Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

Another talk at the ELI Spring 2007 Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments.

Phillip D. Long
Associate Director
Office of Educational Innovation and Technology
MIT

Virtual Learning Environments in 3D

MIT Virtual World Project

Started as a way to reach out to incoming freshman to explain and allow exploration of housing options.

Students used to come, for 1st two weeks did not unpack – just explored to find their fit.

To streamline this, built a residence hall in Second Life so students could explore before coming to campus.

A 3D Facebook!

Planning

* IDEO – Space as a narrative. MIT took this idea as well as ethnographic studies – interviewed students to find out what was important to them.
* Initially was to be a game-like environment.
* Then looked a Second Life.
* Intellectual Property concerns with Terms of Service Agreement. Indemnification. NMC has a service – you rent from them and they take on legal responsibility.
* Can it be named MIT? As long a faculty approved it, yes.
* Used existing policies for web presences to add SL to MIT.
* Got some seed money from SLOAN for student contest to build their own living space.

Cautions

What if students do "bad" things re: residence halls. Could expose things nobody wants/needs to know about.

Web Site

http://confab.mit.edu/confluence/display/SL/