Discovering how other pupils think by collaborative learning in a classroom

The authors have so far developed a system that supports collaborative learning and evaluated it in school education. The system integrates physical and virtual worlds to teach urban planning and environmental problems by game playing by the pupils themselves. Intensive experiments with the system have proven that it can support the externalization of learners' thinking, active participation, interactions among them, and discussions in a learning situation. The paper addresses the effects of collaborative learning, and discusses how pupils discover the way of thinking of other pupils during game play.