How Can We Build Successful 3D Games For Learning? (original) (raw)

3D Virtual Worlds have gained popularity in the resent years. The use of 3D VLEs has also extended the variation in the distance and online education. Another concept that sweeps the current educational practices is gamification. To converge both concepts Istanbul University has created its own virtual campus on a 3D VLE, and has been creating applications and games for foreign language and mathematics education. In this study, those applications and games will be presented and discussed. The designing phase, application of those games with learners, the experience with the learners, and the results of this process will be evaluated. The examples are 1) “Machinima Project” to equip foreign language teachers with digital literacy and “Language Park” to teach Turkish learners Italian, 2) “Coordinate System Robot” game to teach 7th grade learners the coordinate system, and 3) “Snow Dogs” game to teach 5th grade learners the fractions in their Maths class.

ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss the potentialities of 3D virtual worlds in education. We argue that assignments in virtual worlds and a constructivist approach go hand in hand. We identify the aspects of virtual worlds (such as ActiveWorlds and SecondLife) that make them useful for education and research, as well as aspects that do not. We found that intertwining real life instructional courses with virtual constructivist courses was very promising in terms of the learning experience.

Heated debates involving reforms in the educational system are becoming more and more frequent in recent years, mostly due to the increasingly evident shortcomings in the educational system and its difficulties to evolve at the same pace as technological development. Since nowadays people spend much of their time interacting directly or indirectly with technological devices, one can think of using this involvement with educational purposes. Through this interaction people have easy and inexpensive access to a vast amount of information. In this sense, one can think of methodologies to improve education by focusing on the foundations of knowledge rather than the emphasis on the memorization of contents. Therefore, the aim of this work is to propose and validate an interactive content authoring system as well as a virtual classroom where lessons are taught by avatars in an attempt to make learning experience richer and more motivating to students.

Becoming a skilled professional requires both the a cquisition of theoretical knowledge and the practice of skills relevant to on e’s profession. When learning by doing, students consolidate their knowledge of doma in-specific facts by applying them as necessary to accomplish the tasks involved in their profession. Simulationbased learning methods are a family of methods that en ble this learning mode. New computer related technologies, including high perfo rmance networking, high definition displays, distributed multiplayer game e ngines, and virtual worlds, bring new opportunities for simulation-based learning met hods and systems. In this work, we describe our software framework for specifying s imulation-based lesson plans and their implementations on two different platform s: a video based tool and a virtual world environment. We discuss the software chitecture of the system, illustrate its functionality with an example lesson how to conduct oneself in corporate interviews, out...

Several research works in literature refer to the use of 3-D virtual environments in distant learning (Kirriemuir, 2008; Kahiigi et Al., 2008; de Freitas, 2006; de Freitas, 2008) .Researchers, educational institutes and organizations confirm the usefulness of such an educational environment, either by developing 3-D environments tailored to their needs, or by exploiting existing infrastructure and platforms. This paper presents an overview of modern 3-D platforms and examines whether and to what extent they can enhance the learning process in secondary education. Moreover, in order to achieve a better understanding of the possibilities offered by these environments and of the difficulties hidden in the successful integration into the educational process, we run a course using an open source 3-D platform as the main collaborative distant educational environment. More specifically, we design two versions of the same course: one that takes advantage of the new environment in order to a...