Dana M. Barry

US Students Carry out Nuclear Safety Project in a Virtual Environment

Abstract A project about nuclear safety was carried out through e-learning. It was a problem based learning (PBL) activity that took place in Second Life (SL), an online three-dimensional community. The virtual classroom was built on an island owned by Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan. Three students from a high school near Clarkson University participated in this project. A teacher gave them a short lesson about nuclear energy safety and then proposed the problem. The students understood the contents very well and solved the problem through voice chat interactions in SL. They engaged in active discussions and displayed high interest for the safe use of nuclear energy throughout this successful project. The results clearly indicate that this type of PBL class is possible for actual e-learning about nuclear safety and for engineering education.

Eco Car Project for Japan Students as a Virtual PBL Class

Abstract Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a powerful tool for engineering design education. On the other hand, STEM education at pre-college levels is important, particularly for engineering education, to increase and maintain a nations industrial competitiveness. In this paper, virtual PBL in Second Life was carried out for third graders (18 year old students) in some national colleges of technology, Japan. At the beginning of the class, teachers proposed an ill-structured problem for students to solve, like one in real life. The problem was “design your own eco-cars through virtual discussion and make them by prim virtually”. Students as avatars discussed the problem in Second Life using microphones. They designed their own eco-cars using pens and tablets and made virtual cars with prims. After the project was completed, they evaluated their work by offline questionnaires and online talks in the virtual world. All of the results were examined from the viewpoints of the effectiveness for engineering design and STEM education.

Introducing Eye Blink of a Student to the Virtual World and Evaluating the Affection of the Eye Blinking During the e-learning

Abstract Problem Based Learning (PBL) is an educational process by which problem-solving activities and instructors guidance facilitate learning. The PBL is suffered from the current issues in the traditional education system such as enhancing quality, reducing cost and increasing access. Virtual e-Learning (VeL) can be overcome those issues and become a major way of delivering the knowledge. The VeL is in early stage and there are many ways to enhance the effectiveness of the VeL. The establishment of the non-verbal features, which are essential elements in the education process, [1] is a one way of improving the quality of VeL. One of the non-verbal features (Eye blink) is visualized in the VeL and the affection of that non-verbal feature to the VeL is accessed in this research. The eye blink, which is an important non-verbal feature of the real student [2] , is mirrored in the VeL environment. The affection of the eye blink was evaluated through an experiment with the responses of the e-Learning participants. The experiment consisted by PBL sessions with and without eye blinking. The evaluated factors of the questionnaire showed that a high rate of positive responses during the sessions with the eye blinks than the session without the eye blinks and also the difference of the mean ranks is 25%. Further, Mann-Whitney U test is utilized to analyze the responses of the students to determine whether there is a significant difference in the sessions with and without the eye blinking. It is identified that the eye blink helps to enhance the effectiveness of the group discussion significantly over the effect size value (r) of the selected factors have more than 0.62 suggested a moderate to high practical significance when they utilized the eye blinks in the VeL.