At University of Florida, Distance Learning Moves Off the Planet

There's no excuse for being late to Paul Fishwick's class, even though it's held on an island, one that does not appear on the map of the landlocked University of Florida in Gainesville. That's because students can just teleport in.
Fishwick, a computer science and engineering professor, is teaching one of at least two classes offered at UF this semester largely in cyberspace -- specifically, the trendy three-dimensional online world called Second Life. There, Fishwick's "avatar," the character that represents each player in Second Life, leads discussions among some 30 other avatars controlled by upper-level UF undergraduate and graduate students in CAP 4403/CAP 6402, Aesthetic Computing.

"I like the potential for collaboration, immersion, aesthetics, creativity, social interaction," Fishwick said. "There are a lot of different dimensions I think are valuable to educators."

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Source: The Live Newswire

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