Mr. Walsh is speaking about Immersive Education, which is developed through the Immersive Education Initiative (http://ImmersiveEducation.org ) that he founded in 2007 (which is a free consortium for educators who want to use these learning technologies). The Immersive Education Initiative is an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, which is growing at the rate of approximately 2 new members every day. Initiative members have early access to the Education Grid, where they can conduct classes and meetings within a growing collection of virtual worlds. Initiative members can also use the Education Grid to build custom virtual learning worlds, simulations, and learning games.
Educators can join the Immersive Education Initiative free of charge at http://ImmersiveEducation.org
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The future of online learning, Mayadas says, lies in "blended" programs that combine faculty face time with the flexibility of online teaching. The move to such hybrids will be driven by students questioning why they should sit in lectures taking notes three times a week when they can go once and do the rest at their own pace online. Universities and colleges, for their part, like the fact that mixed programs allow them to cut down on physical classes, saving money and creating space for more students.
Blended programs will also go a long way toward meeting the critics who contend that digital learning will never replace the campus experience. By combining face-to-face interaction with new online options in more powerful ways, these programs should offer the best of both worlds—rendering moot today's debate over whether virtual or in-person degrees are best.
With Andrew Bast in New York
© 2008
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