Designing user learning experience in virtual worlds: The young Europeans for democracy serious application

Abstract

In this paper, we present the user experience design of Young Europeans for Democracy (YED) serious application. Facing the actually need to support young citizens understanding and participation in Europe, schools have a key role on European studies integration. Accordingly to the growing opportunities of applying technology for training and education, we propose a serious application in a open-source 3D Virtual World environment solution, adopting a problem-based learning approach, role-playing dynamics and group work tasks. The main goal was to design a meaningfully user experience, increasing the students motivation and engagement for learning different knowledge on the topics of European Studies. Some preliminary results are presented, based on participatory observation within the use of the serious application. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.