Will some students learn more easily with VR headsets than others?
Lawson and Mayer (2023) provide initial evidence that we need more research on individual differences and learning in virtual reality.
Before my first year of college, I bought an Apple Macintosh Classic to do my work - ever since then, I’ve been an Apple fan. But, I have to say, I hadn’t really gotten excited about a new Apple product, since the iPhone, until the Vision Pro:
You gotta hand it to Apple - their ads are slick. And the Vision Pro, with its “spatial computing” looks pretty awesome. Now, at the moment, the Vision Pro is too expensive to use in schools, but less expensive (and much less fancy) immersive virtual reality (IVR) tools (such as the Google Cardboard) are being used in schools. So, it’s worth asking whether they help, hurt, or otherwise don’t affect how students learn.
Lawson and Mayer (2023) conducted a study where they randomly assigned college students into two groups and asked them to view the same lesson on ocean acidification, with one group watching an IVR version and the other watching a standard slideshow version. They also measured various aspects of students’ executive function skills. They found no differences in posttest performance, but they did find that one aspect of students’ executive functioning was negatively related to posttest performance for the IVR condition, but not in the slideshow condition. That suggests that, perhaps (and this is a big perhaps), students’ executive functions, such as their ability to inhibit distractions, can play a role in learning with IVR.
Now, I have some quibbles with the study, and it’s just one study, so I’m not yet ready to say that IVR is more sensitive to students’ executive function differences than other forms of instruction. But, it is a concern, in theory, and this study suggests we should do more research to investigate this possibility. We wouldn’t want to unintentionally disadvantage students with executive functions challenges by forcing them to use IVR. So, here’s hoping more research happens, soon.
(And yes, I know Apple is pretty insistent on using the term “spatial computing” for the Vision Pro, instead of VR, IVR, or anything else. I think that’s wise on their part - VR is a limited term. But the questions stand whether the tool is VR, IVR, spatial computing, or anything else.)