The Future of Education

This paper will illustrate the final recommendations on the use of virtual worlds and virtual reality in education developed by the Euroversity Network, a 3 year project funded under the LLP of the EACEA from December 2011 to November 2014. The Euroversity Network has brought together 19 partners from 10 European countries and Israel with the aim to collect examples of best practice on the use of virtual worlds and virtual reality in education and research. The Network members include teachers, scientists and researchers from a variety of subject areas such as Education, Teacher Education, Adult Education, Linguistics, Digital Media, Economics, Physics, Computer Science, Anthropology and Engineering. The two main outcomes of the Euroversity project are the Good Practice Framework and the founding of the Euroversity Network Association to allow for future growth of the Network.

The Good Practice Framework is a set of guidelines developed  by the Euroversity Consortium in a 4 step process. Step 1 involved the collection of existing materials and knowledge on the use of virtual worlds in education from a variety of existing sources such as previous European funded projects and other university based initiatives. Step 2 involved the writing of a set of draft recommendations while Step 3 saw the validation of these recommendations by the project partners through the of running more than 11 courses and several case study projects in new contexts. Step 4 consisted of a rewriting of the Framework so as to include new perspectives and feedback from the teachers and students who took part in the courses.

The final recommendations have been collected online for public consultation and contribution and are available at http://euroversity.pbworks.com/w/page/52279279/Euroversity. The Euroversity Guidelines address issues such as the choice of an appropriate virtual world platform for education, the technical and practical issues involved, the development of tasks and materials, student assessment and course evaluation. The Framework aims to provide relevant information for teaching and learning in all subject domains while providing, at the same time, concrete examples of subject specific activities and tasks.