Immersive VR learning environments: Effects of coherence formation and environmental details

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Hartmann
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning ; Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 518077247

Immersive virtual reality (VR) learning environments enable learners – through the comprehensive integration of sensory modalities – to authentically experience learning objects. Due to comprehensive design possibilities, VR environments are said to have great potentials for supporting learning processes. While this potential is empirically well supported for transfer- or application-oriented teaching-and-learning contexts, it has not yet been clarified whether VR learning environments are also effective for learning settings in which learners are primarily supposed to acquire semantic knowledge. Thus, numerous use cases arise in which the added value of a VR environment should be to meaningfully supplement verbal or pictorial learning content. If semantic learning content (e.g. presented by means of text and images) is embedded in a VR environment, this implies that spatial-situational features of a VR environment indeed support semantic knowledge acquisition. However, the extent to which spatial-situational features of a VR environment can be harnessed for semantic knowledge acquisition has not been sufficiently researched to date. The project proposed here addresses this research gap by experimentally investigating whether environmental details in VR and the coherence between a VR environment and semantic learning content are effective for learning. The experiment manipulates two factors: environmental details in VR (faded in/faded out) and the coherence between VR environmental details and verbally as well as pictorially represented semantic learning content (coherent/inconsistent). Coherence is operationalized by means of the learning content: While the VR environment has a clear fit with coherent learning content, this fit is not present with an incoherent relationship. Coherence formation processes are essential for learning with multiple representations (e.g. text and images), since the coherence between representations constitutes the added value of each single representation: If a VR environment is purely decorative, it may even hinder learning. The aim of the project is therefore to empirically outline design principles and conditions for the effective use of VR environments for learning. In addition, we aim at working out concrete learning mechanisms by means of process analyses of eye movement patterns and also by considering the learners' spatial abilities and imaginative strategies as potential moderators. In order to carry out the project, material grants, that is, personnel funds, travel funds, test person funds and publication funds are requested. Possible project results provide an essential contribution to the question of the learning effectiveness of immersive VR environments, make previously contradictory findings – for example, due to failed coherence-formation processes – explainable, and can be made directly usable for the effective as well as sustainable implementation of VR learning environments in educational practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Maria Bannert