Design - Based Research on Gender , Class , Race , and Ethnicity in a Multi - User Virtual Environment

This National Science Foundation funded project utilizes graphical multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) as a vehicle to study (1) classroombased situated learning and (2) the ways in which virtual environments may aid the transfer of learning from classroom contexts into real world settings. In the project’s River City curriculum, teams of middle school students are asked to collaboratively solve a simulated 19 century city’s problems with illness, through interaction with each others’ ‘avatars’, digital artifacts, tacit clues, and computer-based ‘agents’ acting as mentors and colleagues in a virtual community of practice. This paper describes the impact of this intervention on subpopulations of students. In implementations in several cities, we have seen no gender or racial differences in student success.