Multi-User Virtual Environments Fostering Collaboration in Formal Education

This paper is about how serious games based on MUVEs in formal education can foster collaboration. More specifically, it is about a large case-study with 4 different programs which took place from 2002 to 2009 and involved more than 9,000 students, aged between 12 and 18, from various nations (18 European countries, Israel and the USA). These programs proved highly effective into fostering a number of transversal skills, among which collaboration (both remote and in presence), stood out as prominent. The paper will introduce the four programs, the way they were designed to foster collaboration and the data on their impact. Overall, the conclusion is that a technology-based educational experience can be successful only if technology is seen as a “mediator” and all the activities that go with it are carefully designed in view of the educational goal and taking into consideration the whole context into which the experience will be embedded. This means that designers of technology-based educational experiences must be ready to make changes and adjustments according to how the experience (which can be compared to a living “creature”) thrives and reacts to the “environment” (the school, the teachers, the students…) in a sort of “evolutionary” life cycle quite different from an engineered blue-print.