مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد محیطی جدید برای یادگیری ساختارگرا – الزویر ۲۰۱۹

Virtual worlds have the potential to provide a new environment in which to engage learners in constructionist activities. However, they were not designed for education and have features and affordances which are not found in traditional constructionist environments. These may limit the pedagogy in action and/or provide new opportunities with which to transform constructionist pedagogy in practice, but to date there has been no research on these issues. To address this, we explore constructionism in action in the virtual world Second Life. This is the first study to examine the theoretical alignment of pedagogy and technology in practice. An exploratory case study of a purpose-built constructionist learning experience was conducted. The experience was designed based on the theoretical alignment of pedagogy and technology and implemented with 24 postgraduate students over four weeks. Open non-directive interviews, chat logs, constructed artefacts, learners’ written reflections and observations were collected and analysed using the constant comparative approach. The findings provide insights into how learners engage in meaningful artefact construction, highlight the role of avatars and draw attention to the importance of the designed space. New opportunities for distributed constructionism are identified. We conclude that virtual worlds are effective environments for constructionist learning.

Introduction

Virtual worlds have the potential to provide an exciting environment to engage in transformative constructionist learning activities. With inbuilt construction and programming tools and without the boundaries of gaming environments, learners can engage in a process of bricolage (an incremental process of trying and testing, rather than following a pre-existing design (Papert, 1991)), to construct personally meaningful, shareable 3D artifacts in order to explore, test and extend their understanding, in situ (Ackerman, 2004) with other learners. Yet there is a paucity of literature on constructionism in virtual worlds. Constructionism is rarely identified as the pedagogical underpinning for the design of learning experiences in virtual worlds. Responding to the critique by Savin-Baden and others that learning in virtual worlds lacks clear pedagogical underpinning (2008; 2011), there is increasing reference to pedagogical theory within the literature, although it is often unclear how those theories have been used to inform the design of the learning activity. While Livingstone, Scullion & Creechan (2013) suggest that previously reported learning activities could typically be characterized as constructionist as they require learners to create something in the virtual world, it is often not clear how the broader features of constructionism are designed for. We argue that simply creating an object in a virtual world is not a constructionist activity.