this field is required

This is cool, it’s the descrip­tion I received via email of a “Gov­er­nance of Vir­tual Worlds” course tak­ing place at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity next semes­ter. I wish I didn’t already have a com­mit­ment that pre­vents me from enrolling.

The core of the course will be an inno­v­a­tive exper­i­ment in self-governance wti­hin World of War­craft. We expect to pub­lish the results: co-author credit will be available.

The class will be Wednes­days from 4 to 7:55 in the Law Col­lege.
Gov­er­nance of Vir­tual Worlds

SLN #: 26479
Course Pre­fix: LAW-791
Course Sec­tion: 019
Credit Hours: 3
Instructor(s): Mableson;McKnight

Course Descrip­tion:
Vir­tual worlds, includ­ing mas­sively mul­ti­player online games (MMOs), used by tens of mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide, have given rise to new forms of social, eco­nomic and polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion, and present unique chal­lenges in their inter­ac­tion with cur­rent legal, polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and cul­tural insti­tu­tions. This course will use cross-disciplinary meth­ods to exam­ine com­mu­nity self-governance within vir­tual worlds, as well as reg­u­la­tion of vir­tual worlds by busi­nesses and gov­ern­ments worldwide.

The work­load and intel­lec­tual demands for this course will be sub­stan­tial. We will usu­ally meet three hours a week in a sem­i­nar set­ting, but may sub­sti­tute ses­sions within a vir­tual envi­ron­ment for some or all of any week’s course time.

While no pre­vi­ous famil­iar­ity with vir­tual worlds or MMOs is required, stu­dents must be com­fort­able with soft­ware tools and online discussion.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of this course will involve a hands-on exper­i­ment in vir­tual worlds gov­er­nance. Active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the project, or an equiv­a­lent, will be essen­tial to suc­cess in the course.

Grad­u­ate stu­dents in many fields (includ­ing CSPO stu­dents, polit­i­cal sci­ence, edu­ca­tion, engi­neer­ing and graphic arts), and excep­tional under­grad­u­ates are wel­come. Enroll­ment will be capped at 20 law stu­dents and 20 stu­dents from other fields.

Addi­tional Infor­ma­tion:
Credit Hours: 3
Grad­ing Option: Numer­i­cally Graded, and ONE Time Pass Option is Avail­able
Writ­ten Assign­ment: Yes
Grad­u­a­tion Writ­ing Require­ment: No
Sem­i­nar Writ­ing Require­ment: No
Skills Require­ment: No
Final Exam Given: No
Paper or In-Class Pre­sen­ta­tion: Yes
Par­tic­i­pa­tion Points: Yes
Black­board Course Site: Yes