The vSTEM Classroom (Virtual Classroom for STEM) is an immersive environment (i.e., Second Life) that teachers and students can connect to both in-school and out-of-school. Teachers can set up the environment so that only their students see each other, or teachers may decide to collaborate/coordinate with other teachers/schools.
A critical feature of the environment is the affordances offered for engaging teachers and students in meaningful interactions focused on scientific and design processes. The environment provides a context for teachers and students to pose hypotheses and valid scientific questions. A multitude of contexts are accessible to teachers and students to investigate their hypotheses by collecting and analyzing meaningful data. These contexts represent real-world settings, most of which would be not be accessible for students, i.e., the polar region, solar system, ocean biomes, etc. Further, the vSTEM Classroom provides content-based scenarios to frame teaching and learning for STEM. For example, the science scenarios build on the notion of scientific discovery. In such a scenario, students ‘discover’ something, and then measure it, recording their measurements in a virtual notebook. In a virtual world, that could be a disease or a new organism. After they measure it, students use ‘tree tools’ to be able to compare it to other species/diseases. Students can use the results to make predications, followed by DNA testing and comparison. They conclude with a review and potential correction of their prediction/outcome.
The environment includes a variety of relatively curriculum-free tools available for teachers and students to use at any point in time. Additionally, the environment also provides opportunities for teaching in-world so that a teacher could instantly pull up a calculator, graphing calculator, microscope, telescope, etc.
The vSTEM Classroom offers flexibility in allowing teachers to tailor their use of the site according to their own curricular needs and goals. If a science teacher wishes to use the vSTEM Classroom but does not have a content-based scenario for implementation, the site will provide them with a scenario. For example, new organisms have recently been found in the Bahamas Blue Holes. In the vSTEM Classroom, a scenario has been designed to allow students an opportunity to ‘dive’ and collect new species. A space station and polar region within the site provide additional contexts for scientific discovery. Teachers may also choose to implement their own curricular scenario and/or access the tools to complete activities that they have designed for their students.
To date, RCET has collected formative data from a variety of stakeholders regarding the prototype development of the vSTEM Classroom including higher education courses, the annual meeting Fall of the Cleveland Regional Council of Science Teachers (CRST), as well as the Fall retreat for the Cleveland Metropolitan STEM Hub. Additionally, a cohort of science educators has been established providing opportunities to collect data from teachers who explore the Classroom and respond to a protocol regarding the usefulness of vSTEM Classroom and potential directions for continued development.