New Media Consortium and Sun Launch Open Virtual
Worlds Project

From entrepreneurs to major universities and large multinational enterprises, interest in virtual worlds is growing fast. The convergence of broadband, wireless, computing, video, and sound technologies has matured to make multi-user, immersive environments more practical and usable. An increasing number of organizations are exploring the potential of virtual worlds for a variety of applications, including — and most promisingly — education.

The term "immersive education" describes a type of virtual world that combines interactive 3D graphics, game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice, chat, Web cams, and rich digital media with online course environments and classrooms. The result is a learning environment that engages students in rich, personalized learning.

For example, at Sun's Worldwide Education & Research Conference (WWERC) in February, Aaron Walsh, director of the Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative, showed a demo of a virtual world in which students can meet at the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and explore the pyramids instead of just reading about them.

However, the ultimate success of virtual worlds and immersive education will depend on factors such as openness, enterprise-strength platforms, vibrant communities, and a portfolio of services. To that end, at the WWERC, the New Media Consortium (NMC) announced a two-year collaboration with Sun to launch the Open Virtual Worlds Project, aimed at making it easier to learn, work, and exchange ideas in virtual space.

The project will develop a range of open-source, open-content educational spaces, content, and objects, and use them to extend Sun's open source Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland virtual world platforms. (Watch Larry Johnson, NMC's CEO, discuss the announcement here).

Alternative to Second Life

NMC is an international not-for-profit consortium of nearly 250 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. Its members include some of the world's most highly regarded colleges and universities, as well as a growing number of innovative museums, research centers, foundations, and forward-thinking companies.

The NMC's Second Life project has grown to be one of the largest educational efforts on that platform. As new alternatives to Second Life have emerged, the NMC has experimented with those as well. As NMC's Johnson observed, "Over the past two years, we have focused a great deal of effort on how to bring people up to speed quickly in virtual environments, how to help organizations use these spaces for effective teaching and training, how to craft immersive and useful 3D simulations — and most importantly, how to bring people together to exchange knowledge and ideas."

For the Open Virtual Worlds Project, NMC will build on such successes as its NMC Virtual Worlds, an educational virtual world development services company. Over the past two years, the NMC and NMC Virtual Worlds have provided a comprehensive set of premium development services for education and training, and conducted an ongoing series of events, conferences, and programs, all within Second Life.

While the NMC plans to continue to offer comprehensive services for the Second Life platform, the consortium believes that Sun's open source platforms will meet institutions' needs for higher levels of security, clear ownership of intellectual property, and portability. The goal of the Open Virtual Worlds Project is to extend the same set of services, support, and activities that NMC offers for Second Life into open source virtual worlds based on Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland.

The project's business plan includes working with Common Need and Moodlerooms to create scalable, hosted solutions that will make it easy for any institution to experiment with 3D virtual educational spaces and content. Over the long term, the revenues from custom development will support a range of off-the-shelf products, activities, and events that will be open to all.

Secure, Scalable Virtual Worlds

The Open Virtual World Project's vision for new virtual environments is that they provide enough security, scalability, reliability, and functionality so that that universities and other educational organizations can rely on them as safe places for teaching, learning, and research. The types of collaborations that can happen within Wonderland-based spaces — which can be installed behind a firewall to take advantage of existing security and single sign-on systems — include audio communication, live desktop applications of all kinds, and eventually the collaborative creation of in-world content (both graphical and procedural).

"Privacy, security, and intellectual property concerns that are an inescapable part of working on other platforms are easily addressed on open platforms like Projects Darkstar and Wonderland," says Johnson.

One important goal of the project is for these environments to be completely extensible. Building on a core set of objects and worlds developed by the NMC, developers and graphic artists will be able extend the functionality to create entire new worlds, new features in existing worlds, or new behaviors for objects and avatars. The content path for Wonderland is also open.

The eventual goal is to support content creation within the world, but in the shorter term, to enable importing objects, avatars, and other content from widely available, standards-based open source 3D content creation tools as well as professional 3D modeling and animation applications.

"All of us at NMC look forward to applying the knowledge and experience we've gained to open-source worlds — and to developing specialized virtual spaces and a range of accompanying X3D and Collada-compatible open content for education and training," says Johnson.

NMC Will Work with Sun Immersion Special Interest Group

In developing the Open Virtual Worlds Project, NMC will work closely with the new Sun Immersion Special Interest Group (ISIG). This Sun-sponsored community is dedicated to advancing the state of open source technology and content for virtual worlds and gaming in education using the Project Wonderland and Project Darkstar technology platforms. Its goals overlap "virtually 100 percent" with the Open Virtual Worlds project, says Johnson.

Adds Kevin Roebuck, Sun's community manager for Immersive Education: "As the original creator of the Project Darkstar and Wonderland technologies, Sun is excited about collaborating with NMC and their outstanding community of creative individuals and organizations to expand the use of open source virtual worlds and game-based learning. This will enhance student achievement and academic scholarship around the world."

Want to find out more? Join the 2008 NMC Summer Conference, June 11-14, 2008, at Princeton University.