Effects of Virtual Reality on School Students’ Learning in Safety Education: A Meta-analysis

Abstract

AbstractVirtual reality (VR) has been used to create immersive and realistic learning environments. Safety education increases students’ awareness of potential hazards. Effective safety education should include a variety of scenarios in which students can practice recognising and responding appropriately to hazardous situations. VR has been shown to benefit students’ safety education by increasing their awareness of hazards. This meta-analysis was performed to examine the overall effect of VR use on students’ safety education, including safety knowledge, safety behaviour, motivation and presence, compared with control interventions. Locomotion, the input device and the display hardware were examined as moderating variables. Fifteen publications with 39 effect sizes (n = 2,411 participants) were included. No publication bias was detected. VR had a significantly positive effect on the overall effect size for safety education compared with control interventions (e.g., educational documents, lectures, animations). Effect sizes were large for motivation, medium for presence and safety knowledge, and small for safety behaviour. Only locomotion (large effect size) had a moderating effect, improving safety education. These findings support the effectiveness of VR use in safety education. Additional research is needed to examine more independent and moderating variables for this educational approach.KeywordsMeta-analysisSafety educationVirtual reality