Monday, July 15, 2019

2019 #VWEDU Online education, sure. But why a virtual campus? Why in a virtual world (MUVE)?


Online education, sure.  
But why a virtual campus?  
Why in a virtual world (MUVE)?
Updated 10/19/2019

A campus is much more than a collection of classes.  Any physical campus offers a number added services. Here I consider which of those services should be carried to the virtual campus as we move from virtual classrooms to complete educational institutions in the digital world. This article is explicitly licensed licensed Public Domain (CC0).
Universal campus (Kitely)

What does a campus offer beyond classrooms?

  • Commons area for students to study together or socialize
  • School library (and librarians to help people find what the need)
  • Conference rooms where students can work together on projects.
  • Laboratories (where students often work together).
  • Sponsored educational events
  • Sponsored cultural events
  • Sponsored competitive events
  • Sponsored intellectual events
  • Dormitories for students living on campus
  • In loco parentis
  • A virtual campus should offer some of these things.
  • Details after the break 
  • This article will be updated as other articles are published.
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What would a virtual campus offer beyond classrooms?

  • Commons area for students to study together or socialize
  • School bulletin board
  • School library
  • Conference rooms where students can work together on projects.
  • Simulated laboratories (these don't blow up). 
  • An alumni center where current students could meet with alumni.
  • A student counselling center where students can seek help on educational or personal problems.
  • Job center where students could look for jobs and internships. 
  • A Digital Teaching Assistant (DTA) in MUVE (virtual world): What would it do?

Commons area

School bulletin board

  • An online bulletin board would be much like an online forum.
  • It is open for posting by students, faculty, and alumni.
  • It supports sort and search.  Users can create persistent searches.
  • It uses categories such as subject, events, jobs open, etc.
  • Selected categories of events may be posted in suitable places.

School library



Conference rooms

Simulated laboratories

Alumni center

  • Gives alumni posting access to the School Bulletin Board
  • May offer rooms for alumni to confer with faculty or students.
  • Gives the alumnus a way to update professional portfolio.
  • May help maintain alumni loyalty to the school.

Student counselling center

  • Where students can seek help on educational or personal problems.
  • Student Counselling Center needs office hours by qualified professionals.
  • To comply with HIPAA requirements, the Counselling Center may have to be in a web-world.

Job Center

  • Displays selected posts from the jobs section of the school billboard.
  • Offers links to selected reading on seeking employment.
  • Provides private offices where students can meet with recruiters.
  • The Job Center could be of special interest to recruiters for online jobs.
  • Online jobs are not limited to local.

Student portfolio center

Installed virtual worlds and web-worlds

  • A virtual campus may need to use both installed words and web-worlds.
  • Installed virtual worlds support much more space and allow extensive scripting.
  • Web-worlds run in a browser, like any web page, but are not as easy to program.

Related

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License

  • Original text in this blog is CC By: unless specified public domain
  • Use as you please with attribution: link to the original.
  • All images without attribution in this blog are CC0: public domain.
  • Second LifeLindenSLurl, and SL are trademarks of Linden Research Inc.
  • Annotated screenshots made with Jing
  • This blog is not affiliated with anything.   Ads are from Google.
  • Selby Evans in Kitely and hypergrid, Thinkerer Melville in Second Life.

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