Another student of mine posted her MA dissertation on scribd (previous postings can be found here). Theodora picked a topic that was close to my research interests and looked at the complex issue of avatar appearance in virtual worlds. She studied  (a) how students design their avatars in 3D virtual worlds and what factors influence those decisions, and (b) the relationship between students’ physical and virtual appearance. This area is wide open for more research -there’s enough speculation to go around, so we don’t need any of that ;)