Agathi Deligiannakou Anastasia Papavasileiou

Eleni Polymeraki Christina Volioti

Apostolos Mavridis Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos

Yevgen Revtyuk Lilya Kolesnyk

Department of Informatics Faculty of Management

1) Introduction

2) About EICL Project

3) Scenario of the Educational Activity

4) Design of the Virtual Place for Supporting Role Playing Games

5) Evaluation

6) Conclusions

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GBL: Excellent tool for facilitating situated learning

promoting active learning

Transfer of an educational activity from the traditional classroom to a virtual world

Collaboration between two universities of different disciplines and from different countries in the context of EICL

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2 main goals

Virtual & international collaboration

among postgraduate students from AUTH and IFNTUOG

for implementing the game-based scenario in the virtual educational place

With the use of an open source platform (OpenSim)

Conducting of the game-based collaborative learning activity

undergraduate students of IFNTUOG

“Investment Management” subject

IFNTUOG provided the scenario

AUTH created the virtual environment to support it

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Hypotheses to be assessed 1. If the virtual world and the representations of

the objects were understandable

2. If the students prefer to conduct this activity through the virtual or traditional classroom

3. If OpenSim is suitable for collaborative distance learning role-playing scenario

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International binomial between a Greek and an Ukrainian university to support:

International co-operation of teachers & students…

in order to improve the learning process…

by using e-tools in pilot courses

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Timeline of the steps and the collaboration

2 weeks 3 weeks 1 week 1 week 1 week 1 week

Communication and collaboration between AUTH team and IFNTUOG assistant (via e-mail or skype)

First familiarization session of IFNTUOG tutor (face-face)

Creation of the virtual world by AUTH team

Second familiarization session (of IFNTUOG assistant)

Third familiarization (of IFNTUOG undergraduate students)

Improvement of the Virtual place by AUTH team

Online Role Playing Simulation

Evaluation, Statistics & Conclusions

IFNTUOG students participated as:

try themselves as a part of one of the investments process negotiating sides calculate payback term & cost of the project, analyze their decisions

in conditions of limited time

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Roles

1. Tutor’s familiarization

2. Assistant’s familiarization Guide her in the virtual world & show functionalities

Comments & improvements

3. Undergraduate student’s familiarization Navigation & use of objects

AUTH team made corrections & took recommendations

Sent a pre-test questionnaire

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Outside the Virtual World Process lasting 20’

Start-uppers received the detailed description of their project

calculated its cost prepared their presentation

Investors got the description of the Start-upper’s project

different in some details each had his own amount of money decide with the whole Committee whether to invest or not

Moderator was the teacher’s assistant from IFNTUOG

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Inside the Virtual World

Passing through the Role Assignment Room to choose outfit depending on the role

Technical Supporters uploaded the presentations

In the Conference Room

each start-upper met the Credit Committee and tried to persuade them to invest – 5’

Investors asked questions & made a decision – 5’

Moderator was observing, announced which side has been more benefited, made a short discussion with the audience – 5’

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OpenSim is an open source platform for hosting virtual worlds based on client-server architecture

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Welcome area

Role Assignment Room

Conference Room

Simulation

Role Assignment

Room

Clothing Boxes

Conference Room

Chairs

Board

Clock

Discussion

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Method of evaluation cycles [1 cycle]

Pre-analysis phase

Questionnaire about user’s profile

Usability phase

Expert’s evaluation

Student’s familiarization

Learning phase

12 students answered 64 questions about the virtual world and its objects

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H1: If the virtual world and the representations of the objects were understandable

Student’s experience in the conference room was satisfactory

Most of them agreed that the objects reminded them a real world conference room

All students changed slides easily

92% understood where they should sit down, depending on their roles

75% understood the usability of timer

○ Only the 42% said it was helpful

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H2: If the students prefer to conduct this activity through the virtual or traditional classroom 85% would be interested

to attend lectures through OpenSim

92% found the virtual collaboration more interesting

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H3: If OpenSim is suitable for collaborative distance learning & for role-playing scenario

77% would like to participate in more virtual collaborative activities

Students described the process efficient and suitable for collaboration

The majority said they would use OpenSim in the future

42% thought it was easier to collaborate through OpenSim

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Experience evaluation after interview Communication was fast & efficient –technology definitely helped

Collaboration was fruitful

Different terminology, culture & language did not cause any difficulties

Pleased with the outcome

For computer specialists: Co-existence of Computer Science with another subject is interesting

ICT is a science that can facilitate all others

For investment managers: Students were interested in using OpenSim into real situations

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Integration of Sloodle in OpenSim’s environment Users will be able to transfer digital learning material from Moodle to

OpenSim

Calculator Users will be able to make calculations inside the virtual world using a

virtual calculator

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papavasa@csd.auth.gr