Legal Sims: from Everquest to Ardcalloch

Jack Balkin's recent piece on virtual worlds (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/virtual_liberty1.pdf) is yet one more example of the emergence of virtual worlds as legal, economic and cultural entities that deserve serious consideration by real world analysts. Legal education has been slow to discover that virtual simulation is a valuable method of learning about the law, the legal profession and its transactions. In this presentation I shall demonstrate how the Glasgow Graduate School of Law (GGSL) has used virtual simulation to enhance student learning in a postgraduate professional practice course. The tour will include some of the online tools that students and staff used within the simulated environment; learning theory that guided the Learning Technologies Development Unit within the GGSL, and feedback from the users. The following paper is an introduction to this tour, setting the context and the general