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



especially for children. We believe that the activity between the user and the
virtual environment may be a defining component in inducing conceptual
change and certainly one that is worth examining further. In the following
sections, we describe our methodology, the VEs designed, and the empirical
work that was carried out in order to examine the effect of interactivity in
VEs on conceptual learning, in other words, on the deeper, transferable
understandings of abstract knowledge [].

2. Previous studies of immersive VLEs

A number of educational VR projects have been developed throughout the
years, ranging from research projects conducted in academic laboratory
environments to projects that have been applied in formal [] and informal
educational settings [][], with a goal to apply and evaluate the potential of
virtual reality as a medium for educating students. Many of the early
educational VR projects were developed especially for head-mounted display
systems (HMDs) whilst the later projects started exploring the use of the
physical space along with the virtual by employing projection-based displays
(CAVEs) and, more recently, Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality setups
[].

A large part of this educational research has been focused on science
education, as in the NewtonWorld and MaxwellWorld ScienceSpace projects
[], which set out to explore the kinematics and dynamics of motion,
electrostatic forces and other physics concepts. The initial formative
evaluation reports on learners’ engagement, surprise and understanding of the
alternative representations of the concepts provided in the ScienceSpace
worlds []. Multisensory cues, multimodal interaction, and the introduction of
multiple new representations were believed to have helped students develop
correct mental models of the abstract material. However, in terms of
interactivity, other than navigation and pick-and-place activity, the worlds
could not be dynamically altered through the learner’s participation.

The Virtual Reality Roving Vehicle (VRRV) project [] and the summer camp
programs in VR for students [], initiated by the HIT Lab, focused on “world-
building” activity, where students conceived and created the objects of their



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