Virtual Reality (VR) Games in Education

The Promise of VR

About a month ago I was listening to National Public Radio (NPR) on the way to work and heard this piece on how VR is being used in training. The gist of the report was that virtual reality – the kind where you put on goggles and grope around awkwardly – has not taken off as a consumer product, but it is being used by employers and institutions like Walmart, Verizon, and Stanford University, as a training tool (Noguchi, 2019). Over a million Walmart employees are using VR to learn how to be more empathetic with customers, Verizon is employing the technology to prepare retail workers for armed robbery situations, and offensive players on the Stanford football team are exploiting VR to prepare for specific defensive alignments.

I first experienced VR this summer when Ken Harper, a professor at Syracuse University’s (SU) Newhouse School of Public Communications, introduced a photogrammetry project involving VR to my English for Architects class at the English Language Institute at SU. Harper and his team had travelled to South Africa in part to recreate a site there in a virtual environment in order to create representations of South Africa for people in the US. (See this story for more on the project.) I found the experience of visiting the virtual site fascinating though I did feel disoriented while wearing the headgear and backpack necessary to become immersed in the virtual environment. There is clearly great potential in creating rich environments for developing deep understanding of other cultures, their histories, and their relationship to our own communities via immersive VR experiences.

Can VR games teach?

All this got me thinking about how VR games might be used for educational purposes. For this blog entry, I searched for recent research on the use of VR games in educational contexts. I found three studies conducted in very different contexts that demonstrate some of the potential benefits of using VR for teaching and learning.

1. Learning about water shortage

In one study, Hsu, Tseng, and Kang (2018) designed a game to encourage water conservation in Taiwan, a place that suffers from frequent water shortages. They felt that the immersion, interactivity, and flexibility of a VR environment might stimulate cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral changes in players regarding the use of water in their homes. The two-person game involves one player in a bathroom exhausting the water supply required for flushing a toilet and taking a shower, and the other pumping water from a water storage tank. Vivid feedback and exaggerated feedback are used to demonstrate reduction of the water supply and its effects. After they play, vivid feedback is shown in the form of the number of 600-milliliter bottles of water used during gameplay. Exaggerated feedback includes the shrinking of an oasis due to water use and a noticeable decrease in the level of a reservoir. Participants in the mixed-methods study were 165 high school students. The results of the study showed statistically significant changes to participants’ cognition and intended behavior following gameplay.

2. Learning fractions

The second study examined the use of a VR game to teach fractions to fourth graders in Turkey (Akman & Çakır, 2019). As fractions are generally one of the most difficult mathematical concepts for young learners to acquire, Akman and Çakır felt VR’s capacity to help learners visualize concepts, together with the potential for an optimal flow experience in playing the games, would help learners acquire knowledge of fractions. Here flow refers to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological theory of flow, in which a series of elements – including a suitable level of challenge and clear goal-orientation – interact to create deep engagement in an activity. (To learn more about flow watch this TED Talk). The game, Keşfet Kurtul, immerses learners in the experience of getting off an island following a shipwreck. Learners must solve various fraction equations to complete mini games within the narrative to successfully leave the island. Interviews with five fourth graders, who used the game at a Turkish private school in the classroom, indicated high levels of motivation and engagement. More extensive research would be needed to develop a greater understanding of potential benefits and challenges of the game.

3. Learning about the first vaccine

Lastly, Ferguson, van den Broek, and Oostendorp (2020) investigated knowledge retention and engagement of learners using the educational environmental narrative (EEN) VR game, The Chantry. In EEN games, players “move through the game environment, often without a clear goal, explore the world offered by the game and while doing so learn gradually more and more about it” (para. 3). The Chantry is designed to teach players about Dr. Edward Jenner, who invented the world’s first vaccine. The researchers sought to understand how participants – 42 adolescents – used the game, retained knowledge, and experienced feelings of engagement under four different conditions: 1) interactive navigation and explicit story structure, 2) interactive navigation and implicit story structure, 3) passive simulation and explicit story structure, and 4) passive simulation and explicit story structure. While passive simulation – a guided tour – led to greater knowledge retention, those participants in the interactive navigation groups had a more positive attitude towards the game. There was little difference found between the experiences and outcomes due to an explicit or implicit story structure. The authors suggest that EEN games may have an important role to play in education.

These three studies offer a glimpse of types of VR games and potential areas of research related to teaching and learning using VR games. In these cases, games were designed or employed to meet specific outcomes in the target population. It is likely that a significant body of research on the use or development of specific games in contexts of use will provide a clearer picture of if, how, and when VR can be exploited in the educational field in the long run.

References

Akman, E, & Çakır, R. (2019). Pupils’ opinions of an educational virtual reality game in terms of flow experience. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 14(15), 121-137.

Ferguson, C., van den Broeck, E. L., & van Oostendorp, H. (2020). On the role of interaction mode and story structure in virtual reality serious games. Computers & Education, 143. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103671

Hsu, W.-C., Tseng, C.-M., & Kang, S.-C. (2018). Using exaggerated feedback in a virtual reality environment to enhance behavior intention of water-conservation. Educational Technology & Society, 21(4), 187-203.

Noguchi, Y. (2019, October 8) Virtual reality goes to work, helping train employees. National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/10/08/767116408/virtual-reality-goes-to-work-helping-train-employees