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 nation's 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.
[1]
Katsuko T. Nakahira,et al.
Design of a multilinguistic Problem Based Learning learning environment in the metaverse
,
2010,
2010 2nd International Symposium on Aware Computing.
[2]
Katsuko T. Nakahira,et al.
W-02 Problem Based Learning for Materials Science Education in Metaverse
,
2011
.
[3]
Dana M. Barry,et al.
Problem Based Learning in Metaverse.
,
2010
.
[4]
Katsuko T. Nakahira,et al.
Multilingual Problem Based Learning in Metaverse
,
2011,
KES.
[5]
Dana M. Barry,et al.
Multilingual Discussion in Metaverse among Students from the USA, Korea and Japan
,
2010,
KES.