Research Grants Awarded in 2007

Theatron 3

This 24 month project, led by Richard Beacham (Centre for Computing in the Humanities, KCL), constructed 20 historic theatres in Second Life, creating an extensive, content-rich range of research-based virtual environments, and generating highly innovative, interactive teaching and learning resources. The project combined the pedagogical, research, technical and methodological expertise of a group of national and international leaders in their fields, including: Hugh Denard (Centre for Computing in the Humanities, KCL); the King's Visualisation Lab; The Higher Education Subject Centres for English, and for Dance, Drama and Music, as well as members of the communities that they serve; David Kaskel (LanguageLab); Mark Childs, consultant in Educational Technology, and King's Digital Consultancy Service.

Web: http://cms.cch.kcl.ac.uk/theatron/

Learning from Online Worlds; Teaching in Second Life

This 12 month project, led by Diane Carr and involving Martin Oliver and Andrew Burn (all at the London Knowledge Lab) researched and theorised learning in two online social worlds (World of Warcraft and Second Life). The project used this theory to develop practical recommendations for learning and teaching, and tested these by teaching courses in Second Life.

Web: http://learningfromsocialworlds.wordpress.com/

Sloodle

This 12 month project, led by Dan Livingstone (University of Paisley) and involving Jeremy Kemp (San Jose State University), researched and developed pedagogical theories relevant to multi-user 3D virtual worlds and used these to inform and lead the development of Sloodle and to support the growing community of educators using 3D virtual worlds.

Final report [PDF]

Web: http://www.sloodle.com/

Modelling4All

Computer modelling is playing an increasingly important role in fields as varied as sociology, epidemiology, zoology, economics, archaeology, ecology, climate, and engineering. This project, led by Ken Kahn and involving Howard Noble (both at the OUCS, University of Oxford), will attempt to make such modelling more widely accessible by developing easy to use Web 2.0 services for building, exploring and analysing models, encouraging the development of an on-line community where models and model components are shared, tagged, discussed, organised, and linked to other resources. Furthermore, the project will explore the possibilities of providing an immersive first-hand experience of the execution of models within Second Life.

Web: http://modelling4all.org/

You can see posters with further information about each of the above projects at Slideshare and at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/97/41/30