Berkman Center and Harvard Extension School to Offer First University Course through Second Life, a 3-D Virtual Environment

Cambridge, MA– The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Extension School announce the offering of "CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion," the first class at Harvard University to be offered in part in Second Life, a 3-D virtual environment.

Co-taught by Professor Charles Nesson, Rebecca Nesson, and Gene Koo,  CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion turns law and Harvard toward the creation of our future in a networked information economy.  "CyberOne models a university relationship with the public of open-access," says Professor Nesson. "Our class is itself an argument for open access and its expression."

CyberOne is being jointly offered this fall through the Harvard Law School and  the Harvard Extension School.  Course video, lecture, and project materials will be freely available in Second Life to anyone with an Internet connection. The Berkman Center in conjunction with Cambridge Community Television (CCTV) will also be broadcasting select video on CCTV.

Says Rebecca Nesson, who will lead the course in Second Life, "Second Life offers the opportunity for a greatly enhanced distance education experience."  Students taking the course through the Harvard Extension School will be meeting weekly with their instructors and fellow students in Second Life for usual classroom activities as well as innovative projects that make use of the myriad possibilities of the Second Life environment.  "Our students will be learning about virtual worlds while experiencing their class in a virtual world.  It will be an exciting education for all of us."

According to Michael Shinagel, Dean of the Harvard Extension School, “We are pleased to be working with the Berkman Center in offering CyberOne as one of our 100 distance courses this year and we look forward to bringing what we learn from it into our other online offerings.”

In Professor Nesson and Rebecca Nesson’s grant proposal to the Provost’s Office, he explained that, “The inclusion of the Harvard Extension School in this project is an acknowledgement that, among Harvard’s schools, it is the one that has made the most progress and possesses the greatest expertise in making Harvard’s content accessible to an online audience.”

CyberOne represents convergence of the Berkman Center’s and the Extension School’s ongoing processes of pedagogical innovation and experimentation, with inquiry into openness, new technologies and related policy, learning and social media.

The course is supported by a grant from the Provost's Fund for Innovation in Instructional Technology, and by the resources of the Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension School.

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