The virtual field trip: Investigating how to optimize immersive virtual learning in climate change education
Authors: Petersen Gustav B. , Klingenberg Sara , Mayer Richard E. , Makransky Guido 
Published: July 2020

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is being used for educational virtual field trips (VFTs) involving scenarios that may be too difficult, dangerous or expensive to experience in real life. We implemented an immersive VFT within the investigation phase of an inquiry‐based learning (IBL) climate change intervention. Students investigated the consequences of climate change by virtually traveling to Greenland and exploring albedo and greenhouse effects first hand. A total of 102 seventh and eighth grade students were randomly assigned to one of two instructional conditions: (1) narrated pretraining followed by IVR exploration or (2) the same narrated training material integrated within the IVR exploration. Students in both conditions showed significant increases in declarative knowledge, self‐efficacy, interest, STEM intentions, outcome expectations and intentions to change behavior from the pre‐ to post‐assessment. However, there was a significant difference between conditions favoring the pretraining group on a transfer test consisting of an oral presentation to a fictitious UN panel. The findings suggest that educators can choose to present important prerequisite learning content before or during a VFT. However, adding pretraining may lead to better transfer test performance, presumably because it helps reduce cognitive load while learning in IVR.

Practitioner Notes

What is already known about this topic?

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) simulations lead to higher presence but may lead to less learning when the content is not designed based on the affordances of the technology. One explanation for this finding is that cognitive load may be higher in IVR.

The pretraining principle (ie, individuals learn more deeply from interactive multimodal learning environments when they receive pretraining on relevant prior knowledge) can be particularly effective in IVR‐based learning compared to learning through a video.

Evidence shows that instructional design principles such as segmentation and generative learning strategies such as summarization can improve learning in IVR simulations.

What this paper adds

An investigation of the value of two different approaches to designing immersive virtual field trips (VFTs) within a real educational middle school context.

Evidence that VFTs featuring IVR climate change simulations, in the context of inquiry‐based learning (IBL), can increase important variables such as declarative knowledge, interest in science and intentions to take climate action in seventh and eighth grade students.

Evidence that presenting important learning content before a VFT leads to higher transfer scores.

Implications for practice and/or policy

Implementing an immersive VFT within the context of an IBL intervention provides students with relevant and engaging learning experiences and results in increased knowledge and interest in science.

In the design of instruction using VFTs, educators can choose to either present prerequisite learning content prior to a VFT or during a VFT. However, adding pretraining has an advantage in terms of higher transfer scores.