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Designing a collaborative virtual environment for introducing pupils to complex subject matter

Published:23 October 2004Publication History

ABSTRACT

Mission Queen Maud Land (MQML) is a collaborative virtual environment that was developed to explore new ways to stimulate secondary school pupils to collaborate in grasping complex subject matter. MQML is designed for five simultaneous users (four pupils and a teacher) and it combines a collaborative virtual environment with a web site and audio narratives. Basic concepts from molecular biology and genetic engineering form the educational core in MQML, and it enables the participants to explore the DNA molecule and to unravel the genetic code by interactions both on a macroscopic and a microscopic level. A background story was developed with the purpose of adding excitement and engagement to the subject matter. The audio narratives were used to convey the story while the web site provided the necessary background information. This paper describes our design approach for making the subject matter easy to understand, and for eliciting collaborative work processes among the participants. Finally, we report results from evaluations of MQML during a field study in the secondary school.

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  • Published in

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    NordiCHI '04: Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction
    October 2004
    472 pages
    ISBN:1581138571
    DOI:10.1145/1028014

    Copyright © 2004 ACM

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    • Published: 23 October 2004

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