Scenario-based Muve for Science Inquiry

The development of scientific inquiry skills is a core element of the draft national science curriculum for Australian secondary school students. Yet, despite the prominence of inquiry learning in the curriculum, the use of integrated classroom technology to facilitate inquiry learning is difficult for teachers to implement successfully without support in Australian secondary schools. The purpose of the Virtual Worlds project, which commenced this year, is to conduct learning and cognitive sciences-based research into the potential of scenario-based Multi-User Virtual Environment systems to promote, and perhaps enhance, secondary school learning experiences. In this paper we consider a number of existing science education-based multi-user virtual environments and introduce our project including our goals, approach and scenario underpinning the virtual world. Proceedings of the 16th UniServe Science Annual Conference, University of Sydney, Sept 29 to Oct 1, 2010, pages 47-52, ISBN Number 978-0-9808597-1-3