he Virtual Playground: an Educational Virtual Reality Environment for Evaluating Interactivity and Conceptual Learning



1. Introduction

In the past two decades, immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has attracted the
attention of many researchers and educators who predicted that VR would
have considerable impact on the way that learning and teaching is conducted.
However, widespread uptake has yet to become apparent and, despite the
successful research efforts undertaken, we still know little about what exactly
constitutes an effective Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Hence, more
recently, certain research efforts have turned to the empirical study of the
influence of some of the distinctive characteristics of VR, such as immersion
[] and presence [][], and whether these can or cannot support conceptual
learning.

In this research we examine the dimension of interactivity in a Virtual
Environment (VE) and, in particular, its potential and limitations for learning.
Interactivity is undoubtedly one of the key elements of a VR experience. By
interactivity we mean the ability to freely move around a virtual environment,
to experience it “first-hand” and from multiple points of view, to modify its
elements, to control parameters, or to respond to perceived affordances,
environment cues, and system feedbac
k1. Studies on the use of VR for
training have shown that such activity can be effective, for example, for
spatial knowledge acquisition and recall in training []. Interaction and
feedback have also often been linked to presence, indicating that user control
over the environment was important for the experience of presence [], as was
the amount of body movement []. Other studies concluded that the extent to
which students were able to control the VE made a greater difference to what
they learned than if the system was immersive or not [][].

Despite these findings, little systematic research has concentrated on
examining interactivity in relation to learning; hence there is no clear
evidence that interactivity alone can bring “added value” to learning,

1 Most of the attempts to define interactivity recognize gradations of activity, both in the
physical (kinesthetic) and the intellectual sense. For the purposes of this research, we adopt
the general framework proposed by Pares and Pares [], where interactivity in a VE is
classified as explorative (involving, in practice, spatial navigation), manipulative (the
manipulation of parameters and elements of the VE), and contributive (the ability to alter the
system of operation itself).



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