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SIMUL@: 3D spaces to learn generic skills. A pilot study with education students

Abstract:

The content of this document is explaining the organization of a didactic proposal that takes place in a virtual world to improve the generic skills of Team-working and Self-management. The virtual world is a simulation of certain space; it is a three-dimensional representation of real environments where interactions between users can be done. This didactic proposal consists of the Pilot project that is implemented in the development of a research project named Simul@ (Ref. EDU2008-01479). The project details are explained further on. The design of technological environments that simulate professional roles and work situations is possible today, however it is convenient to prove the efficiency of these systems, taking into account not only the end result of learning, but also time and effort required the students to complete the skills training. The technology promotes designing learning environment to simulate workplace activity; this is the setting where the generic skills can be developed in terms of transfer and integrative learning. The technology allows the recreation of work situations where cross-curricular competencies can be activated. For the development of this test has chosen to use SL. SL allows interaction of simulations and games, social networking where you create and share knowledge, collaborative work environments, use different media to meet different learning needs. Through SLOODLE, which is a module of learning activities represented as objects of SL, we can integrate SL to Moodle. The student performs the activities in SL and the teacher has Moodle registration in a transparent manner. In order to test the use of 3D tools for working with student teachers acquire the skills of self-management and teamwork has designed a pilot with 12 students. For this pilot, the teacher has designed an activity to be conducted in Second Life (SL) and is organizing an "Olympiad School". These students are distributed to work in groups of three and must compete for the best organization of the event. In order to develop this paper, we have organized the contents up through the following structure: first we make a brief theoretical overview about key concepts as 3D learning environments and generic skills, secondly we explain the context where the experience takes place and third section contains the description of the specific experience organization.