E-Letter responses to:

review: William Sims Bainbridge The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds Science 2007; 317: 472-476 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

E-Letters: Submit a response to this article

Published E-Letter responses:

An Online Virtual World Built by Scientists

James M. Bower   (9 August 2007)

An Online Virtual World Built by Scientists 9 August 2007
James M. Bower, CEO, Numedeon Inc. Professor of Computational Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX Respond to this E-Letter: Re: An Online Virtual World Built by Scientists	William Bainbridge's Review, "The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds" (27 July 2007, p. 472) mentioned in passing Yasmin Kafai's study of the children's virtual world Whyville.net. The readers of Science may be interested to know that unlike Second Life and World of Warcraft (and most other current virtual worlds), Whyville.net was specifically built for education and research. The site was launched in 1999 by myself and several of my colleagues at Caltech who had been involved for many years in encouraging science education reform in the nation's schools as part of the Caltech Pre-college Science Initiative (CAPSI). The site currently has 2.5 million registered users with an average age of 12 ½, and interestingly enough, despite its science/math education origins, two-thirds of its users are young women. This fact promoted the National Science Foundation in 2001 to fund what may have been the first study of life in a virtual online world, the Gender Differences in the Perception and Use of an Informal Science Learning Web Site (www.capsi.caltech.edu/ research/ documents/GenderDiffernecesAschbacher_000.pdf). Kafai has published numerous additional papers in recent years describing everything from the use of Whyville.net in classrooms to a study of ethnic diversity in avatar creation. Whyville.net was the subject of two sessions at this year’s American Educational Research Association (AERA) Meeting in Chicago. Organizations currently sponsoring and studying science-related learning in Whyville.net include NASA, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Given the roots of the site in science, math, and engineering education, we continue to actively encourage investigations by independent academic researchers. James M. Bower CEO, Numedeon Inc. and Professor of Computational Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX, USA.