MUVES - The Future of Education

Recently I've been thinking about the importance of collaboration. Web 2.0 allows people to communicat with one another instantaeously, at almost zero cost. It's really neat. But research has never demonstrated that students attain more educational achievement when they communicate wth peers around the globe. I'm not suggesting that such collaboration is worthless.

But, I want to emphasize that research suggests that Multi-User Virtual Environments have the potentail to make an incredible difference to edutional attainment. Research demonstrates that students achieve more when they have an opportunity to learn knowledge and skills in realistic contexts, where they actually need the knowledge and skills. Imagine the ways in which MUVEs could help produce these contexts. I can envision a day when students use virtual platforms to create worlds that they are studying in social studies. Of course, they'll have to use math skills to develop certain parts of the worlds. As students create these worlds they'll build activities into them that other students will be able to complete to enhance their own education.

Of course, in many instances students will not possess all of the knowledge and skills needed to completely construct their own worlds. When this occurs, teachers might provide virtual worlds within which students can complete appropriate tasks. As they master these tasks they can be challenged with more difficult tasks until they are able to create worlds and experiences on their own.

The purpose of education might be thought of as trying to bring together a series of significant experiences that students could potentially have in non-educational contexts. In these non-educational contexts, they will be expected to manage themselves competently. Educational provides them with the skills to do this. If this is the purpose of education, what better way to provide students with high quality education than asking them to respond to these experiences in virtual words before encountering them in the real world?

I'm hoping to learn far more about MUVEs in the coming months.

Technorati Tags: Andrew Pass education MUVE classroom20