Abstract
Secondary education students often struggle with Mathematics and Science, preventing them to follow a successful career in Engineering. At a higher education level, problems still exist, including in their motivation levels. A Problem-Based Learning approach can offer an interesting solution to help circumvent this issue by creating an environment in which the learners themselves seek out information and create strategies to solve the training situation. This present work, named project eCity, aims at creating a Virtual Learning Environment platform in the form of a city building simulator, in which students, often digital native, will feel at ease and encouraged to solve the practical engineering scenarios they will face. The eCity platform targets at the same time students from the secondary education and students from higher education, allowing them to work together in a close relation to solve the presented problems together.
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References
Woods, D.R.: Helping your students gain the most from PBL (2000). http://elc.fhda.edu/transformReno/resources/Woods-2000.pdf
Lacuesta, R., Palacios, G., Fernandez, L.: Active learning through problem based learning methodology in engineering education. In: 39th Frontiers in Education, San Antonio (2009)
Anette Kolomos, coordinator for the EU project, Socrates project, PBL-Engineering which has developed the master program: Problem Based Learning in Engineering and Science
eCity portal. http://ecity-project.eu/
eCity VLE. http://ecity-project.eu/en/game/
Acknowledgements
This work is funded with support from the European Commission, Life Long Learning Programme. The publication reflects the views of the authors only and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use made of the information within.
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© 2016 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
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Heidmann, O., Vaz de Carvalho, C., Tsalapatas, H., Alimisi, R., Houstis, E. (2016). A Virtual City Environment for Engineering Problem Based Learning. In: Vaz de Carvalho, C., Escudeiro, P., Coelho, A. (eds) Serious Games, Interaction, and Simulation. 2015. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 161. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29060-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29060-7_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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