Factors Influencing Chat-Based Cultural Discussions for Learning History in a 3D Virtual World

In a fast-changing world, there is an increasingly felt need to bring what we teach and how we teach it into the 21st Century. Learning@Europe is an attempt in this direction: a shared online virtual world where students from different European countries meet to play and learn about European history. Chat-based discussions of study material, research homework to prepare in collaboration with remote peers on online forums, team games and a cultural com-petition are the main ingredients of this innovative experience, already tested by over 6000 high-school students and teachers from 18 European countries. This paper focuses on a particular Learning@Europe activity – chat-based cultural discussions about history – and analyzes the elements that are essential to its success. Basing on evaluation data and our 3-years experience, we describe strategies deal with the different elements to be taken into account: Technology; Content; Interaction Design; and – most important of all – Social Behavior.