Asynchronous Immersive Classes in a 3D Virtual World: Extended Description of vAcademia

vAcademia is a 3D virtual world designed for collaborative learning. It enables a new approach to educational activities in virtual worlds, which is based on a new vision of content and learning process. The most distinct feature of vAcademia is 3D recording which allows capturing everything in a given virtual world location in dynamics. The resultant recordings can be not only watched later, but also visited, providing students with a collaboration space and giving a sense of presence. 3D recording is conceptually different from video recording or screen capturing. In such a manner, vAcademia supports a new type of digital content – 3D recording or virtcast which is created based on synchronous activities. In addition, this platform has an integrated set of tools for collaborative learning which substitute those commonly used in physical classrooms, but also allows implementing new learning scenarios that are not possible or costly in reality. In this paper, we present the functionality, scenarios of use, and the initial evaluation results of the vAcademia virtual world.