A controlled study of virtual reality in first-year magnetostatics

TL;DR

This study evaluates the effectiveness of stereoscopic virtual reality in teaching magnetostatics to first-year physics students, comparing it with WebGL simulations and static images, and finds no significant performance difference among methods.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on VR's pedagogical impact in physics education, highlighting its comparable effectiveness and revealing gender differences and influence of prior 3D gaming experience.

Findings

VR did not significantly outperform other methods.

Significant gender differences in student performance.

Performance correlated with self-reported 3D gaming experience.

Abstract

Stereoscopic virtual reality (VR) has experienced a resurgence due to flagship products such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and smartphone-based VR solutions like Google Cardboard. This is causing the question to resurface: how can stereoscopic VR be useful in instruction, if at all, and what are the pedagogical best practices for its use? To address this, and to continue our work in this sphere, we performed a study of 289 introductory physics students who were sorted into three different treatment types: stereoscopic virtual reality, WebGL simulation, and static 2D images, each designed to provide information about magnetic fields and forces. Students were assessed using preliminary items designed to focus on heavily-3D systems. We report on assessment reliability, and on student performance. Overall, we find that students who used VR did not significantly outperform students using other treatment types. There were significant differences between sexes, as other studies have noted. Dependence on students' self-reported 3D videogame play was observed, in keeping with previous studies, but this dependence was not restricted to the VR treatment.