A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Situated Learning of Car Driving

Abstract

In the view of situated learning theory, knowledge and understanding are fundamentally products of learning situations. Learning is situated and takes place by means of legitimate peripheral participation within the context of a community of practice. Based on the theory of situated learning, this article develops conceptual and technical approaches to build a web-based collaborative 3D car-driving simulation environment that requires only low computing, networking and development resources. Rather than instructing individuals on a formal, structured, intensive and programmed base, this simulation environment supports members of virtual communities of practice to perform informal, unstructured, spontaneous, collaborative, situated learning. Pilot studies conducted with the system show its partial success and demonstrate that it depends on the characteristics of specific educationally valuable learning situations whether the collaborative learning approach we propose can succeed also with smaller group sizes.