Minecraft Millport: An immersive, large-scale virtual field course for zoology students

Minecraft Millport is a collaboration with NeuronSafari, @NeuronSafari (Twitter). It gives students experience with fieldwork in a field like no other. Check out these articles in the TimesHigherEducation and this TeachingMatters blog.


Minecraft Millport takes place on Dumbrae Island, a 1:25 scale modification of Puerto Rico with four working beaches that vary in exposure:





Tutorial Island Introduces the students to the local flora and fauna, and gets them used to the controls:

Millport town contains a central transportation hub, and social spaces:

Beaches contain 100's of animals both on the surface and within rock pools

Data has been synthesised and inserted into the game: turtle size and distribution is gaussian, diversity in
rock pools is poisson. Special tools, such as the carrot-on-a-stick allow students to extract data from entities

The Eco Lab allows students to study behaviour: food choice or responses to temperature gradients

End of Course Class picture, Field Zoology 2021