Virtual World Classroom

Welcome to the Virtual World Classroom, Summer 1995. Use the shortcut bar below, to review class work for the six assignments (Froebel, Domino, Layers, Curves, Render, and Final). Click on Email to make a comment, DDL to return to the Digital Design Lab homepage, Index to return to the class directory (with individual logos), Fast for a quick text list of student names, or Topics for the course outline and information.

The Virtual World Classroom

As the name implies, the Virtual World Classroom project is meant to raise issues surrounding the design of virtual space, while exploring the pedagogical possibilities of the World Wide Web. The Virtual World Classroom was first implemented in the context of the Introductory Computer-Aided Design course (A4535), taught over a six-week period in Summer 1995.

The Virtual World Classroom is an experiment which attempts to provide an electronic "incubator" environment, accelerating the learning process by means of a rapid-feedback loop. Through the mechanism of the high-speed network and the World Wide Web, information about advanced technologies can be shared, issues relating to the learning of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) can be discussed, work that only exists in digital format can be readily viewed by all, and a sense of community and a forum for discussion can be formed.

As class work is created, it is automatically gathered, archived and published electronically. Individuals can note and measure their own progress in relation to the group. The Virtual World Classroom can be accessed 24 hours a day, from any computer on the Web. (http://www.arch.columbia.edu) It provides access to personal electronic galleries where work is presented in the order in which it is submitted. Automated email buttons encourage the viewer to provide a critique. If one student develops a particularly interesting technique or procedure, the others can see it immediately, and will be able to seek more information in person, or communicate automatically by email. Assignments are designed to address particular issues in computer-aided design, and require specific presentation treatements so that the results, when seen side-by-side on common gallery pages, will provide rich comparisons for discussion and analysis.

All work is submitted electronically, as renderings or animation sequences. Gallery page, assignment pages, and administrative pages are hyperlinked, so that one can move in non-linear fashion through the course material and an immense body of student work--hundreds of rendered images, downloadable QuickTime animations, VRML models, etc. As students receive feedback from the instructors and TAs and remote guest critics, that written material forms a permanent on-line document that resides with the semester's body of work.

In short, the Virtual World Classroom is an attempt to supplement the normal lecture/tutorial sequence with an electronic environment that fosters a wide range of communication, design and presentation skills that will be necessary for the emerging digital design culture.

The Virtual World Classroom site is still under development.