2020/01/31 by C. D. Porter, Chris D. Porter, J. R. H. Smith +13 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Educational technology #Electrostatics #Experimental and Theoretical Physics Studies #Interpretation (philosophy) #Physics education #Science Education and Pedagogy #Stereoscopy #Teaching method #Training (meteorology) #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts #Virtual reality #physics.ed-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevphyseducres.16.020119
published as Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 16, 020119 (2020) · 22 pages, 9 figures, minor changes compared to earlier version including one new figure
openalex created_date 2020/01/30 · arxiv created 2020/07/01 · openalex publication_date 2020/09/03 · arxiv updated 2020/09/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in using virtual reality (VR) technology to benefit instruction, especially in physics and related subjects. As VR devices improve and become more widely available, there remains a number of unanswered questions regarding the impact of VR on student learning and how best to use this technology in the classroom. On the topic of electrostatics, for example, a large, controlled, randomized study performed by Smith et al. [A controlled study of stereoscopic virtual reality in freshman electrostatics, Proceedings of the 2017 Physics Education Research Conference, Cincinnati, OH, PER Conference series (2017), pp. 376-379], found that VR-based instruction had an overall negligible impact on student learning compared to videos or images. However, they did find a strong trend for students who reported frequent video game play to learn better from VR than other media. One possible interpretation of this result is that extended videogame play provides a kind of "training" that enables a student to learn more comfortably in the virtual environment. In the present work we consider if a VR training activity that is unrelated to electrostatics can help prepare students to learn electrostatics from subsequent VR instruction. We find that preliminary VR training leads to a small but statistically significant improvement in student performance on our electrostatics assessment. We also find that student reported game play is still correlated with higher scores on this metric.