3D environments with games characteristics for teaching history: the VRLerna case study

  • Authors:

  • Kostas Barbatsis;Daphne Economou;Ioanna Papamagkana;Dimos Loukas

  • Affiliations:

  • Regional Directorate of Primary and Secondary Education of Central Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece;University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom;Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece;A.TEI of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 29th ACM international conference on Design of communication
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

The latest rapid advancement of technology of informatics and communication brought new prospective to education. However, the potential of those technologies could have been exploited further in order to transform students from passive data receivers, to active actors in the learning process. The scope of this paper is the presentation of a theoretical educational framework for the use of interactive three dimensional virtual environments with game characteristics that aims at the initiation of motivation and enhancement of learning. To evaluate the effectiveness of the theoretical framework a prototype educational application called "VRLerna" has been implemented and evaluated with real users. VRLerna is an interactive reconstruction of the central building of a prehistoric population at Lerna of Argolis which is used to teach history at Key stage 5. The paper describes the methodology used to evaluate the prototype and via this the theoretical educational framework and presents the evaluation results that portray the success of the prototype to attract the students interest and keep them engaged and motivated.