A Croquet "Buddhatopia"

Buddhatopia is a collaborative experiment in the use of 3D technology in higher education being done here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is funded through one of the instructional technology awards programs that I manage. The goal of the project is to create and deploy a multi-user cosmological and mandallic 3D space for the interactive study of Buddhism - a place for students to become familiar with the Buddhist cosmos and its denizens. Cool eh? The prototype implementation has been done in the Neverwinter Nights 3D engine (that is because Croquet was not yet available when the project began in 2003). However, we are now working toward a production implementation in Croquet.



Such a Croquet-based world will enable Buddhism students to explore the imagined universe inhabited by traditional Buddhists, especially through encountering the ethical narratives that unfold within the Buddhist cosmos. And by interacting with a mandala palace within that cosmos, students will simulate the traditional technique of “familiarization” as a means to better understand and manipulate the central theoretical principles of Buddhism. Through Buddhatopia's design, students will acquire factual knowledge about Buddhism suitable to be tested through multiple choice questions. They will also be able to experiment with Buddhist forms of reasoning and ethics in a manner that enables them to answer questions such as: how do Buddhist make moral decisions? How do they acquire knowledge through experience? What role does karma play? They will also be able to engage in the basic types of activities that constitute Buddhist practice, such as worship, meditation, study of texts, appeasement of deities, control or destruction of demons, protecting life, and so on. The world is meant to be accessed over the course of a semester, 1-4 hours a week. Some exam questions will be encoded in knowledge objects, thus providing additional incentive to interact within the space.



The Principal Investigator on this project is John Dunne, Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Co-Investigator is Scott Roberts, an artist who often uses computer technology in his work, and is also an Assistant Professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.