IUSE: EHR: Assessing Virtual Reality Field Experiences for Enhanced Learning in the Geosciences

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Virtual reality (VR) presents a new opportunity for engaging students in geoscience field experiences, which are known to support student learning. However, it is not clear how to design VR experiences that have comparable results as real-world field experiences. This pilot project aims to develop best practices for integrating VR into geoscience education and to support adoption of those practices in college classrooms. The project includes: (1) a community of practice; (2) a VR activity library; (3) in-class trials to compare the effectiveness of different types of VR experiences; and (4) workshops to engage the geoscience community in determining and disseminating best practices for VR use in classrooms. The project aims to affect at least thirteen faculty participants from different institutions and more than three hundred undergraduate students. In addition to this direct impact, the work has the potential to improve learning outcomes for most students in a geoscience or other STEM classroom as the role of VR in education expands. Integration of industry partners in the community of practice will support faculty development in the use of VR as a teaching technology and help developers of VR technology to consider educational needs as they build new VR innovations.Initiation of the community of practice will involve collaboration of participants from thirteen pilot universities including research universities, primarily undergraduate institutions, and a large community college; three of the institutions are minority serving. Joining these academic institutions are three major industrial partners that are creating technologies for educational VR experiences (Adobe, Unity, and ThingLink). The community of practice will be supported by a new section of the Science Education Resources Center website, which will provide the platform for sharing pedagogy, contributing VR activities and lesson plans, and promoting networking among community members. Academic partners will study the effectiveness of VR experiences among more than three hundred students. These studies will evaluate how realism, interactivity, and accessibility of the experience affect learning outcomes, as well as the student experience relative to the implementation challenges (development and delivery) associated with each experience. The community of practice will define a set of best practices for the design of VR field experiences in the geosciences, and these practices will be disseminated through two community workshops. The key result of the study will be the documentation of a set of best practices for the use of VR for learning in the geosciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.