The Roadmap for Experimental Teaching of Science and Engineering Based Subjects

The continual development of technology represents a challenge when preparing engineering students for future employment. At the same time, the way students interact in everyday life is evolving: their extra-curricular life is filled with an enormous amount of stimulus, from online data to rich Web-based social interaction. This chapter provides an assessment of various learning technology-driven methods for enhancing both teaching and learning in the science and engineering disciplines. It describes the past, present, and future drivers for the implementation of hands-on teaching methods, incorporating industry standard software and hardware and the evolution of learning experiments into all-encompassing online environments that include socializing, learning, entertainment, and any other aspect of student life when studying science and engineering.

Techland

This work describes Techland, an OpenSim-based VW developed and owned by the author for educational purposes for middle school students. Techland is a group of islands focused on math, and science, where explore various approaches to VW, in different and mutually not exclusive learning sets and degrees of immersion. The main objectives are to simplify abstract concepts by using scripted 3D learning objects and to engage students offering a way to go beyond the classroom as the only learning environment. So Techland can be considered a giant 3D book. Activities range from viewing the contents of the world on an IWB, as a support for the teacher's lesson, to logging on the student's avatars into the world for exploration, producing machinima videos and collaborating together. Most islands are public access and reachable from other similar virtual worlds by the HG system, so other schools could take advantage from its contents or they could share projects. Techland has got the proper requirements to will become a meeting place between students and teachers who want to find new approaches to scientific matters.

Learning Patterns as Criterion for Forming Work Groups in 3D Simulation Learning Environments

This study analyzes the relationship between the use of learning patterns as a grouping criterion to develop learning activities in the 3D simulation environment at University. Participants included 72 Spanish students from the Education and Marketing disciplines. Descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests were conducted. The process was analyzed by means of teamwork measurements and the product was analyzed by assessing the final group performance. Results showed that learning patterns can be an effective criterion for forming work groups, especially when the students do not know each other.

Applied Areas of Three Dimensional Virtual Worlds in Learning and Teaching

Three Dimensional Virtual Worlds (3DVW) have been substantially adopted in educational and pedagogical fields worldwide. The current study conducted a systematic literature review of the published research relevant to the application of 3DVWs in higher education. A literature search was performed in eight high-ranking databases, and following scrutiny according to inclusion criteria, 164 papers were selected for review. The systematic literature review process was summarized, reviews undertaken by the authors, and results about the applicability of 3DVWs in higher education were extracted. A wide variety of application areas for the 3DVWs in higher education were found, and were classified into five main categories. Various 3DVW platforms and virtual environments used for educational goals were also identified. The results revealed Second Life as the most popular 3DVW platform in higher education. This study also found that by using 3DVW technology a wide range of virtual environments and virtual tools have been designed and applied in teaching and learning for higher education.

The Affordances of 3D Virtual Learning Environments

The purpose of this chapter is to examine participants' perceived affordances of three-dimensional virtual learning environments (3D VLEs) in developing interpersonal emotional connections with their partners during the initial stage of the virtual exchange. To fulfill the purpose, two Japanese and two American students were paired and participated in sessions within two differently designed virtual environments using the same 3D virtual application. The results indicate that the participants tend to find avatars useful as a cue that helps in recalling previous conversations and in avoiding long silences. Additionally, the affordances of the 3D VLEs heightened the experience of co-presence. However, for non-native speakers, this experience also created increased anxiety. Finally, the results show the affordances affected the participants much more strongly during the first several sessions but were mitigated by other factors as the sessions continued.

Personalisation of 3D Virtual Spaces for Enhanced Ubiquitous Learning

This study explores, using experiments, the effects of different architectural design features of 3D virtual educational buildings on higher-education learners during online e-learning sessions. Architectural features tested include shape, lighting, dimensions, colours and textures. Learners are divided into three groups: under-graduates, post-graduates, and adult learners. Results are demonstrated comprising charts and statistics capturing the extent of learners' enjoyment, information retention, and participation from being inside different 3D virtual spaces with different design characteristics. Consequently, design characteristics causing highest student retention, participation and contentment are established for design of a better 3D virtual learning environment (VLE). These provide guidelines for customised design practices inside 3DVLEs to create 3D virtual educational spaces best suited for ubiquitous “any-time” “any-place” e-learning of each individual student. This will aid in guiding the otherwise current ad-hoc design approach to building educational facilities in 3DVLEs.

Designing a Learning Analytic System for Assessing Immersive Virtual Learning Environments

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a template for the evaluation of learning in an educational game. In this case, gaming is referred to as 3D immersive virtual learning environments. Problem-based learning is the design template for the IVLE as it engages learners in defined learning behaviors that have been shown to encourage advanced problem-based learning. As a result of this holistic design procedure the learning analytic system proposed in this chapter is an integrated system that can be linked to P-12 educational programs augmenting their traditional programs and providing alternative instructional procedures, alternative learning processes for students and a standards-based but a more individualistic and thus viable assessment of learning to replace an outdated learning assessment model.

Using 3D Virtual Worlds Integrated to Remote Experimentation in Sciences Teaching

Considering the need to stimulate the interest of students, it is essential to create more attractive environments for teaching, and laboratory activities are indicated as essential to correlate theory and practice. The use of remote labs allows students access remotely at anytime and anywhere, a real lab equipment. The integration of remote experiments with 3D virtual worlds allows the creation of a rich environment for contextualization of laboratory activity, providing the user with additional information about the experiment. Thus, this article aims to understand and relate existing jobs currently about virtual 3D worlds using the integrated Remote Experiments.

A Remote Mobile Experiment in Brazilian Public Basic Education

The STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are very important for education, but the lack of experimental laboratories for these subjects in a school might decrease the interest of its students in STEM fields. This chapter explores these issues in the Brazilian context where, in order to address this issue, remote experiments are used to share real experiments manipulated through the Internet. Teachers and students can use remote laboratories, equipped with real experiments, to put in practice theoretical concepts learned in class. This chapter presents a report on a pilot project that aims to explore the use of Mobile Remote Experimentation (MRE) by teachers and students of public high schools in Brazil. It involves the use of mobile devices to access remote experiments in STEM subjects through the Internet. The report demonstrates the effectiveness of using such educational resources to improve pedagogical results by applying the TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) model to measure the impact of MRE by STEM teachers.

Learning Geography Through Serious Games

Serious games have gained momentum during last and current decade and research findings indicate they can be fertile and effective learning tools. While there are several studies dealing with 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional serious games in education, there is a dearth of relevant empirical research in formal educational settings that compares their effectiveness. In this study, two versions (2-dimensional and 3-dimensional) of a serious educational game on geography, were developed and offered in eight elementary schools. An experimental process was set up and the investigation was focused on the impact of using the two game versions, regarding motivation to learn and user experience. Both versions had a positive impact on learning, confirming thus the advantages of serious games in education. 2D version had a greater impact comparing to 3D, regarding learning, while 3D version had a greater impact on motivation to learn and user experience.