Use of 3-D virtual environments to support the learning of pro- gramming

The research and development of approaches to help students overcome the difficulties of acquiring good programming skills is a concern common to many institutions and researchers worldwide. One such approach is the use of virtual learning environments that allow students to freely explore several contextualized learning activities provided to them. We propose the use of scriptable 3D collaborative virtual environments in particular, as a way to provide support and context for collaborative programming activities. One of the main problems regarding the use of such virtual environments in a formal educational environment is that of connection between real-world goals stemming from collaboration, and their execution in virtual environments. The coordination of efforts typically follows methods of communication amongst participants that are supplied by traditional systems, external to the environments where interactions are taking place. Here we analyze this problem and a pathway to its study.