provides a theoretical background for VLE. The
theorists claimed that learners are regarded as a
participant in a community of practice; they are
agents of their own learning in the process.
Therefore, situated learning is the process that
conveys knowledge through personal experiences.
Meanwhile, past research concluded: “learning
should be grounded in a practical world of everyday
life” (Hedgegaard, 1998). Contrary to usual learning
approach, situated learning theory stresses that
learning activities should always be put into
empirical settings to stimulate practical or
theoretical ideas (
Rømer, 2002). Based on situated
learning approach, it’ll be easier for students to learn
knowledge where it is applied. In other words,
“problem situations that closely resemble real
situations in their richness and complexity so that
the experience that students gain in the classroom
will be transferable" (Schoenfeld, 1992, p. 365).
2.2 Scaffolding
Vygotsky (1978) claimed that teaching with guided
interaction could be helpful to enhance a higher
level of thinking, so it is essential to employ a proper
teaching technique to facilitate students to integrate
the textbook knowledge and decision ability in the
real world. Scaffolding refers to a certain process
that enables a novice or a child to solve a problem,
implement a task, or achieve a goal which would be
slightly beyond his ability (Wood, Bruner, and
Ross,1978). Scaffolding tools that have been
examined in the past research included question
prompting (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1985;
Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Steinbach, 1984), expert
modeling (e.g., Shoenfeld, 1985), reciprocal
teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984), and guided
peer questioning (King, 1991, 1992, 1994). In the
system, we utilized question prompt technique to
guide the participants to answer the questions.
2.3 The Situational 3D Virtual
Learning Environment
Based on the theoretical framework stated above, we
revised the situational 3D virtual learning
environment (3D virtual supermarket; 3DVS) based
on the prototype to help business students to
personally experience the real-like simulated
environment to apply
class theory to the real world.
The virtual objects in the 3DVS are constructed
through 3D modeling software --- 3Ds Max. To be
as appealing as possible, all the virtual merchandises
are displayed by departments and in the way of a
real supermarket. The background of the 3DVS (like
the ceiling, floor, wall, shelves and lighting) is also
designed through 3Ds Max in order to be as real-like
as possible. There is a virtual female customer, who
is created from 3Ds Max, designed to pose questions
in the environment. The database system is drawn to
record the participants’ answers and designed
through MySql and Java programming.
When the system starts to process, the background
music is played, it goes down when the virtual
customer is going to stop. During the virtual
customer’s shopping procedure, she poses various
questions based on the different departments she
arrives at. A total of 10 questions are posed by the
virtual customer.
Basically, all the questions, developed from
marketing mix theory (Kotler et al., 2006), are
formed to be a scenario-based environment, which is
to provide a series of logically linked real-world
case to scaffold students to apply class theory to
the
real world and higher-order thinking. Students are
requested to reply the questions from the standpoint
of a customer. The participants were guided to
answer the questions by scaffolding specified after
the question. Scaffolding strategies employed in the
system include question prompting and reflective
prompting.
3 PILOT STUDY
Ten undergraduate students in the course of
marketing from a university in Taiwan were selected
to participate in the pilot study. The participants
were allowed two hours to finish the experiment,
they were found to spend much time on thinking and
integrating theory and practice during the process. In
addition, a follow-up interview was conducted to
explore the role of scaffolding strategy in the virtual
learning environment and understand how helpful is
the system in learning.
4 THE PRELIMINARY RESULTS
The preliminary results indicated that the
participants hold quite positive attitude toward the
system. First, the scaffolding strategy (question
prompting and reflective prompting) used in the
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