Educational Applications of Virtual World Environments

A prototype virtual world environment (Lyra VWE) has been developed with the potential of creating new educational experiences for students in agriculture and natural resources. The goal of the VWE is to enable students to interact directly in on-line 3D simulations of various physical and biological systems, while also being part of a social networking environment in which students can interact and collaborate with each other as well as the system under study. We briefly introduce the VWE prototype and focus on an application in food packaging machinery where students can examine packaging equipment in 3D, run the equipment, and make adjustments to the equipment to observe changes in behavior and performance. While constructing these 3D models is costly, we propose some techniques that may reduce the time and expense involved while giving greater portability, reusability, and longevity to such models.