Research group: Center for Research on Learning and Technology, Indiana University
Learner age group: children age 9 to 12
Technical description: Quest Atlantis is a 3D multi-user virtual environment with an online community blended with real-world activities which can be done in classrooms, after-school centers or by the learner alone. There are also unit plans, comic books, trading cards as project artifacts.
The developers try to make the distinction of the uniqueness of the design and implementation by describing it as a “distributed, transmedia narrative” which “Sits at the intersection of education, entertainment, and social commitment.” (Barab, 2005)
Time in development and use: Ethnographic research period, 2 years. Beta version was released in January of 2003. In less than one years, it had 3000 registered participants.
How did the project evolve over time?
Project name: Quest Atlantis The project began with the goal of making learning fun, but after 2 years of ethnographic research, they changed the focus of the design to include a broader social commitment. It is key to understanding this and future virtual learning environments to know that it was the children themselves who wanted more than fun; they wanted to be engaged in personal, social, ethical, and environmental issues. (Barab, 2005 p. 87)
What pedagogic approaches were used?
Learners completed “quests” that were connected to the narrative of Atlantis being a world in trouble. The storyline does not reside in one location or medium, but come together as the user participates in the game context and investigates “relevant personal issues.” (Barab, 2005, p.87)
Quest Atlantis builds on strategies from online role-playing games to engage users and blends them with constructivist, situated cognition theories of learning which focus on the centrality of activity. They use Vygotsky’s “novel stance toward play” citing his opinion about the role of play in learning: “…imagination is adolescents and school children is play without action.” (Vygotsky, 1933/1978, p. 93)
The designer intentionally brought in media and game designers to increase the level of engagement of the environment because these are the designers who are “most successful in engaging children.”
What key design features were developed to support a learner’s construction of knowledge?
Situated learning?
Zones of proximal development and/or formative assessment?
The learner works with all of the artifacts plus the environment itself to construct an answer, or a series of answers to solve a quest. The environment has a participatory framework that has hands-on action as well as reflection. The general approach to the solution of the quests is best described as “inquiry-based learning” and it is central to the design of the environment. (Barab, 2001)
Learners are asked to contribute their expertise and ideas to the environment, as well as engage in social issues that have local relevance and “report in” those activities to blend the Atlantian and real worlds.
The developers used the theory of the zone of proximal development as it applies to play as an unrestricted, free activity that lets children behave beyond their ages, liberated from many of the social constraints of real-world play and other forms of social activity.
The use of the principles of formative assessment are integrated with the learning process by having learners create portfolios of their work that can be assess by teachers and other members of their learning community.
What key design features were developed to support the creation of a community of learners?
This environment has a huge emphasis on community. It involves its learners in their own communities and it is designed with many interactive opportunities based on the designs of “persistent virtual worlds,” which are universes with their own culture and discourse which they have adapted to engage children in learning. They learn from each other, from teachers, from experts distributed across the environment, and from community members they engage on their quests.
What are the empirical results, if any?
In their studies on the impact of QA on learning, learners:
Offered character insights that were “deeper or better supported” than did students in equivalent conditions
Demonstrated statistically significant learning over time in the areas of science, social studies, and sense of academic efficacy. (Barab, 2005)
Children in schools and after-school settings have completed hundreds of quests without any mandated requirement.
There was concurrent design-based research during the initial use of the environment, creating largely qualitative data collected by 10 researchers over a 30-month period observing use worldwide. This research served to inform design improvements in the environments.
1 See Hannafin’s elements of an open-ended environment in the History section of this review for a clearer idea of what this term means.
