Virtual Worlds for Computer Science Education

Virtual Worlds offer the promise of both widening and enriching the educational scenarios within which exploratory learning may be practiced. They empower students to explore virtual contexts that would be inaccessible to them in the real world. Learners achieve presence through the proxies of avatars, and consequently are aware of and may interact with fellow learners within the virtual environment. The geography and architecture of virtual worlds may be defined and programmed by users, thereby allowing learners to participate in a creative process online. This paper reports on experiences of working with virtual worlds for Computer Science education. These include the areas of human computer interaction, wireless networking and Internet routing. The work was conducted over three years and involves both the popular virtual world Second Life and its open source alternative, OpenSim. We find that virtual worlds are engaging, popular and motivating. Students enjoy using them and find them educationally valuable. Furthermore, virtual worlds provide a rich environment, through which content, presented on media such as text, images, video and animations, may be collaboratively explored. Interactivity ranges from simple exhibits as might be found in a museum to configurable, complex simulations visualised in a 3D space. This paper identifies a number of challenges that need to be met for the educational potential of virtual worlds to be unlocked. These reside in the areas of system development, content creation and service provision. We argue that on balance the service model adopted by Second Life acts as a barrier to these challenges being met and that the greater flexibility provided by OpenSim offers a more potential.