Longitudinal Effectiveness of Immersive VR Simulations and their Video Playbacks for Undergraduate Learning: Lessons from a media comparison study

Our main goal was to investigate if and how using multiple immersive virtual reality (iVR) simulations and their video playback in a science course, affects student learning over time. We conducted a longitudinal study, in ecological settings, at an undergraduate field-course on three topics in environmental biology. Twenty-eight undergraduates were randomly assigned to either an iVR-interaction group or a video-viewing group. During the field-course, the iVR group interacted with a head-mounted-device-based iVR simulation related to each topic (i.e. total 3 interventions), while the video group watched a pre-recorded video of the respective simulation on a laptop. Cognitive and affective data were collected through the following checkpoints: a pre-test before the 1st intervention, one topic-specific post-test immediately after each intervention, a final post-test towards the end of the course, and a longitudinal post-test deployed approximately two months after the course.Through a descriptive analysis, it was found that student performance on the knowledge tests increased considerably over time for the iVR group but remained unchanged for the video group. While no within- or between-group differences were found in intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy measures, students in the iVR group enjoyed all the simulations, and perceived themselves to benefit from those simulations.