Design and Development of Virtual Reality Science Laboratory on Science Education: An Analysis of Presences during Learning

Abstract

The global spread of COVID-19 has resulted in the international shutdown of educational institutions, especially for science students. Education is a crucial industry that demands innovation to accomplish learning objectives and goals. Modern technology-based education has been globalized and interactive platforms allow students and educators to access, utilize, and benefit from all the educational content. The first research objective of this study is to develop a virtual reality science laboratory by utilizing the ADDIE Methodology, a popular instructional design model for instructional learning. The second objective is to analyze the presence experiences during learning sciences by using the Virtual Reality Science Laboratory by distributing a set of pretest and post-test questions to two different groups of 37 science students. Group 1, which is 20 students will learn about science through 2D videos while Group 2 consists of 17 students who will experience learning science through Virtual Reality Science Laboratory. The result shows that there is a significant level of presence between the two groups, and the VR group performs better. This study can help educators and developers design effective VR tools to learn science. For future research, we suggest including cognitive load as another variable to test with VR learning tools. This work contributes to the studies on how immersive learning can significantly affect learning towards positive longitudinal effects.