Service learning and virtual worlds

This project leverages virtual world environments to create spaces to support sustainable problem solving communities. These communities are seeking to address pressing social problems through the collaborative efforts of college students, high school students, volunteers, and staff members affiliated with the Gleaners Incorporated. Our approach is to have engineering students build a Second Life environment that provides a structure for collaborative problem solving activities. Second Life serves as a vehicle to build a stronger sense of community among food bank network members, to help conceptualize parameters of their problems, develop virtual solutions collaboratively, test these solutions, and implement these solutions in the real world. In order to involve high school age students, engineering students are using the Torque Game Engine to build virtual environments to support instructional activities focusing on nutrition and economical shopping. Initial student survey data indicates satisfaction with the service learning experience.