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Using virtual reality in electrostatics instruction: The impact of training

C. D. Porter, J. R. H. Smith, E. M. Stagar, A. Simmons, M. Nieberding, C. M. Orban, J. Brown, and A. Ayers
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 16, 020119 – Published 3 September 2020

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. [A controlled study of stereoscopic virtual reality in freshman electrostatics, Proceedings of the 2017 Physics Education Research Conference, Cincinnati, OH, PER Conference series (2017), pp. 376–379], 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.

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  • Received 29 April 2020
  • Accepted 2 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.020119

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics Education Research

Authors & Affiliations

C. D. Porter*, J. R. H. Smith, E. M. Stagar, A. Simmons, M. Nieberding, and C. M. Orban

  • Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

J. Brown

  • Department of Engineering Education, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

A. Ayers

  • Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA

  • *porter.284@osu.edu Permanent address: 191 W Woodruff Ave, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
  • brown.4972@osu.edu
  • ayers.224@osu.edu

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Issue

Vol. 16, Iss. 2 — July - December 2020

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