I was recently approached by a developer who wanted to show me how they had used 3D modelling software to import into the Unreal game engine a model of a famous museum, using hi-res photographs to create highly realistic textures. This, he said, was aimed at engineering students as a teaching tool.

Frankly, I have difficulty seeing the point of this exercise. Recreating scenes from the real world in a computer game environment does what, exactly? We’re not talking interactive here—just something a group of students can presumably “visit” and discuss. This reminds me a lot of some of the education sites in SL, where a lot of evident effort has gone into recreating “landmarks” from the real world campus, but there is little if any interaction.

Players of games like Unreal, WOW, Conan and similar become immersed in the game because

• there is a lot of action requiring concentration and sometimes teamwork as they fight virtual opponents
• there are rewards—defeating a computer component often makes new powers or tools available
• the game often employs puzzle elements, requiring a solution to be found before something new is achieved or revealed

The psychology of this sort of game design is well known and the software developers who succeed in the game space do so because they manage to find a balance between repetitive actions (the fighting is often that), and just enough rewards to keep the player motivated. Add the social-cooperative aspects of team play, finely rendered scenes, and sound effects to make a stadium band proud, and your (mostly younger) players will immerse themselves in the gameplay for many hours.

If anything is learned or demonstrated in those multi player game environments, it is probably a mix of teamwork and (for some players) leadership—if you and 12 friends are playing WOW as a team, for example, someone needs to be assigning roles and leading the group.

But is this a teaching environment? I think not. At least, not if one of these games is used to provide virtual visits to famous places and museums.

I know of someone developing a CSI-like learning environment in SL. Students visit the crime scene, use swabs to collect potential DNA samples (which can be supplied somewhat randomly), pass those to sequencers and other tools of the trade, and get results back which they then need to interpret. There is 2-way communication between SL and external tools so that the students can be presented with outputs from the sequencing—outputs they can then compare with others in order to draw conclusions.

Another simulation being developed involves an archeological dig, where the students’ excavation gradually reveals information that needs to be gathered and recorded properly (if it is not, the find may not be properly understood). Again, links to external asset servers allows two-way recording of information and feedback of results.

Those, and others like them in SL, are the sort of interactive learning to which SL and similar environments are best suited. The student is challenged to put what she has learned into practice in the SL environment, where simulated laboratory instruments do not cost millions of dollars. The student taking the course probably has some interest in the subject matter (there are less mentally challenging courses one could take if all one wanted was a few more credits). Rather than watch a video of someone else doing the actual tasks (or waiting for an opportunity to go somewhere and participate in an archeological dig), students can ’ the tasks themselves.

Traipsing around nicely rendered scenes from famous museums or whatever? Sorry, I truly do not see that working for students. I will be more than a little surprised if educators will be willing to dip into their always-too-shallow pool of funds to put their students on game-quality computers to tour static places when the same place can likely be viewed in class on a DVD video from National Geographic or similar at little or no cost.

Footnote

“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail” certainly seems apropos when it comes to virtual worlds.