Supporting situated learning for virtual communities of practice: representation and management of situated knowledge

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to develop a Web-based, multiuser, 3D simulation learning environment supporting virtual communities of practice. This approach emphasizes helping geographically distributed learners to acquire and construct knowledge by doing shared ''authentic" activities, to interact with each other as community members, and to perform informal, unstructured, spontaneous, and situation-oriented learning. This paper focuses on description of representation and management of situated knowledge and of support for situated instruction.