Students benefit from collaborative learning activities, but they do not automatically reach desired learning outcomes when working together (Fischer, Kollar, Mandl, & Haake, 2007; King, 2007). Learners need instructional support to increase the quality of collaborative processes and individual learning outcomes. The core challenge is to find…

Growing science apathy at the K-12 education level represents an alarming development with potentially devastating consequences at individual, societal and economic levels. Technology has been incorporated in science education without fundamentally improving test scores or student attitudes. We claim the core of the problem is how technology is…

In recent years, the application of virtual reality (VR) technology in education is rapidly gaining momentum. The educational benefits offered by such technology have prompted many educators as well as instructional designers to investigate ways to create effective and engaging VR learning. Instructional designers have examined widely the…

This article is based on an innovative research project with academics, software developers, and organizational pilot sites to design and develop elearning software for an emergency response simulation with supporting collaborative tools. In particular, this article focuses on the research that the author has conducted to provide the theoretical…

A growing body of evidence suggests that relevant, well-designed simulations can make a valuable contribution to students' experiences in training and education and go some way toward meeting the expectations of students who have grown up with immersive, computer-mediated games. Within universities, many barriers exist that may prevent the…

The paper deals with the use of visual stereotypes in virtual pedagogical agents and its potential impact in digital learning environments. An analysis of the concept of visual stereotypes is followed by a discussion of affordances and drawbacks as to their use in the context of traditional media. Next, the paper explores whether virtual…

Simulation is the process of executing a model that describes a system with enough detail; this model has its entities, an internal state, some input and output variables and a list of processes bound to these variables. Teaching a simulation language such as general purpose simulation system (GPSS) is always a challenge, because of the way it…

This paper will undertake a critical review of the impact of virtual reality tools on the teaching of history. Virtual reality is useful in several different ways. History educators, elementary and secondary school teachers and professors, can all profit from the digital environment. Challenges arise quickly however. Virtual reality technologies…

The paper presents a theoretical framework addressing three aspects of embodied pedagogical agents: visual static appearance, pedagogical role, and communicative style. The framework is then applied to a user study where 90 school children (aged 12-15) in a dummy multimedia program were presented with either an instructor or a learning companion…

A 3D virtually synchronous communication architecture for situated language learning has been designed to foster communicative competence among undergraduate students who have studied English as a foreign language (EFL). We present an innovative approach that offers better e-learning than the previous virtual reality educational applications. The…

The 11th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2018) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Templeton Landing in Buffalo, New York. This year's EDM conference was highly competitive, with 145 long and short paper submissions. Of these, 23 were accepted as full papers and 37…

In K-12 classrooms, as well as on the college and university level, the incorporation of digital games has played a vital role in the educational system. While introducing teachers to new fields, these digital games have been designed and implemented for the classroom and have shown positive results at a variety of educational levels. Cases on…

Developing a software environment to enhance 3D geometric proficiency demands the consideration of theoretical views of the learning process. Simultaneously, this effort requires taking into account the range of tools that technology offers, as well as their limitations. In this paper, we report on the design of Virtual Spaces 1.0 software, a…

This paper examines how a game-like 3D Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE), Quest Atlantis (QA), is used in an after-school programme to engage a group of 14 academically at-risk primary students in their learning. It adopts an activity theoretical perspective to identify the disturbances and contradictions during the implementation of the…

In this paper we will focus on a specific category of Collaborative Virtual Environments that aims to support Collaborative Learning. We call these environments Collaborative Educational Virtual Environments. Our aim is to analyze the evaluation process through the study of relevant bibliography and by doing so reveal the existing research gap…