Harnessing Virtual Worlds for Arts and Humanities A series of three high-level "summit" sessions is planned in which a carefully selected group of leading scholars in the arts and humanities will work with technology experts to: 1) Gain an understanding of virtual world technology sufficient to stimulate ideas on how it can support and generate new humanistic research topics; 2) Use this information to identify significant issues in humanistic scholarship that can be investigated through appropriate use of virtual worlds technology; 3) Review and select the most promising research questions for investigation; 4) Develop a set of requirements for a virtual worlds software and content development project sufficient to support the prosecution of those research questions; 5) Develop criteria and metrics to evaluate the impact of virtual worlds for advancing humanistic research.
