Abstract:

The development of immersive technologies of Extended Reality (XR) leads to their application in many fields, including education. In language learning VR has been used in several studies, where the immersive experience almost always simulates common situations in which a person must use another language to be understood. A different approach was used in a few other studies, such as Words in Motion by MIT Media Lab, a kinesthetic VR system for learning Spanish which analyzed the memorization of new words in another language, through the association of body movements carried out in an immersive environment.

It is reasonable to expect that in the coming years the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) methods and immersive technologies will converge in the educational field, paving the way for MOOC courses that will deliver immersive content in AR (Augmented Reality) or VR (Virtual Reality). VR adds the dimension of depth to the videos available in online courses, allowing the student to use not only sight and hearing, but also the perception of his own body in the surrounding space within the learning process.

The authors have created a prototype of XR environment for language learning using Unreal Engine, which deploys two types of VR activities for distance learning of the French language, with the aim to improve the understanding of grammatical concepts and memorization of new words, respectively.

The proposed prototype takes its foundational basis on Richard Meyer's Cognitive theory of Multimedia Learning and the studies on the kinesthetic aspects of language learning. Among the principles elaborated by Mayer, the most important is certainly the multimedia principle: "people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone", because they can construct verbal and visual mental models, building connections between them. In two-dimensional media, such as book pages or a computer screen, the written or spoken word is treated by the verbal channel, whereas the image, developed in height and width, is treated by the visual channel. In an immersive learning environment the dimension of depth is also available, in addition to height and width, thus the prototype takes full advantage of depth for the performing of learning activities. The user clearly perceives the position of the learning elements by exploring the scene, and manipulates specific virtual objects to complete the task. In such a virtual environment model the student uses the verbal and visual mental models, but perceives in addition the spatial information acquired with motion. This adds a third, kinesthetic mental model which integrates with the two already known, helping to establish even more effective connections to foster learning. The tests carried out so far have shown a good appreciation by the students and an experiment is underway to investigate the effects on students’ learning performance.

References:
[1] El Kabtane, H., & al.(2020). Virtual reality and augmented reality at the service of increasing interactivity in MOOCs. Education and Information Technologies, 25, 2871-2897.
[2] Mayer, R. (2020). Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
[3] Vázquez, C., & al.(2018, July). Words in motion: Kinesthetic language learning in virtual reality. In 2018 IEEE 18th International Conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT) (pp. 272-276). IEEE.

Keywords:

Extended reality, multimedia learning, language learning, MOOCs, kinesthetic mental model.