Development of a Synthetic Learning Environment in the Antidisciplinary Space.

Joichi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, suggests that the way ahead in education is to support endeavors where learning processes and peer collaborations are valued above end products and exam scores. The divisions and silo-effect of traditional disciplines need to be dismantled and discouraged. Ito calls this antidisciplinary. This paper is an account of an emerging awareness of an antidisciplinary space as undergraduate students designed, built, programmed and created a 3D virtual simulation, termed a Synthetic Learning Environment, viewable in the Oculus Rift Head Mounted Display for elementary understanding of a nuclear power plant accident scenario. The research project did not set out to be antidisciplinary. There was no conscious effort to identify a space and devise ways of working in that space. The antidisciplinary space emerged through pedagogic partnerships and mutually informative collaborations. The emerging antidisciplinary space, with its impact on pedagogical transformation and collaborative learning, is utilized to study the iterative development of the Synthetic Learning Environment.