Application Scenarios of Interactive Science Fiction Prototyping in Virtual Worlds for Education

This article discusses the potentials of 3D virtual worlds as tool for science fiction prototyping in education. Science fiction prototyping has become an important resource for creating, discussing, and assessing the impact of future scenarios. Introducing this creative process into education and training can help students understand societal and contextual implications of future technologies, scenarios, and environments. We discuss traditional SFP processes, such as storywriting, movies, or computer games that require different talents from their creators. Based on our findings we will introduce ‘Interactive Science Fiction Prototyping (ISFP)’ as a simplified creation approach in virtual world environments. ISFP enables students to create to reflect on science fiction scenarios in an interactive and collaborative way. As an example of ISFP a science fiction prototype of a future city was created and discussed in the virtual world framework Open Wonderland.