Exploiting the Power of Persistence for Learning in Virtual Worlds

Abstract

While the age old adage: “Build it and they will come” may ring true to some extent in many cases, it also begs the question: “…But will they come back?” Persistence can describe the continuously existing state of a virtual world, whether anyone is in it and using it or not; it remains as the last person left it. Persistence is a major affordance of virtual worlds—a central characteristic that sets it apart from any other learning medium available in the current instructional design toolkit. This chapter addresses the criticality of exploiting this attribute in order to design the optimal user interface for a meaningful, lasting learning experience in a virtual world.