Mission
To create an immersive 3-dimensional virtual environment for CPCC faculty, staff, and students to interact, collaborate, teach, learn, and experiment. The user-friendly interface will allow for the creation of a rich learning environment for students, and in addition, it will help to establish a climate of innovation, investigation, experimentation and entrepreneurship.
Second Life Development Team
The development team is a cross-disciplinary group that will include students and possibly experts from outside the College. The group should be fluid, adding members as the need arises in the accomplishment of its goals.
Goals Phase I
The essential concept of this initiative is to create the feeling of a college campus within Second Life that is functional, representative of CPCC, and aesthetically pleasing. The CPCC Campus should be modeled after another successful site. For example, NMC chose the existing SL island of Serenite as the ideal model for their topographical layout. Some of the architectural detail to emulate could be: detailed cobblestone/brick walking paths, intricate stone bridges, areas for reflection and gathering in small groups, lush and extremely high quality vegetation.
The main CPCC building will have a professional presence to be shared by all departments and disciplines. This site will provide a gateway to courseware, academic and student support services, advising and counseling. This main building might be reminiscent of the Overcash building with a large formal theater, student life center, recital hall, and art gallery.
We will create an open area/commons that will serve as the touchdown for those teleporting into the campus. This area should include guideposts that indicate where to go to find the major areas, as well as an events calendar. The sculpture garden should have rotating sculptures, some created by our students, some created by visitors as part of an art competition or show. This area should have trees, fountains, benches, and high quality vegetation and landscaping.
An audio/video interface will be accomplished using Skype or some other tool to provide real time conversation and visual contact.
The FI will have a creative and experimental presence within SL. The FI venue will serve as a showcase for emerging technology projects and research from students, faculty and staff. This building (or room) must be unique, futuristic, and still functional. It will house both permanent and visiting exhibitions, demonstrations, and work areas for students and faculty. We will need at least three display spaces, and a formal board room for small meetings seating 12 with an oval table and projection screen. We will need lots of interior wall space, and an interior design that encourages exploration and learning. Within the FI, we will have an area for the Center for Emerging Technology. It should showcase the technology areas of the college as well as have areas for instruction. New and innovative approaches to online learning should be presented here. Examples could be a virtual network closet using all remote lab tools available and virtual PCs to configure RL networks or SGD modeling of clothing, avatars, and other objects.
CPCC will establish a course within SL with an LMS (Sakai or Moodle) interface. Using a mixed media approach, the LMS and the SL environment will both be used as appropriate to take advantages of the strengths of each. The SL courses could contain a variety of live events—seminars, presentations, & trainings that use streaming video and web content extensively, but emphasize and capitalize on the value-added of the 3 dimensional immersive environment.
Through the FI, we will start a business within SL where faculty and students could sell objects, education, programming, entertainment, etc. The business will be organized as a 401c3, through the CPCC Services Corporation.
Phase II
Develop a Harris Conference Center replica for large conferences and seminars. The conference center will contain three meeting rooms. One should emulate a tiered classroom at a university with seating for 75, the second would be smaller room with seating for 20, and the last a conference room with a rectangular table seating for 8. All conference rooms will need a projection screen and a terminal to access the content library. The interior should include several comfortable conversation areas, and a central terminal for searching content (functionally a list of content links).
Greenway. This area should follow the creek that will be part of the topography. It should be a peaceful place to walk, relax, and meditate on current events and studies. It should also demonstrate some of our desires to integrate NWF type curriculum into the classroom as well as authentic habitat areas. Along the greenway should be the “Zeiss Trail” that displays historical trees from important places and events.
Student Services One Stop Shop for admissions, registration, advising and counseling.
Design an amphitheater with at least three projection surfaces. The space should accommodate as many as 75, all with direct access to the screens, but not all need to be seated. Attendees should be able to easily fly here. There could be standing room areas. Each of the projection surfaces needs to be able to show independent content. As in the library, there needs to be an interface to select content. Sometimes we will want to steam live content, and sometime we will want to allow folks to choose from a playlist.
- Dr. Rod Townley
CPCC 3D Campus / SLC3
