Labs are needed in science education, and schools usually lack appropriate conditions to provide active learning activities with experience. In schools, the lack of labs for science education is usual. The new technologies of 3D virtual worlds allow the user, through immersive virtual worlds, or metaverses, to experience situations similar to those possible in a real environment. A solution to the lack of labs is the virtual labs, which consist of virtual representations that reproduce the environment of a real lab. These are applications based on simulations, offering computational representations of reality. The simulation of concrete and real situations gives the student the opportunity to experiment, actively participating in the learning process by performing experiments that would otherwise not be possible due to safety issues (possible damage to students or the environment) or economy (cost of components involved and derived from the creation and operation of the lab). These virtual labs can be implemented on personal computers that exist in schools or even in the student's home. Users can work in the virtual lab, through their avatars, using experiments provided there, as well as acting collaboratively.
Modern education needs use all resources to improve teaching-learning process. To achieve this goal, technology can be a sharp allied. Especially to the engineering education, which seeks the balance among theoretical and practice lessons. Thus, many universities are using the virtual labs and virtual worlds 3D like way to support the student's learning and enrich the teaching methods. High tech classes, broadband communication, mobility and ubiquity aren't enough if the student's engagement can't be measured. This work presents a proposal to monitor the virtual lab use by students, showing the educational parameters in a graphical interface, following the suitable pedagogical concepts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.