Experiencing and Learning with 3D Virtual Worlds (original) (raw)

In this chapter, 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. We demonstrated this 2-fold approach with the "Virtual Worlds" course at the