The Virtual Weddings Project

Patrik Svensson and Pat Shrimpton

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CURRENT INFORMATION:  

NEW: Click here to read Professor Reed Riner's evaluation of the project.

The Virtual Wedding project is run by Patrik Svensson and Pat Shrimpton at the Department of Modern Languages/English at Umeå University in Sweden. It was funded by the Council for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education for a three-year period starting in July 1999. The full project title is Cultural Simulation: Virtual Weddings and a real wedding of linguistics, literature and cultural studies.

The principal aim of this project is to create a model that will incorporate an innovative and communicatively and analytically oriented use of information technology and virtual worlds into the study of English at university level. The model will aim to integrate IT in such a way that a synthesis can be achieved between the various modular components of the course - linguistics, cultural studies and linguistics - culminating in a virtual event that is an expression of the whole concept. 

The project logo symbolizes the synthesis that we hope to achieve. Cultural Studies serves as a natural link between Linguistics and Literature. The virtual environment serves as a facilitator and as a creative arena where students build things together - thus engaging in both concrete and abstract virtual construction.

We hope that the IT-based synthesis will promote a holistic view of the various phenomena and give students an insight into how modern technology can be used to create such a synthesis. The synthesis will be constructed around a given theme; several possible themes suggest themselves.Our plan is to begin with one pilot study and then to gradually extend the range and number of themes available. The pilot study will serve both teaching and research purposes; the approach will be problem-based. The theme chosen for the pilot study was wedding.

We use the ActiveWorlds suite of software to create a desktop virtual reality environment. It provides us and the students with a single interface which can be used to incorporate basically all aspects of the project. Naturally, our main focus is not on very fancy graphics and the level of detail found in ActiveWorlds is very appropriate for our needs. If you are watching this page from your regular browser you might want to try the ActiveWorlds software suite out.

The ultimate aim for the pilot project was for the students themselves to experience a “wedding” of ideas, knowledge and insights which they themselves have brought together during their work and which will be expressed in virtual form, played out anywhere from Austen’s England to present-day Sierra Leone. With the city theme, the aim remains the same even though the virtual manifestation will be markedly different.