EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Virtual Learning Community

Envisioning the Educational Possibilities of User-Created Virtual Worlds

elilly — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:03:10 -0500

Educational games and simulations can engage students in higher-level cognitive thinking, such as interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. Recent technical advances in multiplayer, user-created virtual worlds have significantly expanded the capabilities of user interaction and development within these simulated worlds. This ability to develop and interact with your own simulated world offers many new and exciting educational possibilities. This article explores the technical capabilities and educational potential of these new worlds. Additionally, it presents and illustrates a model, which uses interaction combinations, to identify course content and topics having educational applications in virtual worlds.

Using technology in teaching and learning: Resources to help you navigate a digital world

ckeller — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 11:38:30 -0500

The author provides a long and comprehensive list of resources concerning teaching and learning with technology.

Five Questions...For Tom Carey

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:51:36 -0500

Instructors in higher education get e-learning support from two distinct sources: their own institutions, through colleagues and faculty teaching centers, and their disciplines, through subject area experts and scholarly associations. Tom Carey, professor of management sciences at the University of Waterloo and chief learning officer of MERLOT, explains how the MERLOT consortium is finding the sweet spot where those two processes come together.