Abstract
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. 2017\cite{smith17}, 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.
Highlights
Many topics in physics are inherently three dimensional (3D), but are usually taught using two-dimensional media such as whiteboards and computer screens
The assessments were identical for all students, regardless of treatment type, except for a few questions posed during the preliminary training, which were unrelated to electrostatics
Questions posed in virtual reality (VR) during electrostatics instruction have not been counted as pre or post, but will be treated separately
Summary
Many topics in physics are inherently three dimensional (3D), but are usually taught using two-dimensional media such as whiteboards and computer screens. A affordable way to provide students with a reasonably high-quality VR experience that we emphasize in this paper is so-called Google Cardboard [22] in which a typical smartphone is placed in a cardboard or plastic headset which may only cost a few dollars. This reduced cost is important because it means each student can potentially have their own VR headset, so that VR can become a regular part of instruction. The reduced cost allowed us to perform a large study using a set of six affordably priced smartphones
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