Development of Virtual Classroom for Hybrid Live Teaching Mode

This study developed a virtual classroom for object-oriented programming courses for gamification activities in a hybrid live teaching mode in early 2022. The aim is to facilitate students who want to take gamification activities directly in class but cannot attend due to several reasons, especially uncertain conditions pandemic. This can be made possible by utilizing a web-based virtual learning environment application. Gather.town is a video-conferencing platform that provides a new experience than what is traditionally used. He provides a virtual classroom that is designed to resemble a real classroom with a 2D Graphics mode featuring avatar-based games. Utilization of proximity-based video conferencing offers interactions that resemble real conditions with 2D maps of classroom layouts. This paper aims to explore the experiences of students attending online by utilizing the virtual classroom to participate in offline teaching in the classroom. The survey was carried out during five sessions of meetings with different or the same students. The results show that students respond positively to the use of Gather.town during hybrid live teaching mode lectures. However, only more than half of the students agreed that the virtual classroom did not replace the real class in teaching gamification activities.