Designing for Relationality in Virtual Reality: Context-Specific Learning as a Primer for Content Relevancy

Abstract

Science achievement gaps exhibit racial disparities starting in primary grades and have been shown to persist through middle and high school. In turn, increasing positive attitudes toward science have been shown as one factor that affects academic achievement and motivation among K-12 students. Exploring novel ways that technology can influence diverse students' attitudes toward science, and the design elements pertinent therein, is thus one prominent goal toward achieving science education for all. Leveraging the immersive nature of Virtual Reality 360 videos, we present a design-based research iteration testing how a novel technology-enhanced learning experience influenced close to 400 urban elementary students' attitudes toward science. Using a two-way MANCOVA analysis, the data support that our design iteration emphasizing context-specific learning can prime students that do not see science as relevant to them to change these attitudes in significantly positive ways. Implications are discussed around relationality, technology use in urban schools, and local contexts as learning resources.

Linking K-12 STEM Pedagogy to Local Contexts: A Scoping Review of Benefits and Limitations

“…Articles were related to STEM with some focusing on mathematics (Althauser and Harter, 2016;Walkington and Bernacki, 2019), science (Buck et al, 2016;Francis et al, 2016;Leonard et al, 2016;Rahmawati and Koul, 2016;Gates, 2017;Zimmerman and Weible, 2017;Fűz, 2018;Bølling et al, 2019;Flanagan et al, 2019;Herman et al, 2019;Iversen and Jónsdóttir, 2019;Kermish-Allen et al, 2019;Kinslow et al, 2019;McClain and Zimmerman, 2019;Zimmerman et al, 2019;Littrell et al, 2020a;Littrell et al, 2020b;Land et al, 2020), technology (Litts et al, 2020), and general community issues with links to STEM pedagogy (Donnison and Marshman, 2018;Ritter et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2020). While most studies approached localized learning by taking students to community and environmental contexts outside of the classroom, other studies connected students with experts and their communities through the internet (Kermish-Allen et al, 2019) or brought the outside world into classrooms through virtual reality (Ritter et al, 2019;Boda and Brown, 2020). Another group of related articles used augmented reality and other technologies to further enhance outside-the-classroom learning experiences (Zimmerman et al, 2019;Land et al, 2020).…”

“…Some articles (Rahmawati and Koul, 2016;Donnison and Marshman, 2018) identified that students had an opportunity to develop a critical voice and that they led the learning with their teachers only assisting when necessary. Students who were previously disengaged with STEM learning in the classroom showed an increase engagement in a localised setting (Althauser and Harter, 2016;Rahmawati and Koul, 2016) because students came to see subjects like science as personally relevant (Littrell et al, 2020a;Littrell et al, 2020b;Boda and Brown, 2020). In summary, it was found that the use of authentic instruction to teach STEM in the context of real-world circumstances promoted longer-term learning and increased student comprehension of the relevance of STEM in the real world (e.g., Althauser and Harter, 2016;Leonard et al, 2016;Rahmawati and Koul, 2016;Gates, 2017;Zimmerman and Weible, 2017;Bølling et al, 2019;Ritter et al, 2019;Littrell et al, 2020a;Littrell et al, 2020b).…”

“…Given the controversy that can surround issues like climate change, this is an important area for upskilling teachers through professional development. Finally, teachers may need significant professional development in order to deploy the virtual and augmented reality technologies which can further enhance students' localized learning experiences (Ritter et al, 2019;Zimmerman et al, 2019;Boda and Brown, 2020;Land et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, online platforms like those used by Kermish-Allen et al ( 2019) can enable synchronous and asynchronous collaboration independent of location that ameliorates difficulties in organizing a single time and place for face-to-face meetings. Other innovative options include the use of virtual and augmented reality to bring the outside world into classrooms or enhance outside-the-classroom experiences (Ritter et al, 2019;Zimmerman et al, 2019;Boda and Brown, 2020;Land et al, 2020).…”

E3XR: An Analytical Framework for Ethical, Educational and Eudaimonic XR Design

“…Out of context learning of isolated facts (Gee, 2007) Just-in-time exploration of surroundings and situated learning (Kidd and Crompton, 2016) Examples: Google Arts and Culture (virtual field trips), Microsoft HoloTours; citizen science AR Unimaginative and uniform perspectives (Naz and Murad, 2017) New perspectives that transcend time, place, space Examples: Time travel to see effects of climate change; view from lens of nature or animals (Ahn et al, 2016;Zec, 2017) Personally irrelevant, boring content (Broman and Simon, 2015) Spark student interest and engagement and preparation for future learning (Bransford and Schwartz, 1999) Examples: Epistemic science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) activities (Nash and Shaffer, 2011;Boda and Brown, 2020) Frontiers and contrast each of them with opportunities for better learning. A summary of these points can also be found in Table 3.…”