The Effect of Virtual Reality on Learning Motivation and Academic Performance

Abstract

This study is designed to investigate whether Virtual Reality (VR) has positive effects on students’ learning activities. This study focuses on exploring the effect of VR on learning motivation and academic performance. Discovering the impact of VR for learning activities will assist institutions to design instruction more effectively. Many current instructional environments use a minimum level of traditional multimedia technologies, such as PowerPoint. Few instructors have moved the classroom content from textbooks to slideshows. With the assistance of instructional designers, instructors could customize their training contents to integrate more advanced instructional technologies. VR can help turn abstract concepts into concrete facts, by combining senses of sight and sound during the learning procedure. A pretest and a posttest design was used for this study. Test scores were collected from the experimental group and control group. An assessment with seven questions was administered before and after the lesson. In addition a survey measuring the learners’ motivation for the lesson was given. Both groups’ test results were collected and compared. Participants included grade students in elementary school. By comparing two groups pretest scores, an ANCOVA test was applied to determine if there was a significant difference between utilizing VR or not. Results indicate that VR has a positive effect on student learning motivation and assessment performance.