LEARNING THE BASES OF CHEMISTRY IN A CONTENT RICH, GAME BASED 3D MMO VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

Virtual, immersive and multiuser virtual environments are already accepted as a powerful and efficient solution of e-Learning. However, we are still far from the moment when they will be easy to create, considering the average competencies of educators, and by their nature will be well understood and optimized for the learning purposes. This article describes the creation and refining of a complex 3D MMO virtual environment dedicated to chemistry, which combined content and pedagogy to explore new possibilities for modern, immersive and game based learning. We used our experience from previous experiments in designing the layout of the 3D environment and the details of the user interactions, with the purpose of maximizing the immersion and the involvement of the student in the learning process. The solution combines rich information related to the chemistry topics, embedded in the 3D space which can be freely explored by the user, with a series of mini-games useful both for fixing the information and for the evaluation process. Particular attention was given to the synchronous multi-user nature of the interaction, which presents distinct advantages in terms of collaboration during learning, but also challenges regarding the design of the games to ensure consistency and efficiency. The first prototype of our system was tested with a selected group of the target students and their feedback was used to refine the details of the 3D layout and user interaction. Then, the resulted improved prototype was tested on a larger audience and complex feedback was gathered. In this paper, we describe the development process, the solution - both at user level and technical level - and the experimental results, highlighting the advantages of our approach towards creating efficient 3D MMO learning environments.