This graduate level course explores the use of emergent real-time virtual environments and Digital Social Networks, ubiquitous computing, augmented reality and viral communications. This is a hands-on, project-based class where participants will have opportunities to design and conduct research studies in an interdisciplinary manner by integrating a variety of knowledge bases and points of view. Resident and Visiting interdisciplinary researchers (from UF and other institutions worldwide) work with students to design novel research projects and configurations.
The IRS explores the use of Interactive Digital Media (IDM) and Virtual World Environments (VWEs) as venues for the rapid-prototyping of ideas, inventions and interactions. Students will investigate the history of virtual worlds, from their roots in cinema and television and their relationship with the military industrial-entertainment complex to their current state, including massively multi-user spaces on the Internet and their implications for human interaction, ethics and public policy in the near and long term.
A significant part of this course for graduate students will be the completion of an in-depth research project with the approval of faculty from their own college. This project will give students the opportunity to identify, discover, and determine the answers to critical research questions within their field of study.
