The Social Design of 3D Interactive Spaces for Security in Higher Education

Abstract

Immersive spaces offer a unique set of security challenges related to human, data, learning facilitation, and virtual environment risks. Security risks may originate from people, the technology, or a mix of unintended synergistic effects; they may originate from intentional, unintentional, and accidental actions. Understanding the risk environment will be important for those who use persistent, immersive 3D spaces for teaching and learning. Based on the current research and direct experiences in educational immersive spaces, this chapter will first define the security risks and offer real-world examples. Then, this will look at various potential social design interventions. “Social design” refers to protective measures created through awareness-raising among all participants, policy creation and implementation, human facilitation of teaching and learning in immersive spaces, and other efforts to improve and maintain the security for the socio-technical system, the institution of higher education, the learners, the faculty, and the larger cyber-sphere. These social design endeavors, one part of a larger 360o security approach, will improve security but never fully attain “perfect security” (a condition of no-risk). This chapter will include an international survey of instructors who teach in 3D immersive spaces to solicit their ideas about security and the social design of protective measures.