ELI Web Seminar, February 19, 2008

ELI Web Seminar, February 19, 2008 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT); runs one hour

Powerful But Not a Panacea: Virtual Worlds as a Tool for Situational Learning

Special Guest

Aaron Delwiche
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
Trinity University

For more than 15 years Aaron Delwiche has studied ways that the Internet can be used to promote global dialogue. With one foot in industry and the other in the academy, he has lived in Osaka, San Francisco, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seattle, and San Antonio.

In 1995, as a project manager with Free Range Media, he oversaw the entry of the Christian Science Monitor into the world of online journalism. Working closely with Tom Regan, he published and promoted journalist David Rhode's Pulitzer-prize winning exposé of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. From 1999 to 2002, as the director of Interface Development at Lemon Asia, he facilitated the regional expansion of Hong Kong's leading interactive agency into Singapore and China.

Currently an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, Delwiche teaches courses on cyberculture, game design and criticism, film studies, and propaganda. His innovative experiments with virtual worlds in the classroom have been covered by international publications ranging from Wired to The Guardian. Recently, he spent six months in Thailand studying the behaviors and attitudes of young gamers who congregate in cybercafes to play online games such as Ragnarok Online and Lineage II. A gamer, researcher, and educator, Delwiche writes widely about virtual worlds and is the cofounder of the virtual world consultancy Elastic Collision.

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Summary

Julie Little, Interim Director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, will moderate this web seminar with Aaron Delwiche in which he discusses virtual worlds as a tool for situational learning.

Once relegated to the fringes of the games industry, virtual worlds such as Second Life are now viewed as a promising instructional platform. College instructors use this emerging technology to teach courses on topics ranging from architecture and anthropology to history, literature and computer programming, and a growing number of Fortune 500 companies conduct employee training in virtual worlds. In 2007 alone, educational institutions were responsible for the creation of more than 1,200 islands in Second Life.

While many educators are excited about the potential of virtual worlds, others are deeply wary. Some fear that virtual worlds are a faddish technology that actually degrades student learning. In this presentation, Professor Aaron Delwiche of Trinity University suggests that there are grounds for both enthusiasm and skepticism. Virtual worlds are certainly not an educational panacea, and they present many challenges for students, instructors, and administrators. When coupled with thoughtful strategies grounded in situated learning theory, however, these emerging technologies can be very powerful educational tools.