How to Build Effective “Edutainment” Experiences in MUVEs

Abstract

This chapter is about how to make an effective use of MUVEs (Multi-Users Virtual Environments) in\ud formal education. It draws on the authors’ experience with four different programs deployed since 2002\ud involving, so far, more than 9,000 students from 18 European countries including Israel and the USA. The\ud chapter is intended as a set of “lessons learned” on all of the relevant aspects of this kind of enterprise,\ud from design to implementation and actual deployment. It is therefore meant as a short “users” guide\ud for building effective and engaging edutainment experiences in virtual worlds

Multi-User Virtual Environments for Learning: Experience and Technology Design

“…Focus groups with teachers at the end of the year (involving 20 teachers on average). Specific evaluations have been discussed elsewhere (see [1], [58], [59]). For this paper, in order to simplify the discussion, the focus is on a specific year of Learning@Europe.…”

“…This section aims at clarifying how the educational experiences introduced in Section 1 were designed. Given the complexity of the artifacts, it is impossible to describe all the details; the interested reader is thus referred to [1], [40]. Here the overall flavor and some relevant examples will be provided.…”

“…The two keywords for the design were: "entertainment" (there had to be fun) and "education" (there had to be substantial educational benefits for the participants). On the basis of previous experiences of the authors and following the suggestion of a group of experts, two lists of requirements were drawn for each of the two keywords [1], [45].…”

“…The experiences were designed and deployed by HOC-LAB of Politecnico di Milano, with the technological support of GSA Lab of University of Salento (in Lecce, Southern Italy). A remarkable educational impact, as recognized by teachers and students, has been achieved with all of them [1].…”