Exploratory and Social Learning in 3D Virtual Worlds

Abstract

Our world becomes more complex and modifiable. Early products are designed mainly rigid and inflexible and the users’ need for flexible and personalized products is becoming constantly more important. Personalization of different product, tasks, and services often requires the use of scripting or programming skills. This programming language can be signs, chain of commands or a specific programming language. The picture of the classical programmer and everyday life are merging constantly and programming skills are becoming increasingly important in our every-days life. This makes it clear that the need to learn programming is very high and the best way to learn such skills is already at an early age. Different digital and online environment allow children to learn first programming commands. In this project, we focus on developing an engaging game-like three-dimensional environment to attract in particular younger pupils to learn programming. The aim of this project is to create a 3D World with different tasks where users can freely and independently move around and explore the whole world. The tasks have different levels of difficulty. The learner should have as much freedom in the world as possible and should be engaged to solve tasks to enhance their understanding of programming commands through structured and logical thinking. The world is designed for children; thus it is necessary to make tasks playful and interesting. To realize the whole project Unity 3D is used. The world is designed to support the following pedagogical features: first of all it is possible to program interactively; every line can be tested, there are no limitations of the learner’s creativity since there are many different ways to solve a task. There is no right or wrong solution. Another advantage is the interesting 3D world, this should increase the passion of exploring. The world is designed as an engaging and interesting scenario with a fixed underlying Code-Execution-Engine, which can be reused in any 3D World. The learning person should have a feeling of playing a computer game instead of a learning program. It should generate a more fun and a more interesting learning process.