The document outlines a collaborative project between a Greek and a Ukrainian university, focusing on using an open-source platform, OpenSim, to facilitate a role-playing educational activity for postgraduate students. It details the development and implementation of a virtual environment for game-based learning, assessing its effectiveness in comparison to traditional classroom settings. Evaluation results indicate positive student experiences, with a majority expressing interest in future virtual collaborative activities and finding the OpenSim platform suitable for such educational purposes.

1. Agathi Deligiannakou Yevgen Revtyuk
Anastasia Papavasileiou Lilya Kolesnyk
Eleni Polymeraki
Christina Volioti
Apostolos Mavridis
Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos
Department of Informatics Faculty of Management

2. 1) Introduction
2) About EICL Project
3) Scenario of the Educational Activity
4) Design of the Virtual Place for
Supporting Role Playing Games
5) Evaluation
6) Conclusions
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3.  GBL: Excellent tool for
 facilitating situated learning
 promoting active learning
 Transfer of an educational activity from the
traditional classroom to a virtual world
 Collaboration between two universities of
different disciplines and from different
countries in the context of EICL
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4. 2 main goals
 Virtual & international collaboration
 among postgraduate students from AUTH and IFNTUOG
 for implementing the game-based scenario in the virtual
educational place
 With the use of an open source platform (OpenSim)
 Conducting of the game-based collaborative learning activity
 undergraduate students of IFNTUOG
 “Investment Management” subject
 IFNTUOG provided the scenario
 AUTH created the virtual environment to support it
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5. Hypotheses to be assessed
1. If the virtual world and the representations of
the objects were understandable
2. If the students prefer to conduct this activity
through the virtual or traditional classroom
3. If OpenSim is suitable for
 collaborative distance learning
 role-playing scenario
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6. International binomial between a Greek and
an Ukrainian university to support:
 International co-operation of teachers &
students…
 in order to improve the learning process…
 by using e-tools in pilot courses
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7. 7

8. Timeline of the steps and the collaboration
2 weeks 3 weeks 1 week 1 week 1 week 1 week
Communication and
collaboration between AUTH
team and IFNTUOG assistant
(via e-mail or skype)
First familiarization session of
IFNTUOG tutor (face-face)
Creation of the virtual world by
AUTH team
Second familiarization session
(of IFNTUOG assistant)
Third familiarization (of
IFNTUOG undergraduate
students)
Improvement of the Virtual
place by AUTH team
Online Role Playing Simulation
Evaluation,
Statistics &
Conclusions
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9. IFNTUOG students participated as:
Roles
 try themselves as a part of one of the investments process
negotiating sides
 calculate payback term & cost of the project, analyze their decisions
in conditions of limited time
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10. 1. Tutor’s familiarization
2. Assistant’s familiarization
 Guide her in the virtual world & show functionalities
 Comments & improvements
3. Undergraduate student’s familiarization
 Navigation & use of objects
 AUTH team
 made corrections & took recommendations
 Sent a pre-test questionnaire
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11. Outside the Virtual World
Process lasting 20’
 Start-uppers received the detailed description of their project
 calculated its cost
 prepared their presentation
 Investors got the description of the Start-upper’s project
 different in some details
 each had his own amount of money
 decide with the whole Committee whether to invest or not
 Moderator was the teacher’s assistant from IFNTUOG
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12. Inside the Virtual World
 Passing through the Role Assignment Room to choose
outfit depending on the role
 Technical Supporters uploaded the presentations
 In the Conference Room
 each start-upper met the Credit Committee and tried to
persuade them to invest – 5’
 Investors asked questions & made a decision – 5’
 Moderator was observing, announced which side has
been more benefited, made a short discussion with the
audience – 5’
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13.  OpenSim is an open source platform for hosting
virtual worlds based on client-server architecture
Welcome area
Conference
Room
Role Assignment
Room
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14. Role
Assignment Clothing Boxes
Room
Chairs
Simulation
Board
Conference
Room
Clock
Discussion
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19. 19

20. Method of evaluation cycles [1 cycle]
 Pre-analysis phase
 Questionnaire about user’s profile
 Usability phase
 Expert’s evaluation
 Student’s familiarization
 Learning phase
 12 students answered 64 questions about the
virtual world and its objects
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21.  H1: If the virtual world and the
representations of the objects
were understandable
 Student’s experience in the
conference room was
satisfactory
 Most of them agreed that the
objects reminded them a real
world conference room
 All students changed slides
easily
 92% understood where they
should sit down, depending on
their roles
 75% understood the usability of
timer
○ Only the 42% said it was helpful
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22.  H2: If the students prefer
to conduct this activity
through the virtual or
traditional classroom
 85% would be interested
to attend lectures
through OpenSim
 92% found the virtual
collaboration more
interesting
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23.  H3: If OpenSim is suitable for
collaborative distance
learning & for role-playing
scenario
 77% would like to participate
in more virtual collaborative
activities
 Students described the
process efficient and suitable
for collaboration
 The majority said they would
use OpenSim in the future
 42% thought it was easier to
collaborate through
OpenSim
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24. Experience evaluation after interview
 Communication was fast & efficient –technology definitely helped
 Collaboration was fruitful
 Different terminology, culture & language did not cause any difficulties
 Pleased with the outcome
 For computer specialists:
 Co-existence of Computer Science with another subject is interesting
 ICT is a science that can facilitate all others
 For investment managers:
 Students were interested in using OpenSim into real situations
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25.  Integration of Sloodle in OpenSim’s environment
 Users will be able to transfer digital learning material from Moodle to
OpenSim
 Calculator
 Users will be able to make calculations inside the virtual world using a
virtual calculator
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26. papavasa@csd.auth.gr