Are virtual worlds the future of the classroom?

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: June 12, 2006 4:00 AM PDT

This summer, as many as a million virtual kids could catch an infectious virus known as Whypox, causing them to break out in red welts and spout "Achoo" whenever chatting with friends.

Meanwhile, at the beach, crowds of "tweens," 8- to 12-year-olds, will see their popular hangout beset with so-called red tides, as the seashore changes from blue to red with phytoplankton blossoms.

Are these two signs of a crumbling world? No, they're learning tools for Whyvillains, the residents of an online virtual world whose population of kids has grown to about 1.6 million since its inception in 1999. Children in Whyville earn "clams" through activities and games, and use that virtual money to buy face decorations for their otherwise plain avatars. Then, they typically socialize with peers via chat, bulletin boards and the city's mail system.

"When Whypox first hits, they start saying 'Achoo,' and it interferes with their chat, which is obviously very important. So they are interested in finding out what it is and what they can do about it," in Whyville's Center for Disease Control, said Cathleen Galas, a teacher who helped a class of sixth graders through a bout of the pox last year by instructing them about epidemiology, the study of infectious diseases.

In educational circles, Whyville's private universe is known as a multiuser virtual environment, or MUVE, a genre of software games created to inspire children to learn about math and science, among other subjects. Unlike most game software and social networks, which elicit negative associations for some parents and teachers, MUVEs are structured environments with rules for behavior, yet no pat formula for action. Designed to provide problems to solve that don't involve slaying monsters, MUVEs compel kids to figure out the issues to succeed in the environments or have time to socialize.

Learning-based virtual worlds are growing more popular in schools and among children, thanks to ongoing efforts by universities and private companies.

For example, Harvard University's "River City" is a MUVE that involves a society in the late 1800s that's in political and environmental disrepair--kids must figure out why residents are falling ill. Harvard's School of Education is in talks with several urban school districts to introduce the software to tens of thousands of schoolchildren this fall.

Quest Atlantis, a downloadable MUVE developed at Indiana University that focuses on an ancient culture, will be introduced to 50 new classrooms, or between 10,000 to 20,000 students, in New Jersey next fall, according to Indiana Associate Professor Sasha Barab, who specializes in learning sciences and instructional systems technology.

Privately held companies like Pasadena, Calif., Numedeon, makers of Whyville, are also finding it easier to lure new sponsors. In the next month, Toyota Financial Services will host a Whyville loan center to help kids learn about FICO scores and interest rates in order to borrow money to buy a virtual Toyota Scion to drive around the world, according to the site's co-founder and president, Jennifer Sun. (Driving a Scion became a popular activity when the cars were introduced in Whyville in April.)

Wider adoption of MUVEs raises the question: Are virtual worlds the future of learning for the wired generation?

Ask some educators and they'll tell you yes. That's because research has shown that kids engage deeply in virtual environments, gaining a conceptual and ethical understanding of school subjects, according to education experts. And many kids are already comfortable socializing online, so educationally oriented virtual worlds can offer that same sort of stimulus and use that potential to aid learning. There's one big caveat, however: Virtual worlds must have knowledgeable and motivated teachers driving the train.

Chris Dede, Harvard professor and creator of "River City," has researched the effects of MUVEs in schools for the last six years. "Based on our results thus far, we're excited about how MUVEs can provide immersive, engaging simulations that complement lectures, textbooks, labs and field trips as part of an effective science curriculum," Dede says in a video promoting the project.

"As a (teaching) supplement, this is the wave of the future," said Numedeon's Sun.

Still, proponents have an uphill battle when it comes to dispelling negative preconceptions of video games and socially oriented computing environments. They say many people automatically fear that games can't teach kids anything valuable, or worse, that they're a waste of time. With the rise of MySpace, many parents are also worried that kids aren't safe against predators in digital communities.

"One of the things for us is how do we deal in this fearful culture?" said Barab. "Do classrooms want to innovate and make it educational and entertaining?" He added that there's also some tension around how educators enlist kids in a fantasy world so that it has real world value.

In regard to teaching an inner-city kid about Rome and its ancient art, politics and society, for example, a virtual world can spark the child's imagination more than a textbook filled with beautiful pictures can, Gallas said. Virtual environments, ironically, offer the feeling of reality.

'River' rafting
Harvard professor Chris Deede developed "River City" nearly six years ago, seeking to answer two simple research questions: Can kids learn from this type of virtual interface? And if so, how much can they learn? He answered these questions by evaluating use of the MUVE in schools around the greater Boston area.

Kids in "River City" have avatars and can walk, run or swim through the city, which contains a polluted river and mosquito-ridden bogs. Students work in teams to investigate the virtual town, click on objects to interview subjects, and collectively form hypotheses about what's affecting the city and making people sick. Inside the city, they can also access library materials and other data sources--and each lesson is up to national standards for biology and history. Kids must also handle tasks like analyzing water samples at a virtual treatment plant.

"Instead of teaching slash-and-slay mentality, 'River City' teaches kids to be scientists through the technology," said Edward Dieterle, advanced doctoral candidate in learning and teaching at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

In one example, kids who experienced "River City" found that people in densely populated tenements were much more likely to be stricken with the illness than wealthier people living farther apart. They sought to change variables in the city, such as adding more tenements, which the MUVE allows through administrators, but then one change set off a domino effect that didn't necessarily fix the city. The kids learned that because of the complexity of the world, it takes many changes to solve its problems.

"In ways, many adults don't understand this," said Gallas.

Next page: Whyville--the anti-MySpace 

Are virtual worlds the future of the classroom?

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Deede and his team have also found that lessons in "River City" can significantly aid learning for kids who aren't usually engaged in the classroom, or who have a history of absenteeism. Low-scoring kids typically do as well in "River City" as high scorers. "Underperforming students come alive by learning in 'River City,'" said Dieterle.

Gallas, who's done some research with "River City," put it like this: "If you're motivated to spend a lot of time doing something, that's where the learning happens. If you look at snowboarders or skateboarders--these may be kids that don't do well in traditional school environments--if they want to learn a trick, they go through a hundred to 200 iterations to do it."

Now the Harvard team is researching whether the local success of "River City" will carry over to a broad number of schools. Funded with $4 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, the program has been implemented in seven states. Last year, it was introduced to about 100 teachers and 10,000 students across the United States, and was found to work well with large school districts such as Miami Dade and Milwaukee. In the next two years, the Harvard team hopes to bring "River City" to other districts, including those in Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Whyville--the anti MySpace?
Numedeon was founded in 1999 by a biology professor at CalTech, along with two PhD students. The three, including Numedeon president Sun, wanted to revamp the way science was taught in schools, shifting it to inquiry-based education, in which educators construct engaging experiments to teach science through interaction, rather than through books. Whyville launched in 1999.

The community creates activities that simulate questions in science, such as how do ice skaters spin so fast? Whyville's Spin Lab lets kids figure out the answer. NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab has sponsored WASA, a center where kids can become certified space engineers. Inside a virtual lab, zero gravity conditions teach kids to throw projectiles in order to move, in the process teaching them about Newton's Third Law: Every action has a reaction. This summer Whyville will add a spectrograph game that will let kids analyze a specimen like carbon or sodium.

The University of Texas has also sponsored a program in Whyville, called WhyEat, to teach kids about nutrition in an age of rampant child obesity. Kids who play must choose nutritious foods, or they could get ill.

As for red tides, children at the beach can visit Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute on Whyville--sponsored by the real Oceanographic Institute--to learn about the algae outbreaks and what they can do to fix their warm-weather hangout.

A major side effect of Whyville is a thriving business economy that's created wealthy citizens.

Whyville kids love face decorations and other avatar accessories enough that they can pay a clam fee to create and produce a decoration or accessory of their own to sell to other kids. In order to do that, children must factor in profit margins and learn about advertising and marketing to promote their stores. The wealthiest kids, with millions of clams, have developed a hot-selling item. Kids also trade goods like furniture or art work, which they collected on treasure hunts at the Getty, a virtual museum hosted by the real J. Paul Getty Museum.

"All of that really taught us and enforced the idea that when you allow the process to be driven by the user, they always come back and surprise you," said Sun. "They learn about life. And sometimes they learn about themselves."

Kid safety in the age of MySpace phobias
The economy has also taught kids a harder lesson in life: how to protect themselves against scams. For example, rogue citizens have been known to pose as "city workers"--staff members of Numedeon who wear special hats in Whyville--to send e-mail to other kids and try to get their passwords. When they get them, they steal the user's virtual possessions.

Whyville citizenship isn't easy to come by, creating a challenge for predators. To gain the privilege to chat with other members, send "internal city e-mail" or post messages on bulletin boards, kids must have their parents send a fax that verifies the child's application to join Whyville and approves those activities. Without such permission, kids may play games or join educational activities, but they can't talk to others.

What's more, the community requires new members to get their "chat license," which involves taking a multiple-choice quiz that tests their knowledge on how to act with strangers, what information to give out to other members (no personal information), and other such things. And kids must log in on three different days before they can chat.

Artificial-intelligence technology also filters out bad words or suggestive words, like "pants," and asks chatters to rephrase their sentence. If the person persists, he or she can lose chat privileges.

As for "River City," its creators say it's 100 percent safe, given that it's distributed only to K-12 schools, password-protected and overseen by teachers. Students' digital characters can only communicate with members of their team via chat or e-mail. Teachers also often sift through chat logs to ensure that no child is harassing others.

Disease detectives
Gallas used Whyville for a classroom of sixth graders at University Elementary School, inside the University of California at Los Angeles' School of Education and Information Science. The students used butcher paper in class to chart how the infection spread from child to child with information on Post-It notes about symptoms, who talked to whom, where and when they got the infection and how long symptoms lasted.

The kids wrote papers on the subject and became philanthropic, donating money and land for universities and hospitals.

"They started coming up with theories, like because the beach was so densely crowded, that's where they might have caught it," or that the virus has a seven day lifecycle, she said.

"None of this information was given to them. They were the disease detectives. And I would lead the discussion."

Send insights or tips on this topic to stefanie.olsen@cnet.com.