| dc.description.abstract | After the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, due to the restrictions on social distancing in real life, people were compelled to shift activities such as work and education to online formats. In the realm of education, merely converting course content into videos or slides and placing them online results in a lack of interactive learning environments, which can leave students in a passive state with low learning interest, thereby failing to achieve the same learning outcomes as in physical schools. Consequently, the metaverse, which offers a high degree of realism and immersion, has garnered significant attention. In the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), which has been developed over many years, it is noted that social interaction is as crucial as interaction with learning content. The metaverse, with its ability to represent expressions and actions through virtual avatars and facilitate voice communication, aligns well with the development direction of CSCL. Additionally, the metaverse′s capability to interact with virtual objects reduces the cost of conducting scientific inquiries and broadens the scope of topics.
This study designs a collaborative scientific inquiry activity within a metaverse environment. The study involves 67 high school students from two schools, divided into experimental and control groups according to their respective schools, with the experimental group engaging in the inquiry activity within a metaverse environment and the control group using online webpages. Students could freely form groups and collaboratively answer inquiry question sheets, with the inquiry activities divided into two 90-minute sessions in the morning and afternoon. Before and after the activities, a learning interest questionnaire and a science concept test were administered to explore the students′ learning effectiveness. The metaverse environment collected students′ movement trajectories within the environment and input them into the Virtual Space Learning Analysis Tool (VSLAT) to observe students′ learning behaviors.
The results of the study found that students engaged in scientific inquiry within the metaverse environment showed higher improvements in learning interest and effectiveness. Furthermore, by observing group trajectory maps and encounter distribution Gantt charts in VSLAT, four distinct collaborative scenarios were identified in the metaverse environment. Based on the experimental results, the study concludes with future directions and recommendations for applying the metaverse in the field of education. | en_US |