EDUCAUSE Review Articles, Virtual Learning Community, and Virtual Community

The use of virtual worlds expands on the campus-based and online classrooms, enhancing learning experiences. Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences.

Virtual worlds can become an important tool in an educator’s arsenal. But using this tool requires a shift in thinking and an adjustment in pedagogical methods that will embrace the community, the fluid identity, and the participation—indeed, the increased conversation—that virtual spaces can provide.

Beyond the capabilities that virtual worlds offer us at the moment, it is the possibilities that we can imagine for the future that may be the most compelling. Virtual worlds technology, like the Internet in general, is changing the way we access and experience information and the way we can access and connect with each other.

Whether it is Second Life or another virtual world, this foundational movement is not going away. It is improving. It is moving forward. The question to be addressed in the coming months and years is how higher education and, subsequently, individual institutions will determine the best way to continue to move forward with virtual worlds.

nanoHUB is an online portal for nanotechnology researchers, instructors, and students created by Purdue University and the National Science Foundation. It uses cyberinfrastructure to provide access to scientific tools for research, demonstration, and collaboration, as well as instructional materials. Users can run experiments, review research, or download lectures. nanoHUB is a virtual toolkit as well as a community where students and faculty contribute to the science of nanotechnology.