What are the risks of Virtual Reality data? Learning Analytics, Algorithmic Bias and a Fantasy of Perfect Data

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology with the potential to extract significantly more data about learners and the learning process. In this article, we present an analysis of how VR education technology companies frame, use and analyse this data. We found both an expansion and acceleration of what data are being collected about learners and how these data are being mobilised in potentially discriminatory and problematic ways. Beyond providing evidence for how VR represents an intensification of the datafication of education, we discuss three interrelated critical issues that are specific to VR: the fantasy that VR data is ‘perfect’, the datafication of soft-skills training, and the commercialisation and commodification of VR data. In the context of the issues identified, we caution the unregulated and uncritical application of learning analytics to the data that are collected from VR training.

The material politics of mobile virtual reality: Oculus, data, and the technics of sensemaking

“…In short, VR – particularly as Facebook and Oculus have become more tightly interwoven over the last several years, Oculus a more central part of the Facebook ‘ensemble’ – shows the potential for Facebook to further intensify its extractive and accumulative tendencies. Through the framework of concretization – and specifying MVR’s apparatuses of sensemaking – we introduce new questions that ‘critical VR’ (Carter and Egliston, 2021) scholars would do well to ask about the role of VR within the business models and political economies of big tech companies investing in the VR space (see Egliston and Carter, 2020), and what big tech stands to gain through this intervention.…”

“…Further, while data-governance laws – such as the GDPR and the CCPA – apply to Oculus’ data processing, these measures are hamstrung by being framed around improving mechanisms for consent for surveillance, rather than imposing harder-line limits on data capture (see Viljoen, 2020) – especially pertinent given that these devices are embedded into home life. Beyond Facebook’s own use of this data, as we have argued elsewhere through a case study of VR edutech companies (Carter and Egliston, 2021), increasingly being rolled out in workplaces using Oculus hardware, third party uses of VR data have the potential to materialise forms of social inequality.…”

Metaverse Evreninde Sporun Bugünü ve Geleceğine Yönelik Bir Derleme

“…ABD'nin en büyük beyzbol kulüplerinden biri olan New York Yankees, WIN Reality Games uygulaması aracılığıyla çeşitli antrenmanlarını sanal gerçeklik sistemleri aracılığıyla sürdürdüğüne dair açıklama yapmıştır. Bunun yanında çok sayıda sporcuyla, çok sayıda taktik öge barındırmasıyla bilinen Amerikan Futbolu branşında, antrenmanların daha etkin olması amacıyla STRIVR uygulamasını birçok NFL takımının kullandığı bilinmektedir (Carter & Egliston, 2021). Cannavo ve diğerlerinin (2017) çalışmasında basketbolda taktik çalışmalarda VR Playbook uygulamasının etkililiğine dair yaptıkları çalışmada da kullanım alanına dair farklı bir örnek sergilenmektedir.…”

Protean Kinematics: A Blended Model of VR Physics

“…All this being said, we would be remiss to not discuss the ethical implications of motion tracking in VR (Miller et al, 2020;Carter and Egliston, 2021). Indeed, the platformization of VR (e.g., Oculus) is of grave concern to many VR users and researchers (Egliston and Carter, 2020).…”