Learning Experience with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds create a new opportunity to enrich the educational experience through media-rich immersive learning. Virtual worlds have gained notoriety in games such as World of Warcraft (WoW), which has become the most successful online game ever, and in ‘general purpose’ worlds, such as Second Life (SL), whose participation levels (more than 10 million users) and economic opportunities (creating millionaires), have attracted considerable news media attention (e.g., Forbes, Newsweek, Wired, Businessweek). This article offers a description of the opportunity in general, and of a specific application case that illustrates the value, as well as implementation challenges