Virtual STEM activity for renewable energy

A project about renewable energy was successfully carried out in Second Life (SL) by a team of Japanese students with a U.S. instructor who used English to communicate. This was a challenging task, especially since the students' first language is Japanese. To improve the learning environment, a teaching assistant was available to translate information from English to Japanese when necessary. This paper describes the successful STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) activity in SL where the Japanese students designed and built a special airplane for wind energy. It also mentions other contributions of our work, such as the incorporation of an Engineering Design Process into the lesson and the advantages we found by carrying out the renewable energy project in a virtual reality environment.