The DRHA 2008 conference at focused on how cross discipline knowledge sharing is essential to the future of digital humanities and teaching. Languagelab as experts in this field were invited to participate. The interdisciplinary nature of virtual worlds is not only relevant to teaching English at Languagelab but to many other communities of practice. Digital art, heritage, 3-D visualisation and engineering, science and theatre are all using virtual environments to create and share content. The use of virtual worlds in education was highlighted as increasingly important and a number of practitioners showcased their student collaboration and creativity in virtual environments. Among the leading institutions discussing their successful initiatives were The University of Pisa, Brunel University and Rezzable, Harvard Law School are now using Second Life as a platform to teach their courses, which are being marketed globally.
The other speakers at the conference also gave interesting presentations, here are some links to find out more about them:
However there is a stark contrast between successful institutions and others who have established projects that have stagnated due to the lack of maintenance and provision of new content. Indeed, one delegate at the conference stated that many have ‘Built very impressive empty spaces’. This differs from others that are breaking new ground and attracting a significant number of new students.
Languagelab was specifically invited to show how the combination of; live actor immersive practice (The City People), classes and full courses combine narrative, student generated content and pedagogy to create a new way to learn language. Attendees were also given sight of of future projects at Languagelab, new courses (IELTS, Business and General English) and even a glimse of a radical new teaching methodology, TRIP.