Students’ Experience with Virtual Reality Technology in Middle School Science
Disciplines
Educational Technology
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), can allow students to interact with scientific concepts by manipulating models, carrying out multiple experimental trials quickly, and observing the motion of objects within a system. Students will interact with a simulation that was developed using the PhET simulation “My Solar System” that can be supported with either laptops or fully immersed with a VR headset. Through the theoretical lens of constructivism, this mixed-methods study will examine how the immersive experience of VR interacts with the collaborative nature of science education. Quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to examine differences in content acquisition, student experience with collaboration in immersive VR comparing the control and experimental groups, and affordances and constraints of VR while studying astronomy concepts. The goal is to receive parental permission for 75 participants for the quantitative phase and 16 participants for the qualitative semi-structured interviews. The problem this study seeks to address is filling the gap in the literature about how students experience immersive technology in a collaborative setting such as a middle school science classroom and to inform pedagogical decisions. Becoming more informed about how students experience VR moves pedagogical decisions from focusing on the novelty of the technology to determine if the implementation of VR supports the desired learning objective. With a study start date in March 2025, the presentation will share preliminary quantitative results on content acquisition between the control and experimental groups, and emerging themes from quantitative analysis of interview transcripts.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
BCOE - Instructional Technology & Innovation
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Dr. Jason Harron
Students’ Experience with Virtual Reality Technology in Middle School Science
Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), can allow students to interact with scientific concepts by manipulating models, carrying out multiple experimental trials quickly, and observing the motion of objects within a system. Students will interact with a simulation that was developed using the PhET simulation “My Solar System” that can be supported with either laptops or fully immersed with a VR headset. Through the theoretical lens of constructivism, this mixed-methods study will examine how the immersive experience of VR interacts with the collaborative nature of science education. Quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to examine differences in content acquisition, student experience with collaboration in immersive VR comparing the control and experimental groups, and affordances and constraints of VR while studying astronomy concepts. The goal is to receive parental permission for 75 participants for the quantitative phase and 16 participants for the qualitative semi-structured interviews. The problem this study seeks to address is filling the gap in the literature about how students experience immersive technology in a collaborative setting such as a middle school science classroom and to inform pedagogical decisions. Becoming more informed about how students experience VR moves pedagogical decisions from focusing on the novelty of the technology to determine if the implementation of VR supports the desired learning objective. With a study start date in March 2025, the presentation will share preliminary quantitative results on content acquisition between the control and experimental groups, and emerging themes from quantitative analysis of interview transcripts.