Study On Desktop-VR-Based Web Courseware Design For Junior Science Curriculum

Since the beginning of the 21st century, a reform of science curriculum has been overwhelming in China's basic education system. The core of this reform is to improve comprehensively students' science literacy. In the information era, new technologies have provided material supports for individuals' all-round development, therefore the science curriculum in China should follow closely the frontier of worldwide research on educational software development and correspondingly new learning modes. The key issue in constructing integrative science curriculum is how to strengthen the education of scientific knowledge and scientific spirit with the help of modern technologies. As a new form of medium, VR has overwhelming advantages over other media used in instruction. It has a bright future in science curriculum for primary and secondary education. Desktop VR is presently applied in designing Web courseware. However, qualitative research on VR in instruction is rather superficial and unsystematic. On the other hand, most of the literacy at hand discuss and summarize from the perspective of skills, lacking in the guidance of pedagogical theories.This study pinpoints at this reality and need. Distributive cognition, constructive learning theory and humanitarian learning theory are theoretical supports to courseware design. The aim of this study is as follows: under the guidance of constructing an integrative and well-informed science curriculum, analyzing the whole process of designing VR-based Web courseware in junior secondary science curriculum, including necessities for VR-based instruction, teaching plans, compositions of courseware, creation of contexts, guiding strategies and interactive designs. Combining theory with practice, this study designed a courseware after theoretical discussions.The results from this study suggest that there are still two others issues to be discussedand studied. First, it is a bit difficult to construct a well-informed science curriculum for it is a challenge to the traditionally mature pedagogical modes. Courseware design immerses the complicated relationships among elements in instruction and reflects the ideal of a well-informed science curriculum. Its connotation is very rich, including those uncovered in this study. Second, there is still a long way to go to apply VR-based Web courseware effectively in science curriculum, demanding more personnel and more pedagogical practice. How to conduct teaching experiments in junior schools with VR-based Web courseware? How should teachers and students utilize reasonably VR-based Web courseware, from the point of final results of instruction? And how to evaluate courseware reasonably? All these issues deserve further study.