A Programming Experience of High School Students in a Virtual World Platform

Virtual Worlds have become a very popular kind of software application that has been used in different fields, from games to simulation or education. They allow individuals to interact with others through their avatars and with objects in the environment. Virtual Worlds provide new educational experiences where collaboration and cooperation among users can be easily achieved. This paper presents the results of an experience in which students from several high schools were offered a course on programming through a VW educational platform in order to make programming concepts more appealing. At the same time the proposed platform minimizes the effort required by the teachers to use the VW environment. The paper analyses the didactical issues of the created virtual world and the main problems that have been solved in order to develop the operative educational platform. Finally, an evaluation of the subjective experience of students and teachers when using the WV environment was carried out. The results of this evaluation show that both teachers and students had a very satisfactory educational experience.