Immersive virtual field trips in education: A mixed‐methods study on elementary students' presence and perceived learning

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of immersive virtual field trips (VFTs) with head‐mounted displays (HMDs) on the presence and perceived learning. A mixed‐method approach was used to obtain an overall understanding of students' experiences with this immersive technology in an elementary classroom. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 27 elementary‐school students through presence surveys and reflection papers. Statistical analyses were performed to compare immersive VFTs with traditional VFTs regarding students' virtual presence. Further, an inductive content analysis was performed to analyze reflection papers. The results showed an overall enhancement in virtual presence with the use of immersive VFTs. However, students felt that learning was not favorable with HMDs. The result of this study provides practical implications for the use of immersive VFTs in classroom settings.

Effects of an immersive virtual reality‐based classroom on students’ learning performance in science lessons

“…that participating in Immersive Virtual Field trips with the use of HMDs in elementary classrooms enhanced students' virtual presence and motivation (Cheng & Tsai, 2019;Han, 2020). Moreover, in science, some studies showed promising results regarding IVR's applications in classrooms.…”

The Virtual Field Trip: Investigating How to Optimize Immersive Virtual Learning in Climate Change Education

“…The destination of travel in previous educational VFTs included the Arctic, Hershey's Factory, Le Louvre, and Mt. Everest (Stansbury, 2014), and topics have included animals (Han, 2019) as well as climate change (Markowitz et al, 2018), which is the topic in the present study. In this study, students participate in a VFT to Greenland in order to witness the melting ice sheet and explore the consequences of global warming.…”

Immersive virtual field trips and elementary students’ perceptions

“…This was further confirmed by a recent study that examined the use of immersive VFTs in college students’ Chinese language learning (Xie et al , 2019). Two very recent studies conducted with elementary students also found that the use of immersive VFTs significantly increased students’ perception of presence (Cheng & Tsai, 2019; Han, 2019), which enhanced students’ intrinsic motivational beliefs and diminished their test anxiety in social studies (Cheng & Tsai, 2019).…”

“…While these studies either provided examples of K‐12 teachers' instructional practices or examined their use by college students, very few have examined the use of immersive VFTs in elementary classroom settings. One recent study examined elementary teacher’s instructional practices (Patterson & Han, 2019) and other studies explored elementary students’ experiences and learning with immersive VFTs (Cheng & Tsai, 2019; Han, 2019). Considering that the affordability of HMDs and increased educational VR content are expected to expand the educational possibilities of immersive VFTs for younger learners, more studies can enhance our understanding about this emerging tool in elementary classrooms.…”

“…The use of this immersive VR in delivering VFTs is different than other VR environments, such as VR simulations that provide hypothesis testing experiences (Merchant et al , 2014) or virtual worlds that allow interactions among multiple users (Girvan, 2018). Instead, immersive VFTs provide an enhanced level of presence, which is critical for VFTs (Han, 2019). As the importance of traditional field trips has been well documented from the perspective of experiential learning (eg, Jose et al , 2017), the use of immersive VFTs in classroom settings can also support experiential learning by providing more realistic first‐person experiences.…”