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Features
2006 Campus Technology Innovators: Virtual and Immersive Learning
7/23/2006
Innovator: Appalachian State University
APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY’S AET ZONE:
A 3D, IMMERSIVE, SCALABLE WORLD
Challenge Met
The Instructional Technology graduate degree program at Appalachian State University (NC) serves hundreds of students each year, almost all of whom live and work more than 30 miles from campus. The typical student is a mid-career educator who is not familiar with immersive learning environments, has only a basic understanding of traditional web-based learning systems, and has access to rather modest technology.
Online instruction may have been an obvious choice to serve these geographically dispersed students, but ASU had specific objectives to meet before it would call the program a success. The stated challenge was to “create an online learning environment that: maintains fidelity to our conceptual framework; supports our social constructivist teaching methods; allows for serendipitous, non-structured interactions between students, instructors, and others; and supports participants’ sense of presence/ absence of others.” Their solution is AET Zone, a 3D, immersive world for learning that serves as the social, curricular, and pedagogical hub for all content and most interactions in the Instructional Technology program.
Nearly 900 “citizens” log on to AET Zone to attend classes, meet with peers or instructors, give or attend presentations, or even just hang out. Students head to AET Zone from different geographic locations and classes, multiple sections of the same classes, and multiple program areas. And students’ Zone citizenships are not revoked once the course in which they have enrolled is over. Instead, current and former students mix with instructors and visitors from around the world to create a truly vibrant global learning community.
How They Did It
Members of the Instructional Technology faculty at ASU’s Department of Leadership and Educational Studies, (including John Tashner, Stephen Bronack, and Dick Riedl) have driven the AET Zone project from its inception in 2001. They combined a suite of tools to create AET Zone, selecting Activeworlds as a 3D development platform because of affordability, scalability, and the low bandwidth requirements for use. They began with one small world, but quickly moved to a multiworld universe server, creating personalized spaces for different groups of Zone citizens. Still, additional resources were necessary to make the environment most effective for learning. Web-based
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