Amee Adkins, EAF; Ken Fansler, COE; Wes Matejka, COE
Gettin' Good Gear: Play, Pedagogy, and Engagement in World of Warcraft (External Link - YouTube)
Because of substantial advances in digital capacity and bandwidth, participation in massively multi-user, online environments (MMOs) is growing exponentially. As a place where users willingly engage themselves at length, MMOs deserve sustained critical attention as we attempt to understand what they offer, to consider how we might use them educationally, and to learn about learning as presented in these worlds. The presentation will include a short film featuring the presenters as their avatars to introduce a synthetic world, World of Warcraft (WoW). Following the film, the presenters will discuss teaching an undergraduate class partially in the world of the game.
Borinara Park, Technology
In this session, the presenter will offer an overview of his work in using a small scale 3D graphical virtual reality (VR) simulation to provide a more effective and proactive learning experience for students studying green building technology. Green building technology focuses on environmental impacts and energy efficiencies of building features through various sustainable aspects of building design and construction such as sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. The VR green building learning environment will provide highly visual, immersive, interactive, and sociable internetbased learning metaverse in which students can explore and interact with various green building features. In this VR learning environment, each student, through his/ her own avatar, is introduced to the 3D virtual green building, and explores and learns the sustainability features by interacting with the 3D graphical building parts in which relevant green building information is embedded. Additionally, since this virtual learning environment is accessible via the internet, students can interact in real-time with other avatars, such as experts and other presenters from remote places, to share information and thoughts. Therefore, this VR green building learning environment intends to provide synchronous/asynchronous interactive learning experiences.
