Participatory Simulations: Building Collaborative Understanding Through Immersive Dynamic Modeling

The Participatory Simulations Project explores how a new kind of collaborative learning environment, which is supported by small, wearable computers, can facilitate collaborative theory-building and lead to a richer understanding of scientific experimentation. In a Participatory Simulation, participants become "agents" in a full-scale simulation. Unlike previous work, Participatory Simulations combines the notion of a microworld with the affordances of real world experience. By involving a large number of people (typically between 15 and 30) in a "life-sized" experience, the project brings a microworld off of the computer screen and into the physical world. In particular, this study explored the use of a series of Participatory Simulations in a high school Biology class. The students became "agents" in a simulation of a disease infecting their community. The results of this project show that Participatory Simulations fully engage participants in the simulation, facilitate collaborative problem solving, provide a substrate for collaboratively designing and running experiments, and support the definition of new vocabulary to discuss the