Innovation, collaboration and system thinking are increasingly recognized as skills that can be useful to children, and that can help ensure their success as citizens and workers in the 21st century Seeking to improve opportunities for young people to develop abilities and competencies for the future and to narrow the complexity gap left by No…

This paper examines how pre-university students shared and constructed knowledge in the context of GP (general paper) by interacting through individual virtual characters across five cycles of enactive role play sessions. Contextualized scenarios on the topic of euthanasia were developed in "Second Life". Role-playing the virtual characters…

There have been a number of frameworks and models developed to support different aspects of interactive learning. Some were developed to deal with course design through the application of authoring tools, whereas others such as conversational, advisory, and ontology-based systems were used in virtual classrooms to improve and support collaborative…

Multi-institutional approaches to graduate education continue to emerge as a way to better prepare students for collaborative work. In this article, we describe a graduate course designed to investigate application of conservation biology principles by local land use planners. "Where is Conservation Science in Local Planning?" was…

This paper presents an alternative application of e-portfolio in a university student assessment context. A concept based on student collaboration (called netfolio) is developed, that differs from the classical e-portfolio concept. The use of a netfolio, a network of student e-portfolios, in a virtual classroom is explained through an exploratory…

The literature related to online learning programs for K-12 students dates to the mid-1990s and builds upon a century of research and practice from K-12 distance education. While K-12 online learning programs have evolved and grown over the past decade, the amount of published research on virtual schooling practice and policy is limited. The…

Increasing organizations and educational institutions have implemented virtual learning communities to encourage knowledge sharing. However, this task can not be accomplished simply by grouping people together and telling them "sharing your knowledge will make you learn better". This research attempts to examine the factors influencing knowledge…

Although there is interest in the educational potential of online multiplayer games and virtual worlds, there is still little evidence to explain specifically what and how people learn from these environments. This paper addresses this issue by exploring the experiences of couples that play "World of Warcraft" together. Learning outcomes were…

"Second Life" (SL) is currently the most mature and popular multi-user virtual world platform being used in education. Through an in-depth examination of SL, this article explores its potential and the barriers that multi-user virtual environments present to educators wanting to use immersive 3-D spaces in their teaching. The context is set by…

To promote STEM higher education, avenues such as distance education must be visited. Students in most of the distance-learning classes generate great amounts of textual messages for class interaction, discussion and assignments which take up most of instructor's time to respond and grade. Researches in distance learning and computer-aided grading…

For the past few years, virtual environments (VEs) have gained broad attention from both scholarly and practitioner communities. However, in spite of intense and widespread efforts, most VE-related research has focused on the technical aspects of applications, and the necessary theoretical framework to assess the quality of interfaces and designs…

This study examines the effects of using historical microworlds on conceptual change in mechanics. Historical microworlds combine history of science and microworld through a computer based interactive learning environment that respects and represents historic conceptions or theories. Six grade 5 elementary students participated individually to…

This article reports MyCaseSpace, a Web-based program used to present clinical cases to students in health-related professions to test their critical thinking skills. The creator of MyCaseSpace, David Segal, an assistant professor in the College of Health and Public Affairs at the University of Central Florida, has created various characters to…

For educators who think real life does not offer enough opportunities to practice their profession, there is Second Life, an Internet-based virtual environment that counts thousands of educators among its enthusiasts. Second Life bears a passing resemblance to an online game, with users represented by digitally drawn characters, called avatars,…

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are widespread in higher education today, typically used to deliver instructional materials and facilitate communication within a course. This study aimed to investigate the task-technology fit of VLEs for their two main groups of users: instructors and students, using the VLE WebCT. Task-technology fit, user…