European virtual classrooms: building effective “virtual” educational experiences

Abstract

This paper presents Learning@Europe, an educational service, supported by VR, that has involved in year 2004-2005 more than 1,000 students from 6 different European countries. L@E has fostered the creation/reinforcement of three different kinds of communities: (1) the classroom community (reinforcing the bonds among students, and between students and their teachers), (2) communities among different schools competing together through 3D environments, (3) a global community (roughly involving 20% of the total) of all the teachers and students. A similar situation was created, at regional level, in the Italian Region of Lombardy, involving nearly 800 individuals. Given that the behaviours of the different communities in the two projects were very similar, it seems to be arguable that a pattern of community building through virtual environments has been detected. The important facts (detected by surveys of teachers and students, inspection, direct observation, qualitative data analysis) about these communities are: (1) the depth of the pedagogical impact, in terms of increased knowledge (about history and related subjects), skills (use of functional English, use of ICT in learning/teaching processes, group work) and attitudes (more curiosity towards history, increased motivation in school activities, improved respect and interest for other cultures).(2) The engagement of all the participants, with very high level of customer satisfaction. (3) The depth of the social impact, reinforcing existing relationships (within the same class) and creating new ones. The key feature of this success apparently lies in the sense of ''social virtual presence'', that is, a feeling of being engaged in a virtual situation, so strong that the technological means become ''transparent'' and the social situation (meant at different levels and for different time frames) becomes ''the king''. The paper will present the project, its main features and its outcomes, eventually discussing the role of social virtual presence into building effective and lively communities.

Investigation of the Relation Between Interaction and Sense of Presence in Educational Virtual Environments

“…In EVEs with strong interaction, users showed an increase of sense of presence [27], [28], resulting the achievement of educational aims [19], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34].…”

Collective digital storytelling at school as a whole-class interaction

“…If employed in multinational settings, virtual collaboration in storytelling activities can also enhance cultural understanding, and enable children to embrace openness to diverse cultural viewpoints. However, to our knowledge, there are no significant cases of wide adoption of technology-enabled tools for supporting virtual storytelling in educational contexts, at levels comparable to those reached, for example, by complex multi-user virtual game environments such as Learning@Europe [11] or Quest Atlantis [19]. Some digital storytelling initiatives draw on role-play elements, enacting typical social interaction situations where participants take upon a role.…”

User Characteristics, Trait vs. State Immersion, and Presence in a First-Person Virtual World

“…The International Society for Presence Research (ISPR) identified presence as "… a psychological state or subjective perception…" in which a user sets aside awareness that experience is filtered through technology and perceives as though the technology was not involved in the experience (ISPR, 2019). Other researchers have defined presence as the strong sense in VW users of being there; being actually inside an environment; the illusion of "non-mediation" or being uncoupled from technology (ISPR, 2019;Lombard & Ditton, 1997); and the sense that they have actually been somewhere rather than just seeing it and that what they are doing is actually real (Chen, Toh, & Wan, 2004;Di Blas & Poggi, 2007;Inoue, 2007;Lombard & Ditton, 1997;Mikropoulos, 2006). For Ausburn and Ausburn (2010), presence is simply the reality in virtual reality.…”