Growing the use of Virtual Worlds in education : an OpenSim perspective

The growth in the range of disciplines that Virtual Worlds support for educational purposes is evidenced by recent applications in the fields of cultural heritage, humanitarian aid, space exploration, virtual laboratories in the physical sciences, archaeology, computer science and coastal geography. This growth is due in part to the flexibility of OpenSim, the open source virtual world platform which by adopting Second Life protocols and norms has created a de facto standard for open virtual worlds that is supported by a growing number of third party open source viewers. Yet while this diversity of use-cases is impressive and Virtual Worlds for open learning are highly popular with lecturers and learners alike immersive education remains an essentially niche activity. This paper identifies functional challenges in terms of Management, Network Infrastructure, the Immersive 3D Web and Programmability that must be addressed to enable the wider adoption of Open Virtual Worlds as a routine learning technology platform. We refer to specific use-cases based on OpenSim and abstract generic requirements which should be met to enable the growth in use of Open Virtual Worlds as a mainstream educational facility. A case study of a deployment to support a formal education curriculum and associated informal learning is used to illustrate key points.Postprin

Database Concepts in a Virtual World

This project explored the use of a 3-D virtual world in an introductory database course to reduce the amount of time required to learn database concepts. A Second Life 3-D model was built to clarify database concepts and students used the model to create a Microsoft Access inventory database. Thereafter, the students provided feedback by answering a voluntary survey. Eighty two percent of the students surveyed agreed that the 3-D model clarified terms such as records, tables, primary keys and relationships. Seventy five percent of the students believed that the model reduced the amount of time required to learn these concepts

Lessons Learned Implementing an Educational System in Second Life

Second Life is an online 3D virtual environment that offers interesting potential for use in education due to its widespread availability, flexibility, and its use of standard platforms and input devices. Given a broad design brief for a nine-week masters student project of using Second Life for education, we explored a range of potential ways of using the environment, and designed and implemented a 3D turtle-graphics system. In this paper we present our findings together with a reflection on both the constraints that Second Life places on the range of educational uses worth pursuing, and the specific issues likely to be faced by researchers creating other such systems