Collaborative Efforts: Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds

With shrinking budgets and the current economic climate, academia should be looking to cloud-based technologies as a way to support students and achieve institutional goals. Over one-quarter of the current US population is under twenty years of age. With more than one-fourth of the nation's population qualified to be in educational institutions, administrators could conclude that there is an overwhelming need to reinvent the way they deliver education. Just as important, institutions need to address the way IT professionals support teachers in designing their curriculum. Virtual environments allow faculty to create a world that encompasses anything they can dream up. Interaction, simulation, and collaboration enable learning in the interactive environment. Like all other teaching and learning methods, online environments can be either an advantage or a disadvantage to the learning process. Technology is going to continue to change the very nature of the educational system through the use of social collaborative applications.