Cultural Learning in Virtual Environments

This paper is a survey of evaluation mechanisms that may be specifically suitable for virtual heritage environments and also to some extent for social learning environments. It suggests in particular new terms and criteria to assess the contextual appropriateness of various evaluation methods. From two working examples it also reviews issues and lessons learnt from current ongoing research. The first case study of Palenque in Mexico involved five types of evaluation specifically chosen to assess cultural awareness and understanding gained from different forms of interaction in a virtual heritage environment. The second case study, ‘Virtual Babel’, will attempt to use some of these evaluation methods to track cultural learning between students in Japan and in Australia using an online virtual world.