摘要
There has been a recent explosion of interest from academics across a wide range of disciplines in the use of Multi-User Virtual Environments for education,driven by the success of platforms such as Internet Communication Technology learning skills in higher education.While digital virtual worlds are used in the 21st century learning,advances in the capabilities and the spread of technology have fed a recent boom in interest in massively multi-user 3D virtual worlds for entertainment,and this in turn has led to a surge of interest in their educational applications.As these platforms are used more often as environments for teaching and learning,there is increased need to integrate them with other institutional systems,Web-based Virtual Learning Environments(VLE)in particular.In this paper,we briefly review the use of virtual worlds for education,from informal learning to formal instruction,and consider what is required to turn a virtual world from a Multi-User Virtual Environment into a fully fledged 3D Virtual Learning Environment(VLE).In this we focus on the development of Moodle—a system which integrates the popular 3D virtual world of Second Life with the open-source Virtual Learning Environment.
