Immersive Environments

The colloquium was a great success! Read HASTAC blogger Melanie Forehand’s account of some of the sessions: https://www.hastac.org/blogs/mjfore/2016/12/19/resolve-use-games-classroom-2017

While modern language pedagogy has progressed in new and exciting ways, the learning of medieval languages has remained, well, medieval. Learning medieval languages, from Latin to Classical Arabic to Old French, generally uses the grammar-translation approach, where students read in their native language about a particular grammar point and then translate passages from the target language into their own language. Current digital technologies, however, allow us to create synthetic immersive environments as a means of simulating medieval language communities. In particular, 3D historical adventure games, with their focus on goal-directed player activity and simulated communities of practice, seem to be a particularly well-suited medium for teaching cultures and languages that are no longer physically accessible. Vanderbilt University is hosting two-day colloquium to explore best practices for creating synthetic immersive environments and 3D historical adventure games for teaching medieval languages and cultures.

This conference is supported by:

Vanderbilt University

Department of French and Italian

The Vanderbilt Center for Digital Humanities