Abstract
This chapter discusses the potential of using virtual worlds for inquiry-based teaching of science and engineering topics, particularly in the form of interactive experiments. It draws on experiences with a virtual lab for learning cognitive modelling and applied artificial intelligence (AI) in a university setting, realised within Linden Lab’s multi-user virtual environment Second Life (SL). The main observation was that the students, although experienced programmers, had a tough start in making use of the environment, particularly the Linden scripting language (LSL), which they experienced as cumbersome. Yet, in the end they put up with the difficulties and created an inventive AI-based game that exploited the physics engine of Second Life and the support for implementing agents in LSL. We conclude that virtual worlds are in fact useful for creating virtual lab environments, even though Second Life in particular is perceived as lacking ease of use.
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Acknowledgements
We owe great thanks to the students who participated in the experimental AI course, created the game levels detailed above, and took part in the evaluations: Arne Leitert and Christian Scheel (Level 1), Marian Nagorsnick and Martin Weitzel (Level 2), Thomas Keil and Michael Meitzner (Level 3) as well as Paul Boenisch and Thomas Podelleck (Level 4). Matthias Krause created the first project meeting environment, while Max Wieden implemented the alternative version of Level 4 in C++.
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Maciuszek, D., Martens, A., Lucke, U., Zender, R., Keil, T. (2014). Second Life as a Virtual Lab Environment. In: Hebbel-Seeger, A., Reiners, T., Schäffer, D. (eds) Synthetic Worlds. Integrated Series in Information Systems, vol 33. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6286-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6286-6_7
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