Virtual University of Edinburgh
http://vue.ed.ac.uk

Following individual experimentation in several virtual worlds and
explorations by several separate groups of their use for teaching and
research projects, publicity about the use of Virtual Worlds across
Edinburgh University in the press and on TV brought together those
involved to share experience.  Following a meeting in March 2007 the
"Virtual University of Edinburgh" (Vue) group was established and a
decision was made to acquire an University of Edinburgh island in
Second Life.

The Virtual University of Edinburgh started with one region named
"Vue" in May 2007 and then further school specific full and homestead
regions round were added that over the following few months. Later,
other shared use regions (1 full region and 3 homesteads including a
sandbox) were added with support from the central University's
Information Services group and the University Development and Alumni
group.  These central groups wanted one of the core regions to be
called "Edinburgh University" and to have buildings suggestive of the
Edinburgh skyline as seen from real University locations.

A "Vue Regional Planning Authority" (VRPA) group was formed to look
after coordination, guide developments and to take responsibility for
fund raising for the shared regions. The outline coastline and
topography including "Arthur's Seat" hill and "Castle Loch" were used
to create a visually interesting skeleton for the developments.  Plots
were designed to allow a number of groups and individual projects to
be established and to change when necessary. Initial sketches were
then made to proposed some iconic Edinburgh buildings and features
such as a diagonal "High Street" with "Old College" at one end and the
"Castle Rock" at the other with "The Vaults" underneath it as a large
exhibition space. Other iconic Edinburgh skyline features such as "The
Bridges", "Calton Hill Monuments" and the "Scott Monument" were also
included.

As requirements and usage changed some shared regions became school
specific ones or some of the shared use regions were removed to reduce
costs.  The long term aim being to retain one full shared use core
region which is "Vue".

A replica of the Vue regions at its peak land mass of 10 regions was
recreated on the Openvue grid using the open source "OpenSimulator"
platform. These regions are accessible using an avatar from any
"hypergrid" enabled OpenSimulator grid, such as OSGrid. See
http://vue.ed.ac.uk/openvue/