# VR as an Innovative Learning Tool in Sports Education
## 4 Discussion  
In the VR rotation task, participants strongly perceived the rotation of their own body, which affected their visual perception of the avatar, as most of them were irritated by the simultaneous real and mental rotation. As mentioned earlier, this is consistent with the theory of Embodied-Cognition [32; 33]. The fact that the motion of one's body influenced the mind in solving the task argues for an interrelation of body and mind. This could lead to further investigations with the VR rotation task to see if this sense of confusion would dissipate after a certain number of trials and these students could learn to focus their attention either exclusively on the mental rotation in VR or on the rotation of their own body. Moreover, this in turn could indicate that the method might serve as attention and perception training, which is especially important for learning dance choreographies. In a dance group, attention must be directed to the motion of fellow dancers as well as on the self-perception of one's own motions [16]. A tool like the VR rotation task, which trains these parallel attention and perception processes of dance motion elements in the long term, appears to be very useful for dance sport. It would expand existing research that has identified positive contributions of VR by specifically using avatars in sports for targeting attention [35]. Contrary to the feeling of irritation caused by the turntable, a few students experienced that the rotation of their own body helped them to decide on the avatars' rotation directions in VR. Again, this is in line with the theory of Embodied-Cognition, specifically relating to an improved ability of mental rotation when humans are in similar positions to the object [36] and humans can empathize with a human-looking object, e.g., an avatar in VR [30]. However, the important question that arises here is, to what extent does this feeling arises with the same rotation directions of one's own body and that of the avatar, since the positions are similar? Or is the feeling also present when both rotations run in opposite directions, i.e., the difference from the avatar's motion to one's own body position in space is strongly noticeable, possibly even more than when the own body does not rotate at all? Targeted interviews and further investigations, as they are enabled by VR, should verify this. Furthermore, future research should address the differences between learners regarding the effects of Embodied-Cognition on perception and task performance, e.g., irritating or supporting. With regard to the dominant perceptions of the participants, the innovative tool helped to find out that in addition to the students who most strongly perceived their own rotation via the turntable, almost a similar number of participants only subconsciously perceived the real rotation and were able to rather focus on the rotation of the avatar. The task-beneficial perceptions of these participants may further indicate more use of such a VR tool for investigating and practising perception and attention processes, which are again relevant for pedagogic research in dance [37]. In addition, the fact that the task was cognitively demanding for many students suggests that the tool could be a suitable method for educational use. Since students reported that they found the task easier as they became habituated to it, specifically also referring to the unfamiliar technologies, this suggests on the one hand that it was not too demanding for them; on the other hand, variations of the task would be needed for long-term use in this specific school context. Overall, the method could have an impact not only on extracurricular physical education, but also on other school contexts. Other researchers have already investigated cognitively challenging tasks from the motor domain to promote active breaks in schools.