Promoting Knowledge Construction: A Model for Using Virtual Reality Interaction to Enhance Learning

VR technologies, offering powerful immersion and rich interaction, have gained great interest from researchers and practitioners in the field of education. However, current learning theories and models either mainly take into account the technology perspectives, or focus more on the pedagogy. In this paper, we propose a learning model benefiting from both the Human-Computer Interaction aspects and pedagogical aspects. This model takes full account of the impact of different factors including pedagogical contexts, VR roles and scenarios, and output specifications, which would be combined to inform the design and realize VR education applications. Based on this model, we design and implement an educational application of computer assembly under virtual reality using HTC Vive, which is a headset providing immersion experience. To analyze users’ learning behaviors and evaluate their performance and experience, we conduct an evaluation with 32 college students as participants. We design a questionnaire including usability tests and emotion state measures. Results showed that our proposed learning model gave a good guidance for informing the design and use of VR-supported learning application. The use of the natural interaction not only makes the learning interesting and fosters the engagement, but also improves the construction of knowledge in practices.