Virtual Reality Educational Game Research Articles

The effect of VR on learners' engagement and motivation in K12 English education

This paper examines how virtual reality (VR) technology can be used in K-12 classrooms, specifically focusing on its potential impact on learners' engagement and motivation, with a particular emphasis on English language learning. The paper begins by providing an introduction to VR technology and its relevance in education, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic context. It reviews existing literature on learners' engagement and motivation, emphasizing the importance of these factors in the learning process. The study explores the initial step of VR technology in English instruction, highlighting the challenges faced in traditional language classes and the opportunities that VR presents. A case study on English VR teaching in middle school is presented, followed by a detailed case design for a cutting-edge VR learning platform tailored for young primary school English learners. The case study for K-12 students and design showcase how VR technology can be utilized to create engaging and immersive learning environments that foster comprehensive language skills development. The paper concludes by acknowledging the potential of VR educational games and embodied cognition theory in enhancing language learning outcomes and encourages further research in this area.

Application and Research of VR in Education

The development of computer hardware and computer graphics had led to a new kind of new form of visualization which is called Virtual Reality (VR) technology. People could play games and communicate with others, but most importantly, children are more likely to learn things through VR. This essay mainly examines what are the ways of how VR educational games, art educations, and political education, contribute to help students to learn while they are playing VR and what are the differences between VR and other forms of education. The research summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of VR in educational games, and analyses its application in different art education scenarios. Some problems of VR in political education are discussed. This paper may provide readers with new ideas and thoughts on the potential of VR in the future that are beneficial to the entire society. At the end of the paper, the paper summarizes the full text and looks forward to the future.

VR educational game in public awareness campaign preventing the spread of COVID-19 – a pilot study

Within a few years, virtual reality (VR) has generated a lot of interest. With the development of this technology, many opportunities for its use have arisen. Among the most popular applications, one can also mention education. The typical VR approach in education involves applying games to increase the learner's involvement and motivation. The question is whether engaging in a virtual reality game designed for a public awareness campaign can help the participants enhance their assessment of social distancing measured in meters, potentially aiding in the reduction of COVID-19 transmission. The Sustainable Development Goals have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, impacting almost all countries around the world. This has led to changes in political and health priorities as well as research strategies. For this purpose, a pilot study was conducted on 4 people in the game created in the Unity engine. The respondents’ reactions were examined with the use of the following EEG indices - Engagement, Arousal, Valence, and Approach-Withdrawal were used. As a result, it was obtained that the created game can improve the assessment of distance by the respondents. Therefore, we can conclude that applying virtual reality games can teach people to follow certain rules and contribute to slowing down the spread of COVID-19.

Usability Evaluation of Imikode Virtual Reality Game to Facilitate Learning of Object-Oriented Programming

Many empirical studies have shown that educational games and recent technologies impact education and increase learning effectiveness, students’ motivation and engagement. The overall aim of this study is to evaluate the usability of Imikode, a virtual reality (VR) game that was developed to introduce the concepts of object-oriented programming to novices. The improved version of the Imikode VR game consists of three features: An artificial intelligence component designed to provide real-time error feedback to users, an intelligent agent that guides and teaches users how to play the game and finally, the integration of multiple game play that gives learners more opportunities to explore the VR environment for greater immersive learning experience. This study adopted a survey approach and recruited first-year computer science students to measure learner satisfaction with educational virtual reality games and examined the correlations among the attributes of the Usefulness, Satisfaction and Ease of Use questionnaire of usage of Imikode. The results showed that the students were satisfied with Imikode and perceived the virtual reality educational game as very useful for learning object-oriented programming concepts. In addition, there was a correlation among the questionnaire variables, which means that researchers can use the instrument for future usability studies in the context. We further proffered some design recommendations for building software tools.

The Impact of Story Structure, Meaningfulness, and Concentration in Serious Games

This contribution analyzes the impact of factors related to story structure, meaningfulness, and concentration in the design of Serious Games. To explore them, the authors carried out an experimental evaluation aiming to identify relevant aspects affecting the cognitive-emotional impact of immersive Virtual Reality (VR), specifically Educational Environmental Narrative (EEN) Games. The experiment was designed around three main research questions: if passive or active interaction is preferable for factual and spatial knowledge acquisition; whether meaningfulness is a relevant experience in a serious game (SG) context; and if concentration impacts knowledge acquisition and engagement also in VR educational games. The findings highlight that passive interaction should only be encouraged for factual knowledge acquisition, that meaningfulness is a relevant experience and should be included in serious game design, and, finally, that concentration is a factor that impacts the experience in immersive games. The authors discuss potential design paths to improve both factual and spatial knowledge acquisition, such as abstract concept-oriented design, concluding that SGs should contain game mechanics explicitly supporting players’ moments of reflection, and story structures explicitly aligned to educational facts.

A Virtual Reality Educational Game for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage Repatriation

The technology of virtual reality and the gamification of education has had proven educational benefits and has the ability to immerse students in a participatory learning experience. To capitalize on the strengths of the new digital medium, including immersion, engagement, and presence, a new educational game aims to teach the ethics of cultural heritage repatriation through the lens of art history. The use of games to address current issues and conceptualize a framework for understanding the complexities of geopolitics is not new but aligning these considerations with the pressing need to protect cultural heritage as seen in modern-day Ukraine is. This study investigates the process of game design and development from preproduction to postproduction. The final version of The Museum of the Lost provides a model for other institutions with game design and art history departments to collaborate and create educational experiences that optimize the user experience and learning outcomes.

Approachability Evaluation of Virtual Reality Educational Game: The Case of Keepin

Educational game technology now in advance phase where virtual reality is adapted into it. But when the educational game is not designed well, it become no point to use the game for education. Educational game not only could be played, but also should be understandable and entertainable at the same time, especially for new player (approachable). This study has purpose to evaluate the approachability of game KEEPIN a virtual reality educational game about waste handling that has been design using Game Approachability Principles, students participated in experiment consist of play the game session, simulation, and questionnaire. Total respondents are 35 students. The evaluation gave result 23 students find the game enjoyable by give positive experiences during empirical usability testing, they also success play the game at first attempt and can achieve the goal of the game. 5 students give negative experiences but success play the game at first attempt and can achieve the goal of the game. 7 students close the game without finished it. It shows that KEEPIN can be understandable oand quite approachable for new player.

Processing presence: how users develop spatial presence through an immersive virtual reality game

A primary affordance of virtual reality (VR) headsets is to give the user spatial presence or the illusion of being in the virtual environment. Although considerable research connects VR to spatial presence, spatial awareness, and spatial ability, little is known about how users develop spatial presence in VR learning environments. This study addresses that gap by exploring spatial presence experience construction in a VR educational game and investigating whether users’ knowledge, game experience, and VR experience impact the establishment of spatial presence. In this study, 56 high school students played an immersive 3D VR cell biology game where players search for clues within a virtual cell to diagnose the cell. Findings suggest that players’ perceptions of spatial presence are linked to how they allocate their attention during the game, their level of interest in cellular biology, and their visual-spatial acuity, but are not linked to their game experience, VR experience, or prior knowledge of the content area. These results indicate that well-scaffolded, engaging virtual environments can foster spatial presence among users, regardless of prior knowledge or experience, and gives practitioners clues about how to design VR learning environments.

A Case Study of Educational Games in Virtual Reality as a Teaching Method of Lean Management

(1) At present, it is important to bring the latest technologies from industrial practice into the teaching process of educational institutions, including universities. The presented case study addresses the application of educational games in virtual reality to the teaching process in a university environment. (2) The study took place at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Žilina in Žilina and consisted of two phases. In the first phase, students’ satisfaction with current teaching methods was examined. The second phase focused on an educational game in virtual reality, which introduced a non-traditional approach for teaching lean management, namely the tool 5S. (3) This game was designed by the study authors and created in the Godot game engine. The educational game was provided to students during class. After completing the game, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The aim was to enable students to express their opinion on the educational game and to identify the main benefits of this approach in the teaching process. (4) In the study’s final phase, based on the acquired knowledge, the authors examined the benefits and disadvantages of virtual reality educational games for the teaching process of industrial engineering tools.

Lost in Learning: Hypertext Navigational Efficiency Measures Are Valid for Predicting Learning in Virtual Reality Educational Games.

The lostness measure, an implicit and unobtrusive measure originally designed for assessing the usability of hypertext systems, could be useful in Virtual Reality (VR) games where players need to find information to complete a task. VR locomotion systems with node-based movement mimic actions for exploration and browsing found in hypertext systems. For that reason, hypertext usability measures, such as “lostness” can be used to identify how disoriented a player is when completing tasks in an educational game by examining steps made by the player. An evaluation of two different lostness measures, global and local lostness, based on two different types of tasks, is described in a VR educational game using 13 college students between 14 and 18 years old in a first study and extended using 12 extra participants in a second study. Multiple Linear Regression analyses showed, in both studies, that local lostness, and not global lostness, had a significant effect on a post-game knowledge test. Therefore, we argued that local lostness was able to predict how well-participants would perform on a post-game knowledge test indicating how well they learned from the game. In-game experience aspects (engagement, cognitive interest, and presence) were also evaluated and, interestingly, it was also found that participants learned less when they felt more present in the game. We believe these two measures relate to cognitive overload, which is known to have an adverse effect on learning. Further research should investigate the lostness measure for use in an online adaptive game system and design the game system in such a way that the risk of cognitive overload is minimized when learning, resulting in higher retention of information.

A Virtual-Reality Edu-Game: Save The Environment from the Dangers of Pollution

The virtual reality educational game, with theme “saving the environment from the danger of pollution” – aims to help children aged 10-13 years in understanding pollution and how to reduce it. The game uses smartphone and VR Box. This edu game is designed under SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) of the waterfall model. Contained assets are obtained from the Unity Asset Store which will simulate learning techniques with several educational games. This can be seen as an advantage from the traditional learning method. Based on a black box test, this game runs well on target devices. Usability test is conducted using the System Usability Scale (SUS), and this game gets a score of 71.58 which is in the good criteria.

VREG: A Virtual Reality Educational Game with Arabic Content Using Android Smart Phone

In the last few decades, technology found its way from being a wild sci-fi dream, only seen in movies, to being an important element of all aspects of life. The technological industry bloomed quite rapidly where the technological solutions have made any process you can think of easier, faster and more efficient. Educational methodologies started off simple, having a teacher using simply his/her words and some writing along with it. With technology entering the field of education, teaching methods were enhanced and the quality of its outcomes was improved. However, sadly in Arab countries that was not the story. In other words, the use of new education technologies is still limited to basic and simple tasks. In fact, to add to the agony, most of the programs used are poorly implemented and rarely applied. Interestingly, as many studies confirm and from the simple observation of kids playing, it is found that most children are very attracted to new technologies and their applications. Those interests not only changed what a normal childhood would look like, but also introduced a multi-billion industry of electronic games. Virtual Reality (VR) games were introduced a few years back starting a gaming revolution, allowing gamers to enter the world of their dreams. Similar to most technologies, VR started to become more affordable with time. Multiple companies have competed to give us amazing VR products such as Samsung Gear. In this manuscript, we present a Virtual Reality Educational Game (VREG), which is an interactive 3D game with Arabic content that targets the students between age 4 and 8 and can be played on a smart phone. VREG includes multiple games that cover the different concepts of Arabic and English languages alongside math, aiming to help the student to learn through playing. In order to make sure that our game reaches wanted education standards, we put it to the test in two private schools; the feedback was very positive from both teachers and students where the majority of users enjoyed their experiments in VR games.

On the usability and likeability of virtual reality games for education: The case of VR-ENGAGE

Educational software games aim at increasing the students’ motivation and engagement while they learn. However, if software games are targeted to school classrooms they have to be usable and likeable by all students. Usability of virtual reality games may be a problem because these games tend to have complex user interfaces so that they are more attractive. Moreover, if the games acquire an educational content they may lose the attractiveness and appeal that they have on users who are familiar with commercial games. Consequently, likeability may also be questioned. In this paper, we address the issue of usability and likeability of a virtual reality game that is meant to teach students geography. We describe the evaluation experiments conducted, which involved three categories of students in terms of their level of game-playing expertise: novice, intermediate and expert game players. The evaluation results showed that the game was indeed usable and likeable but there was scope for usability and likeability improvement so that the educational benefits may be maximised for all categories of students. The evaluation studies reported in this paper, revealed important issues about further research on virtual reality educational games.