VIRTUAL WORLDS IN ONLINE EDUCATION AND TRAINING - AN EVALUATION REPORT

Abstract

Online 3D Virtual Worlds (3DVWs) are special cases of e-learning and e-training environments, user-centered, basically with graphic and multimedia content. 3DVWs exploit real-time 3D graphics and networking technologies to implement visual, immersive, sensorial, experiential and social mediums. Even 3DVWs offer (cvasi) 3D graphic environments, the human-computer interaction for orientation, navigation or content access is still 2D, if the display is not performed via specialized virtual reality equipments. Despite the existing important implementations as educational platforms, mainly in academic millieus, the 3DVWs are not yet taken into consideration as a current practice. Beyond the 3D modelling of the environment and the technical challenges for multi-user scenarios and real-time graphic and sound rendering, a reason for this slow rate assimilation is the effort needed to create a different e-learning environment, not just to convert the methods and content in a graphical context. Our research investigates the instructional design and the learning outcomes in an Opensimulator 3DVW from two perspectives, i.e. of teachers and students. The paper presents an evaluation of a series of teaching, learning and assessment activities taking place in an online multi-user 3D virtual environment, designed with motivational incentives, and discusses the findings against to results from an evaluation of similar activities performed on the Moodle LMS platform. In the introduction of the paper an overview of the main functionalities of the online 3D virtual class is presented. The main part of the paper describes the experimenations with teachers and students, the evaluation methods and results. The final part of the paper discusses findings in regard to the initial research hypothesis and draws conclusions regarding the design and usage best practices for online 3D virtual worlds as e-learning settings.