The virtual environment broke down some existing barriers (for instance, picking a language and agreeing to communicate via chat allows those who do not feel secure speaking publicly to read and type, thus avoiding embarrassment). While virtual navigation could have posed initial challenges, we noticed participants taking time to explore and become familiar with the Makerspace and its available tools (Davis et al., 2009).

In his work on metaverses, Coeckelbergh (2024) points out that since a person can typically decide on the look of their virtual body in the metaverse (their avatar’s gender, skin and hair colour), the environment invites gender politics. Interactions in the metaverse involve language politics, for instance, if non-binary language is used. And when people talk about the metaverse, stories about the metaverse shape the reality of and reality in the metaverse. On the other hand, the Makerspace and the ability to choose the look of an avatar did not result in people necessarily challenging a dominant gender system. With exception of the gingerbread person, most though not all avatars were not only assigned an unambiguous and binary gender, but they also conformed with participants’ gender identities in the real world. Gender play was limited by the fact that some people not only used chat but also turned on microphones and used their voices, introducing gendered bodies/voices into the metaverse. Thus, while the avatars were able to move through walls, virtual bodies remained rather ‘disciplined’ (Coeckelbergh, 2024) with regard to gender. Virtual embodied presences were also governed by the options allowed for by avatars. Playfulness, for example, was limited to the use of emoticons, a few games (paper, scissors, rocks) and some options to move and sit in unusual places (such as the swimming pool). However, avatars were connected to the real persons they represented, and their performances were intertwined, which is characteristic of postdigitality (Jandrić et al., 2018).

As defined above metaverses are ‘virtual worlds’ that overcome some of the physical limitation[s] of the real world (Davis et al., 2009: 93), for example with regard to time and space. In contrast to other online environments the Makerspace offers a sense of continuity and that was something participants appreciated. The whiteboard and chat function were stable objects in the Makerspace that allowed participants to listen to each other’s needs, value each other’s contributions and thus work together in partnership. Participants also made themselves ‘at home’ in the Makerspace by adding objects such as a Christmas tree or putting a laptop on the table to mark/signify ‘their’ space. Continuity, in particular with regard to building trust and a sense of safety, is also central to Noddings (2012) ‘pedagogy of care’.

However, continuity was not always achieved; some participants found the Makerspace and the asynchronous conversation in chats challenging and felt less committed to contributing. Working at times with strangers meant that there was no prior shared experience affecting how much group partners trusted each other (Morrison-Smith and Ruiz, 2020). Continuity in partnership work demands that partners plan their approach and how they will deal with challenges in order to pre-empt potential risks that threaten the stability of the partnership (Chang and Kang 2016). As mentioned earlier, we also found that the caring partnership model of attending to each other’s needs worked well in some groups. Accountability and being able to rely on each other’s contributions is key to good partnerships and in some cases we found evidence of respect for each other’s ‘life experiences, diversity, individual needs and aspirations’ (Pauli et al., 2016: 10). However, this was not true for all groups. The less successful interactions led to expressions of disappointment from individuals. Care through dialogue as exemplified in the group with the deaf student increased feelings of trust and safety (Noddings, 2012: 772).

The study was conducted as a digital ethnography to examine online cultural realities (Underberg and Zorn, 2013). It involved the methodical observation and analysis of online interactions, both directly and by way of participant accounts (Boellstorff et al., 2012). We found that a limitation of this study is that we collected feedback from individuals and not always from the entire groups. This was due to the challenge of finding a time when all group participants could come together. The Austrian students were interviewed as a class but not as individual groups, and focus groups were organised by participants’ willingness and availability; future research could pay more attention to the group response. As a European higher education intervention, based on European democratic values, we felt our approach was neither fully barrier-free, nor fully participatory or fully democratic. We observed that the diversity within the groups (i.e. educational background, gender, ability, culture etc.) afforded extensive preparations to ensure the metaverse could inform, respond to and accommodate different ideas and perspectives.

The Makerspace metaverse was a place where a heterogeneous group of people from across Europe was able to come together and engage playfully but seriously with each other, with a range of levels of commitment. It was a space that, despite its limitations, was also characterised by mutual care and respect, a key condition for partnerships in education.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: Data presented here was generated as part of an Erasmus+ project, funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or OeAD-GmbH. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. The authors acknowledge also the financial support by the University of Graz.

ORCID iDs

Kathrin Otrel-Cass

Olena Beskorsa

Michael Reicho

Melanie Gürentz

Author biographies

Kathrin Otrel-Cass is a Professor of educational research and digital transformation at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research focuses on the intersections of technology-enhanced learning environments, science education, and ethnographic research methodologies, with particular emphasis on human-technology interactions.

Olena Beskorsa PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education, the University of Graz, Austria. Her expertise includes developing pre-service school teachers’ interculturalcompetence; fostering innovative educational practices in emergency situations through digital technology.

Iris Mendel is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests include education and social inequality, feminist theories, care and critical pedagogy.

Michael Reicho is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz, Austria. His research interests include digital competences, fake news and artificial intelligence.

Melanie Gürentz is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests include out-of-field teaching in STEAM subjects, career changers’ transition into teaching and innovative teaching techniques.

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