Holodeck in our classes at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. In the third article, we will provide details of what we learned from our research and development efforts, how teachers and students perceived their experiences, and next steps.
Introduction Higher education students in the Pacific islands are geographically dispersed and, given the distances between the islands, often perform their studies through online distance education. Creating an online environment to enhance social interaction and community-building at-a-distance for these students can often be challenging. Our system, the Holodeck, is designed to meet this unique and practical need through a mixed-reality teaching and learning 3D virtual learning environment. Currently, a number of online course delivery options are used to provide these students with quality instruction at a distance, such as course management websites and web conferencing tools. Our best practices in distance education indicate that our students find value in being able to celebrate community and connect socially with classmates and teachers. However, for students whose cultures value social interaction and building relationships, traditional online learning tools can feel inadequate. The Holodeck is designed to bridge this gap. We have spent six months developing our initial prototype, which we describe in the following sections. We begin by providing a broad overview of the Holodeck from the perspective of its users. We then discuss the background of the Holodeck, explaining where our ideas for this system came from and how we ended up building our prototype. We conclude with a brief overview of lessons learned (so far), and our expected upcoming work (which we anticipate can and will change).
What is the Holodeck? The Holodeck is a “mashup� that combines a real world space (a physical classroom where students meet in-person) with a virtual world (a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment where students meet as 78