An exploration-based SVVR approach to promote students’ chemistry learning effectiveness

ABSTRACT

In science education, chemistry is a discipline that involves macroscopic matter and microscopic particles. It is difficult for the traditional teaching approach to help learners comprehend abstract chemical knowledge. Researchers have attempted to use Virtual Reality (VR) to help learners realize meaningful knowledge via visualizing the learning content. However, merely engaging students in experiencing the scientific contexts is not enough. To fill this gap, the present study adopted Spherical Video-based Virtual Reality (SVVR) to create authentic learning contexts for learners, and proposed an exploration-based SVVR approach which aimed to promote students’ understanding of abstract concepts and improve their competence of completing chemistry experiments. A quasi-experimental design was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. A total of 136 junior high school students from three classes were recruited for the experiment. The experimental group adopted the exploration-based SVVR approach, control group I adopted the conventional SVVR approach, and control group II adopted traditional instruction. The results showed that the exploration-based SVVR approach not only improved students’ learning achievement, but also increased their learning motivation, learning attitude, and creative thinking tendency. Besides, students adopting this approach had more positive behaviors, including finding problems, making assumptions, investigating and verifying, and discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• Spherical video-based virtual reality
• exploration
• science education
• virtual reality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under contract numbers MOST 109-2511-H-011-002-MY3 as well as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62107010), Fujian Provincial Social Science Foundation (FJ2021C118), Fujian Province Educational Science Planning (FJWTZD21-07), and Fujian Normal University New Liberal Arts Research Project (W202107).

Notes on contributors

Qi-Fan Yang

Dr Qi-Fan Yang is an associate professor at the College of Education, Fujian Normal University. His research interests include mobile learning, digital game-based learning, AI in education and VR in education.

Han Lin

Ms Han Lin is a graduate student at the College of Education, Fujian Normal University. Her research interests include VR in education and digital game-based learning.

Gwo-Jen Hwang

Dr Gwo-Jen Hwang is a chair professor at the Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research interests include mobile learning, digital game-based learning, flipped classroom and AI in education.

Pei-Yao Su

Mr Pei-Yao Su is a senior lab technician at the College of Education, Fujian Normal University. His research interests include teaching evaluation and VR in education.

Jia-Hua Zhao

Ms Jia-Hua Zhao is a PhD student at the Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol University. Her research interests include e-learning and game-based learning.