Designing, Building, and Assessing a Virtual World for Science Education

摘要

A virtual world for Science education has been implemented where students explore and perform experiments as a way of learning how to operate as a geologist would. Planet Oit is a role-based, goal-oriented, distance learning simulation hosted on the Internet. Students log in using a standard internet browser that launches a Java applet. While on the virtual planet they pursue goals set for them, interact with each other, and are visited, when necessary, by intelligent software tutors implemented as agents. A pilot study was conducted, seeking to evaluate the usability of the Planet Oit simulation and to assess the simulation in terms of its pedagogical effects. Preliminary results are reported.