Identifying students’ thinking skills based on the pattern analysis of their interaction behaviours observed in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds, like Second Life, have been adopted by researchers to assess students’ understandings of the knowledge they have learned.
Students’ performances of solving the challenges and quests in the virtual worlds can be treated as their overall mastery of the taught concepts and skills. However, the answers of the questions like “do they have a clear idea of what concepts, theorems, and procedures the challenges involve” and “how familiar are they with the procedural knowledge and its associated objects (i.e.., equipment and tools) that fit their needs while solving the challenges” remain unknown. This research project aims to find the answers to the two questions by analyzing students’ interactions with the objects in the virtual world from both of intensity and time spent viewpoints. This research also aims to develop a metrics of mapping and measuring a student’s mastery level for each learning objective covered by objects in the virtual world based on his or her extracted interaction behaviour pattern. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Maiga Chang

Student:

Vahid Bahreman

Partner:

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

University:

Athabasca University

Program:

Globalink Research Award