Medulla: A Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Framework for Research, Teaching, and Learning with Virtual Worlds

Abstract

Medulla is an enabling technology designed to support the construction of complex synthetic environments, created by the Federation of American Scientists for learning, teaching, and research inside virtual worlds. It integrates the existing technologies to support the innovative use of digital art, media, documents, and software. In the past, educational technology projects typically reached only small audiences and quickly because they were locked into limited technologies and lacked a viable business model. Medulla is an open source collaborative toolset, independent of any particular virtual world platform, designed for use even by people not familiar with virtual worlds. Initial work has been completed on identifying the functionality needed for collaborative construction and use of virtual worlds for education, evaluating existing software tools capable of providing these services, and linking them together as seamlessly as possible using interoperability standards. Current demonstration projects include reconstructions of the ancient city of Uruk and one designed to teach algebra.