Croquet Virtual Learning Environment
Croquet is coming—prepare to rethink online learning.
Imagine you are an undergraduate student of the future. Your first class takes place in a lush wooded landscape with rolling green hills and a waterfall. Then you go through a portal to your next class in an underwater world full of fish that undulate around you—some of them are your fellow students. Your last class takes place in outer space, where Earth and a satellite are revolving around the moon and you can see the gravitational effects of two bodies on a third. If you get in the way of the moon it will toss you out of the way.
Think this sounds like science fiction set in the year 2305? Think again. Programmers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin are developing a multi-user, 3D software environment called 'Croquet' that enables students and instructors to move through, create, and collaborate in virtual worlds.
Croquet looks and feels like a virtual reality game, but in terms of its development and goals is radically different. Mark McCahill, director of the University Technology Development Center on campus and one of Croquet's authors, explains that while the goal of most games is to hurt, destroy, and dominate, the goal of Croquet is to create and collaborate. Educators have often been attracted by the features of gaming software, which are highly collaborative, interactive, and intrinsically motivating. But these gaming engines aren't necessarily well suited for teaching and learning because corporations own and control the code and allow users only limited functionality. Croquet, on the other hand, is open source software, which means that anyone can access the code or the tools and create, extend, or adapt the virtual space to their own ends.
Croquet is also different from many other educational gaming projects in that it is an attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional online learning environments. It enables learners not only to gather, discuss, and analyze information, but also to actively construct it. They can manipulate and annotate and even make 3D objects (admittedly primitive ones), and eventually will be able to attach behaviors to those objects. In its current form making worlds in Croquet requires considerable programming and graphic art skills, but as more people use the program they will develop a library of shared objects and worlds to which any user will have access. In other words, the more people work with this open source software, the more user-friendly it will be.
ETF Meeting Demonstration
A handful of professors on campus are already experimenting with Croquet in their classes and, with the help of their students, are thinking about how it can support teaching and learning. For example, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, a faculty member in the Department of Rhetoric and 2004-05 DMC faculty fellow, is using it for 3D mind mapping activities. Bernadette Longo, another rhetoric department faculty member, and her students began exploring Croquet while redesigning online writing centers.
Attend the Educational Technologists Forum meeting:
May 19, 2005
3:00 to 4:30 p.m.
402 Walter Library
Mark McCahill will give an overview of the Croquet project and talk about its future, and Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch and DMC consultant Lauren Marsh will share activities they've developed to introduce students to this environment and get them thinking about teaching and learning in a virtual space.
Campus Projects
For more information about how Kastman Breuch and Longo are using Croquet for teaching and learning, see our Using Croquet to Teach Writing Exemplary Projects page.
Bibliography
To access Croquet, see the project site. For more information about the development of this technology as well as its potential to transform online learning environments, please see the publications listed below. All are available as portable document files on the project site's Whitepapers page.
Lombardi, J., and M. P. McCahill. "Enabling Social Dimensions of Learning Through a Persistent, Unified, Massively Multi-User, and Self-Organizing Virtual Environment." Croquet™ Project, 2004. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/Enabling Learning 2004.pdf.
Lombardi, M. M. "Croquet, Anyone? Designing a More Responsive Online Learning Environment." Teaching with Technology Today 10, no. 5 (April 2004). http://www.uwsa.edu/ttt/articles/lombardi.htm.
McCahill, M. P., and J. Lombardi. "Design for an Extensible Croquet-Based Framework to Deliver a Persistent, Unified, Massively Multi-User, and Self-Organizing Virtual Environment." Croquet™ Project, 2004. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/Design for MUVLE 2004.pdf.
Smith, D. A., A. Kay, A. Raab, and D. P. Reed "Croquet: A Collaboration System Architecture." Croquet™ Project, 2003. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/Croquet Collab Archi 2003.pdf.
Smith, D. A., A. Raab, D. P. Reed, and A. Kay "Croquet: A Menagerie of New User Interfaces." Croquet™ Project, 2004. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/Croquet Menagerie UI 2004.pdf.
