Abstract:

At a Fall 2019 convening of the XR Global Summit in Boston, Massachusetts augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) professionals emphasized the growth of the use of the technologies in K-12 education. Panelists noted that as the technology becomes more and more ubiquitous, communicating its’ value will require more research that synthesizes insights, especially when it comes to a demonstrable impact on learning (XR in Learning Global Summit, 2019). One recent study, however, has reviewed the literature on the use of augmented reality platforms to support learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This review of the literature suggests that although many studies provide teachers and the learners the ability to explore and simulate scientific activities, very few studies investigated technologies that facilitated the learning activities required to foster student conceptual learning in STEM (Ibáñez, MB & Delgado-Kloos, C; 2018). The virtual reality game which we will investigate seeks to do just that.

We propose to implement a virtual presentation that investigates student and teacher perceptions of a virtual reality game that helps students to not only experience what it is like to be a scientist but also provides educators with a way to facilitate the conceptual learning students need to collaboratively draw scientific conclusions. Drawing from teacher and student data gathered to support the design and development of a virtual reality game, researchers will interrogate student and teacher attitudes about and perceptions of the learning activities that support conceptual understanding. In March 2019, the Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology (ECD|CCT) agreed to serve as Killer Snails, LLC’s external evaluator for their GeoForge: Virtual Reality (VR) product development project. The product will be designed to both increase student content knowledge and critical skills for analyzing specific topics taught in earth science. In addition, the product will provide educators with a supplemental curriculum that addresses the challenges they experience when teaching complex topics in Earth Science, thus providing the learning activities and tools teachers need. We hope to use the data we collect to inform how middle school earth science teachers and their students perceive the learning activities with which they engage to foster their scientific conceptual understanding.

Keywords:

Virtual reality, Augmented reality, Gaming, STEM.