Abstract:

Today's society is moving towards new forms of education, both regulated and non-regulated. Learning in the 21st century uses frequently the B-Learning spaces. Those spaces allow to insert of hypermedia resources (videos, virtual laboratories ...) that make easier the personalized monitoring of the student and process-oriented feedback in real time. Additionally, recent research has made new proposals of what has been called Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). These systems facilitate the development of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) and have been very effective to increasing students’ motivation and achieving effective learning. In particular, the design of virtual classrooms where serious games techniques with SRL are used resemble to be really effective. This simulation structure together with the development of interactive activities with the computer in which a process-oriented feedback is included seems to enhance the motivation and creativity of the apprentices. It has been proven that the use of this methodology explains 72% of the variance of the students’ learning results. Therefore, throughout this paper we propose the design of a Virtual and Intelligent Classroom called SmartArt. This classroom can be adapted to different types of students interested in the History of Art. On the one hand, it adapts to the training needs of art history knowledges for different undergraduates, such as History and Heritage Degree, Media Communication Degree and Tourism Degree. Also, to non-regular students such as university extracurricular courses. The design of this virtual classroom is intended to be developed through integration in educational web platforms, such as Moodle, of serious games designed using 2D design implemented in the game engine Unreal Engine as a graphic adventure videogame. The different characters included in this graphic adventure explain the main milestones of the History of Art, focused in a first moment, in those corresponding to the Ancient and Medieval Ages, whose development is articulated in three different difficulty levels (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced). The learning structure in this Virtual Classroom uses self-regulated questions about each learning milestone that is presented in the video game. It always starts from a previous knowledge analysis that is expanded with an interactive glossary, then serious games that include questions of inquiry, word games, ... are proposed. Once the student gives an answer, he receives an answer with a justification for his success or failure by process-oriented feedback (he is redirected to the correct content). Likewise, each unit includes a rubric in which the student is given adjust information on the steps to achieve an effective learning. This proposal includes used examples of visualization of the different hypermedia resources and self-regulated design.

Keywords:

Smartart Classroom, Self Regulated Learning, Serious Games, Art History, Virtual University, Gamification.