GAMIFIED 3D VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR IMPROVED STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION AND LEARNING EVALUATION. A CASE STUDY ON “3DUPB” CAMPUS

The 3D virtual worlds need special graphical and instructional design to simulate an effective learning environment and make students focus on their learning objectives. Issues exist also for teachers who may find difficult to use a 3D learning environment. The current paper presents a research and experimental implementation of a gamified 3D virtual learning environment designed with the purpose to increase students’ and teachers’ motivation of using a 3D learning environment and to measure their learning outcome or participation effort in a visible and synthetic way. "3DUPB", a 3D virtual clone of the Politehnica University of Bucharest on the OpenSimulator platform, was used as a test bed for conducting a case study and evaluating preliminary results.