Not to be left behind by their counterparts at MIT and Berkeley, a group of eight students in their 3rd year at Ashoka University have built their campus on Minecraft.
The students commerced on their project in mid-May and spent five to six hours every day. Aishwarya Das, a student of physics, said they aimed to recreate the life they had on campus on a virtual server. Students of Ashoka University can now experience college life, from graduation parties to farewell, online on Minecraft. Recently, the college’s graduation was held on the Minecraft platform. Das said about 700 people could join the server at any given point in time, and chat with each other. She explained that their concept is similar to how gamers talk to each other on the discord server.
Atishay one of the students, who originally came up with the idea of building the platform, said they first made the campus building, block by block. He said they created the experiences from their memories of the college. “We used the discord servers to coordinate between ourselves and divided responsibilities – someone builds the admin block, someone looks at the auditorium etc.,” Atishay said. “The college has already approved to hold the orientation program for the new students on the platform.” Students are looking forward to classes to be held on the platform. They also want live music festivals online.
Experts said that with game-based learning gaining popularity in the education sector, teachers realise the importance of Minecraft and its potential in teaching students various subjects in the classroom. Minecraft is a creative and flexible platform. Its a video game platform that offers users fully customisable and flexible gaming experience. Besides killing monsters and building structures, teachers have also been using this platform as a learning tool in the classroom as well as for the overall curriculum.
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