When I first saw an article at IHE called “Professor Avatar,” my interest was naturally piqued. When I read the first paragraph about the professor in the “red Hawaiian shirt, holding a lime margarita in his right hand and a wrinkled, fat cigar in the other,” I groaned. Not another reactionary article in IHE to spark debate, I thought. But then I read on and realized Christopher Conway has actually thought about the issue and described it in an entertaining and provocative way.
The issues he brings up involve the blend of public and professional personae, and the use of online “avatars,” which he basically defines as anything presented online. He delineates these avatars as “anonymous,” “relational,” and “teaching,” and suggests we can use the latter to take lectures outside the classroom and use class time for discussion and other meaningful f2f activities. Good stuff.
This is particularly interesting to me right now, as I am teaching a course that revolves around digital media an, basically, the use of avatars. In this course, I have been very self-revealing — much more than usual in a classroom — in the hope that students will do the same as we examine what our internet usage tells us about what it means to participate in American culture in the 21st century. So far, so good. There have been some embarrassing moments, things I hadn’t realized I had on, say, my Myspace page, for example. I think (I hope) being as transparent as possible about my “avatars” and bringing them into class has made the class more interesting and engaging, instead of presenting only the in-person avatar of instructor that students usually see.
Interacting on myspace and facebook, and even over IM is a little like seeing students out in the world in unexpected places, except they don’t do that thing they do in person where they put their heads down and pretend they don’t see you because they don’t know how to interact with you outside of the classroom. The virtual world is, ironically, more humanizing. In fact, I ran into a former student at a concert last week, who said hi, then added me to facebook the very next day, so my avatar can interact with hers.
This blog acts as a professional research and teaching avatar in many respects. I have a lot of personal stuff here, such as the flickr box on the side, but the content is usually related to my research interests (media, film) or teaching, with a few asides about local stuff. I also have an anonymous blog that is much more personal and quirky, and my other avatars (myspace, facebook, etc.) are somewhere in the middle, leaning towards the personal. While I sometimes unintentionally divulge information I perhaps shouldn’t, or don’t mean to, overall I think these activities can extend my research and teaching personae, but they can’t substitute for “the real thing”.
