Investigating the Effectiveness of Virtual Reality for Culture Learning

ABSTRACT

People who are to live, study and work abroad will face more challenges in the new cultural environment and suffer more acculturative stress. Virtual Reality (VR), by which an immersive learning environment can be built, may help them adapt to a foreign culture at a lower cost of time and money. In order to work out a design method for culture learning in VR, we have designed a VR application so that learners can experience and learn the typical western festival culture – Christmas culture – in an immersive environment. To evaluate the effectiveness of the VR method, 50 EFL Chinese university students were enrolled in our experiments and randomly assigned to the VR group and the non-VR group, the data was drawn from cultural knowledge questionnaire, behavior test and Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS). The ANCOVA revealed no major effect for group factor on knowledge learning. Similarly, the Mixed ANOVA identified no major effect for group factor on behavior learning and attitude learning. There was no interaction effect between time and group in all experiments. Our results show that the VR method is preferred by most of the participants, but it shows no remarkable advantage over the non-VR method. Moreover, regression analysis between the culture learning and the sense of presence in VR shows that presence has the potential to improve the performance of intercultural interaction engagement. Our findings are of practical value for culture learning in VR.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the participants in this study.

Disclosure of potential conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest when submitting this paper for publication.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Science and Technology Projects of Xi’an, China [Grant number: 201809170CX11JC12] and Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (China) [Grant number: 20171981008].

Notes on contributors

Lei Gao

Lei Gao received the B.S degree from Shandong University, Jinan, China in 2017 and the M.S degree from Xidian University, Xi’an, China in 2020. She is currently a PhD student in UCL Interaction Centre, University College London, UK. Her research interests include virtual reality and data physicalization.

Bo Wan

Bo Wan received the BS, MS, and PhD degrees from Xidian University, Xi’an, China. He is currently a professor with the Key Laboratory for Smart Human-Computer Interaction and Wearable Technology and the College of Computer Science and Technology, Xidian University. His current research interests include human-computer interaction and embedded system.

Gang Liu

Gang Liu received the M.S and Ph.D. degrees in computer science and technology from Xian Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China. Since 2007, he has been a faculty member of the School of Computer Science and Technology at Xidian University. His major research interests include embedded system, information security and trusted computing.

Guojun Xie

Guojun Xie received the B.S degree from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China in 2018. He is now a postgraduate in the School of Computer Science and Technology at Xidian University, Xi’an, China. His research interests include human-computer interaction, virtual reality and mixed reality.

Jiayang Huang

Jiayang Huang received the B.S degree from Shandong University, Jinan, China in 2017. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Xidian University, Xi’an, China. Her current research interests include wearable sensing and machine learning.

Guanglan Meng

Guanglan Meng received her M.S. degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in Foreign Languages from Xidian University. Xi’an, China in 2003. She is now an associate professor in the Foreign Languages Department of Xidian University. Her major research interests include language teaching and translation.