US Students Carry out Nuclear Safety Project in a Virtual Environment

AbstractA project about nuclear safety was carried out through e-learning. It was a problem based learning (PBL) activity that took place in Second Life (SL), an online three-dimensional community. The virtual classroom was built on an island owned by Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan. Three students from a high school near Clarkson University participated in this project. A teacher gave them a short lesson about nuclear energy safety and then proposed the problem. The students understood the contents very well and solved the problem through voice chat interactions in SL. They engaged in active discussions and displayed high interest for the safe use of nuclear energy throughout this successful project. The results clearly indicate that this type of PBL class is possible for actual e-learning about nuclear safety and for engineering education