IVANHOE is a pedagogical environment for interpreting textual and other cultural materials. It is designed to foster critical awareness of the methods and perspectives through which we understand and study humanities documents. An online collaborative playspace, IVANHOE exposes the indeterminacy of humanities texts to role-play and performative intervention by students at all levels.
While we often refer to IVANHOE as a ?game,? it is important to understand that the concept has broader implications for humanities pedagogy and research, and that many modes of sophisticated, scholarly gamesmanship are possible in the IVANHOE environment. The ?rules? of the game are up to its players and initiators. IVANHOE can foster both competitive and collaborative interaction, well suited to research and teaching.
No, really: what is IVANHOE?
In simple terms, IVANHOE is a digital space in which players take on alternate identities in order to collaborate in expanding and making changes to a ?discourse field,? the documentary manifestation of a set of ideas that people want to investigate collaboratively.
Conceived at SpecLab and developed by ARP, IVANHOE was released to open-source developers under an Educational Community License in late 2006.
(Source: http://www.ivanhoegame.org/?page_id=21)
