Abstract:

LECLIC: “Living in the Era of Climate Change is a three years international ERASMUS+ project of short exchange of pupils corresponding to the action KA229 (2020-1-ES1-KA229-082206). Composed by a consortium of four secondary schools addressed to students (ages between 12 and 16 years old). An innovative STEM immersive curriculum to challenge students to analyze the causes of climate change in the regions where they live, the current lifestyle of the students’ families and the quality of life of the region has been developed. In this paper, we analyze cognitive and affective factors of students when creating an immersive virtual reality game on climate change analysis of the causes, consequences and actions to mitigate it.
The theoretical framework used in this paper is the Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL), the Research-Based Model of Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality of Makransky and Petersen (2020). The model describes six affective and cognitive factors including interest, motivation, self-efficacy, embodiment, cognitive load, and self-regulation.
We have used the CAMIL model to analyze the STEM design based learning approach developed during the project implementation to enhance students in the creation of Virtual Reality Games (VRG). A case study consisting in a design based research approach has been developed to analyze the affective and cognitive factors. The cognitive factors have been analyzed through the content analysis of the implementation documents workshop in the immersion in Virtual Reality activities on climate change, workshop on the creation of a VRG, the games developed by the students. The affective factors have been analyzed through pre and post surveys on the situational interest, intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy.
Results on cognitive factors inform on the cognitive load that had supposed to the students the integration of the STEAM approach on climate change through an immersive VRG, consisting the creation of knowledge about the causes and consequences of climate change, designing questions to understand this theoretical principles on climate change, collecting 360º photographies on, the use of coSpaces environment (https://cospaces.io/edu/) for creating the game, coding the game. Three kinds of games have been created. Those that exclusively present knowledge on climate change immersive environment in a gallery or museum, others that ask students to take actions to mitigate climate change (such as: virtual reality immersive garbage collection), and a blend of both a museum and actions to be taken. The affective factors analysis inform that students agree that the VRG creation has kept their attention for longer periods of time, it has been more engaging than a traditional activity, it has increased students’ comprehension about VR, coding, climate change and they strongly agree that it has provided a realistic experience on VR.

Keywords:

STEM education, Secondary education, Virtual Reality immersion, methodology, climate change.