Rape in virtual worlds

Bugeja, M. (2010) Avatar Rape Inside Higher Education, February 25

I hesitated about posting this blog, not because of the content, but because I already had a strong reaction to a previous posting suggesting that virtual worlds still had a long way to come before they are going to be useful in education, and I don’t want to give the impression that I am always criticising virtual worlds. Quite the contrary, in fact. I believe they have tremendous potential for education, but because they are so potentially revolutionary, they force us to think radically about what education is, and how it can best be delivered – all great questions.

This article though raises another set of questions, basically about online behaviour and institutions’ responsibilities to students, particularly if they are being sent into virtual worlds. It also asks questions about the nature of rape and whether it can actually be rape in a virtual world. To my mind, the issue is more about ethics and the concept of virtuality than about the educational aspects of virtual worlds, but because it made me think more carefully about something I might need to deal with as an online tutor, I found the article useful and thought provoking ( the good kind).