3D reflections?

The plan is that Art & Design students build a Shine to a philosopher in Second Life. I am having a couple of little worries about this. The first is that there will be very little time over the first pilot for them to get very in depth about philosophy. It might just be too much for them to take on board at once. This might put some of them off the whole thing, and the work produced might be a bit meaningless and disappointing. More importantly, as I'm getting my head around the educational theories, I am thinking that I believe in constuctivism really quite forcefully. I know from experience that learning works best when it links new stuff onto existing knowledge. The parallels with the idea of constructing visual chunks of knowledge in a 3D space are notable. What am I saying? Erm...
Philosophy is not what my lot know, so they are unlikely to be able to connect it together. It will float around randomly in space, and drift away.
They will be coming towards the end of their first year on the course, so how about if we got them to build something that represents the knowledge that they have gained so far. A 3D reflection? I would like it to be theoretical, like the idea of the philosophical concept, so maybe whatever they wrote their essay on earlier in the year? It would be very interesting to compare their views on writing an essay and building a thing. Which one is actually the best tool for learning?