From Multi-User Virtual Environment to 3D Virtual Learning Environment

While digital virtual worlds have been used in education for a number of years, advances in the capabilities and spread of technology have fed a recent boom in interest in massively multi‐user 3D virtual worlds for entertainment, and this in turn has led to a surge of interest in their educational applications. In this paper we briefly review the use of virtual worlds for education, from informal learning to formal instruction, and consider what is required to turn a virtual world from a Multi‐User Virtual Environment into a fully fledged 3D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In this we focus on the development of Sloodle – a system which integrates the popular 3D virtual world of Second Life with the open‐source VLE Moodle. Our intent is not simply to provide additional learning support features for Second Life, but to study more generally the ways in which integrated virtual environments can benefit teaching and learning, and this is the focus of our closing discussion

Behaviour-based identification of student communities in virtual worlds

VirtualWorlds (VW) have gained popularity in the last years in domains like training or education mainly due to their highly immersive and interactive 3D characteristics. In these platforms, the user (represented by an avatar) can move and interact in an artificial world with a high degree of freedom. They can talk, chat, build and design objects, program and compile their own developed programs, or move (flying, teleporting, walking or running) to different parts of the world. Although these environments provide an interesting working place for students and educators, VW platforms (such as OpenCobalt or OpenSim amongst others) rarely provide mechanisms to facilitate the automatic (or semi-automatic) behaviour analysis of users interactions. Using a VW platform called VirtUAM, the information extracted from different experiments are used to analyse and define students communities based on their behaviour. To define the individual student behaviour, different characteristics are extracted from the system, such as the avatar position (in form of GPS coordinates) and the set of actions (interactions) performed by students within the VW. Later this information is used to automatically detect behavioural patterns. This paper shows how this information can be used to group students in different communities based on their behaviour. Experimental results show how community identification can be successfully perform using K-Means algorithm and Normalized Compression Distance. Resulting communities contains users working in near places or with similar behaviours inside the virtual world.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the project ABANT (TIN2010-19872/TSI)

Practicing Learner-Centered Teaching: Pedagogical Design and Assessment of a Second Life Project

Guided by the principles of learner-centered teaching methodology, a Second Life project is designed to engage students in active learning of virtual commerce through hands-on experiences and teamwork in a virtual environment. More importantly, an assessment framework is proposed to evaluate the learning objectives and learning process of the Second Life project. The assessment framework is composed of a variety of items, such as reflection essays, chat transcripts, peer evaluations, and a post project survey that measures the learning motive, attitudes, level of difficulty, and the time used to complete the project. The Second Life project was implemented in an MBA-IS course in which thirty-two students were randomly assigned to eight teams. In Second Life, each team managed an avatar and completed a series of business-related activities. The assessment outcomes indicated that students were able to apply what they learned in class into the virtual environment through their exploration and interaction. Students were motivated to learn in the Second Life project and felt that the engaging experiences helped with their learning. On average, students developed a positive attitude toward Second Life and felt that the application was not difficult to use. Lessons learned, recommendations for design issues, and implications for educators are also discussed

The Effectiveness of Aural Instructions with Visualisations in E-Learning Environments

Based on Mayer’s (2001) model for more effective learning by exploiting the brain’s dual sensory channels for information processing, this research investigates the effectiveness of using aural instructions together with visualisation in teaching the difficult concepts of data structures to novice computer science students. A small number of previous studies have examined the use of audio and visualisation in teaching and learning environments but none has explored the integration of both technologies in teaching data structures programming to reduce the cognitive load on learners’ working memory. A prototype learning tool, known as the Data Structure Learning (DSL) tool, was developed and used first in a short mini study that showed that, used together with visualisations of algorithms, aural instructions produced faster student response times than did textual instructions. This result suggested that the additional use of the auditory sensory channel did indeed reduce the cognitive load. The tool was then used in a second, longitudinal, study over two academic terms in which students studying the Data Structures module were offered the opportunity to use the DSL approach with either aural or textual instructions. Their use of the approach was recorded by the DSL system and feedback was invited at the end of every visualisation task. The collected data showed that the tool was used extensively by the students. A comparison of the students’ DSL use with their end-of-year assessment marks revealed that academically weaker students had tended to use the tool most. This suggests that less able students are keen to use any useful and available instrument to aid their understanding, especially of difficult concepts. Both the quantitative data provided by the automatic recording of DSL use and an end-of-study questionnaire showed appreciation by students of the help the tool had provided and enthusiasm for its future use and development. These findings were supported by qualitative data provided by student written feedback at the end of each task, by interviews at the end of the experiment and by interest from the lecturer in integrating use of the tool with the teaching of the module. A variety of suggestions are made for further work and development of the DSL tool. Further research using a control group and/or pre and post tests would be particularly useful

O ensino da programação no desenvolvimento de jogos através do ambiente Scratch

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ensino de InformáticaOs jogos de computador desempenham um papel muito importante na vida dos nossos jovens (Murray, 1999; Turkle, 1997; Overmars, 2004; Maloney et al. 2008; Resnick et al., 2009; Paraskeva et al., 2010). O ambiente de programação Scratch permite criar facilmente jogos com potencial educativo. Este relatório apresenta um estudo sobre o ensino da programação no desenvolvimento de jogos através do ambiente de programação Scratch. O objectivo da minha intervenção foi ensinar todos os alunos a programar e a entenderam os conceitos de abstração e raciocínio lógico, condições básicas para a programação. O estudo foi implementado numa turma do 12º ano do ensino secundário na disciplina de Aplicações Informáticas B e decorreu ao longo de vinte e cinco sessões de noventa minutos. Os vinte e seis alunos, numa primeira fase, desenvolveram no Scratch um jogo individual e numa segunda fase, em grupos de cinco e seis elementos, um jogo global para toda a turma intitulado Zschool. Este projeto global, além de envolver a referida turma B do 12º ano na programação do jogo, também contou com a cooperação da turma E do 12º ano de Artes Visuais que foi responsável pelo desenvolvimento de toda a componente multimédia: cenários, personagens e sons. Suportada numa metodologia de Development Research (Lencastre, 2012; 2009; Coutinho & Chaves, 2001), são descritas neste relatório as fases de análise do contexto e definição de objectivos; a revisão de literatura e desenho do projeto; a implementação, atividades e estratégias desenvolvidas; e a avaliação, que envolveu a análise dos jogos individuais e os projetos de grupo, assim como uma entrevista coletiva do tipo focus group que procurou recolher as opiniões dos alunos sobre a minha intervenção. Os resultados mostram que o Scracth permitiu motivar os alunos para a programação e desenvolver o raciocínio lógico/abstracto que a programação exige. Com este estudo consegui verificar que o desenvolvimento de jogos suportados pela ferramenta Scracth apresentam um elevado potencial pedagógico no ensino da programação, permitindo ensinar a programar de forma acessível e apelativa. Permitiu ainda promover a interdisciplinaridade entre a turma de Ciências e Tecnologias e a turma de Artes Visuais através de um projeto coletivo global.Computer games play a very important role in the lives of our youth (Murray, 1999; Turkle, 1997; Overmars, 2004; Paraskeva et al., 2010; Resnick et al., 2009; Maloney et al. 2008). The programming environment Scratch lets you easily create games with educational potential. This paper presents a study on programming teaching in game development through the Scratch programming environment in an educational context. The purpose of my intervention was to teach all students to program and understand the concepts of abstraction and logical reasoning, basic conditions for programming. The study was implemented in a class of high school 12th grade in the discipline of Computer Applications B and took place over twenty-five sessions of ninety minutes. The twentysix students, initially developed an individual game in Scratch and in a second stage, in groups of five and six elements, one global game for the whole class titled Zschool. This global project, besides involving class 12 B also included the cooperation of the class 12 E, also from the 12th grade of Visual Arts, which was responsible for developing all the multimedia components: settings, characters and sounds. Supported in a Development Research methodology (Lencastre, 2012; 2009; Coutinho & Chaves, 2001), are described in this report the context analysis and objectives definition phases, the literature review and project design, implementation, activities and strategies developed, and the evaluation, which involved the analysis of individual games and group projects created by the students, as well as a focus group conference type that sought to collect students opinions about my intervention. The results show that Scracth allowed the motivation of students to programming and develop logical/abstract reasoning that programming requires. With this study we could find that the development of games supported by Scracth has high pedagogical potential in programming teaching, allowing teaching in an accessible and appealing way. It also allowed to promote interdisciplinary among the class of Science and Technology and the Visual Arts class through a overall collective project