Suggestions for new features to support collaborative learning in virtual worlds

The authors have some experience in building virtual worlds for education purposes, in archaeology and for language learning. However, many mainstream world-building applications do not offer quick and appropriate ways of developing interactive and user-driven content that can be easily shared with other users. Many education-orientated applications also require built-in tracking and evaluation mechanisms. Evaluation of virtual worlds and communities is difficult enough as it is. While commercial game engines offer a form of task performance tracking, they typically lack non-violent ways of supporting interaction and collaborative teamwork. The chance to help students and the public to learn by creating and collaborating through the development of contextually relevant worlds is exciting. It is perhaps best served by an application containing a feature set designed specifically for content designers to create learning environments. In this paper we suggest some features that might help educational designers build better 'learning as sharing' experiences.