Learning governance and new media using affordances not possible in real life

Facilitating analysis and extensive discussions of subject case studies has been an established and conventional method of teaching communication and new media topics in higher education. The understanding and interpretation of these case studies are however, often be limited by how much information can be illustrated in students' reading in their learning experience. As case studies of such relevance are based on incidences that are happening in our world today, subjects or sites for research reference are usually not possible to revisit in reality. Educators in the National University of Singapore are challenged to improve or enhance the understanding of the intended topics by way of experiencing the context in the study using a virtual world simulation, to lead students into developing more independent thinking and critical analysis of the case studies. This paper seeks to outline the possibilities, pedagogical implications, facilitation process of extending a typical theoretical analysis and classroom-based scenario to a more media-rich and interactive exploration of knowledge learnt from a typical case study.