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THE ADDED VALUE OF WRITTEN KNOWLEDGE BUILDING IN A THREE-DIMENSIONAL VIRTUAL WORLD

Introduction The concept of knowledge building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994) is closely related to the notion of constructivism (Papert, 1991). Both assume that learners construct knowledge by interpreting their perceptual experiences in terms of prior knowledge, current mental structures and existing beliefs (Jonassen & McAleese, 1993). Constructivism implies that learning is the personal interpretation of the world situated in a rich context. Learners' involvement in the process of knowledge construction, development and evaluation aims at the development of their reflective awareness. Collaboration is used to encourage the construction of an understanding from multiple viewpoints. In this project, it is assumed that learning occurs by building a virtual world both under the physical point of view, building virtual houses and objects, and under the cultural point of view, by exchanging, discussing and generating ideas, knowledge and specific content for each virtual house. The students' reflective activities are stimulated by a twofold need: to present and explain to other partners their own ideas and to take into account suggestions, comments and request coming from the distant partners. Visualisation (Edelson, Gordin & Pea, 1997) has become particularly relevant as a consequence of an increased emphasis on inquiry-based learning. Visualisation exploits the ability of the human visual system to identify patterns in images. In the fields of art, physics and science, inquiry is often difficult when only based on textual data. Through the presentation of visual data, a further and often easier manner of investigating and learning is offered. This option is very often considered as one of the most productive features of the new technology. The combination of different media (graphics, sound, animation, text) reflects the multiple representations humans are capable of. The visual thinking skills are stimulated when students have the possibility to build the objects to be visualized. Desktop virtual reality software makes concrete this opportunity by offering a set of tools through which is easy to create and visualize 3D objects. The creation of 3D objects within educational environment includes different stages where different thinking strategies are involved, such as: a) Deciding upon the general aim of why to build. This phase is strictly connected to the idea of students capacity to take decisions about their own curricula; b) Planning, pre-visualizing the objects by displaying essential elements on paper, with materials easy to be manipulated (Das, Lego), by collecting photos, pictures connected to the objects; c) Planning the educational value …