Integrating Virtual Worlds with Learning Management Systems: The MULTIS Approach

Learning Management Systems (LMS) provide minimal support for educational use of virtual worlds. Integration efforts assume the educators are inside the virtual world, providing hooks to services in the external LMS, to setup and manage virtual world activities. We present the inverse approach, enabling educators to setup and manage virtual world activities using the traditional LMS Web interface as an integral part of the overall educational activities of a course. In our approach, the LMS enables the teacher/trainer to setup, control, track, and store virtual world activities and its elements. It is the result of a joint effort by academic and corporate teams, implemented in the Formare LMS for OpenSimulator and Second Life Grid virtual world platforms. We explain how the Multis architecture can be used for integration, with concrete cases, an approach that can be implemented in other LMS and virtual world platforms, to overcome the limitations of existing systems for organizational management of e-learning activities.