International Environmental Problem Discussion by Using Moodle

Environmental Problems are going to be an important and critical issue on global scale. Therefore, it is very informative for students to learn and discuss the topic internationally. For the purpose, time differences, costs and language differences might be a sort of potential barriers. In this study, a course management system based on Moodle was applied to the international discussion about an environmental problem. Students in the USA (Hawaii), Fiji and Japan tackled with the discussion in teams in virtual reality. Each country had a team, respectively, and they presented their own daily environmental problems by posting to the CMS located in Suzuka National College of Technology, Japan. Then they discussed about the problems in the CMS. After the several weeks long project, a questionnaire was distributed to the participants and the educational effectiveness was discussed by analyzing the results.