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Holding learners' attention is challenging, especially when they are asked to listen to long passages. High‐immersion virtual reality (VR) can immerse learners in listening tasks, even in such complex languages as Chinese. This exploratory study examined the effect of VR on 43 Chinese language learners' listening comprehension, enjoyment, sense of presence, and cognitive load. Participants were self‐selected into two groups without knowing the purpose of the study or the details of their activity. The experimental group (n1 = 23) experienced an interactive multimedia story in VR, and the comparison group (n2 = 20) watched a screencast video recording of the same story. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) indicated that VR may have a positive effect on the development of listening skills. Compared with the video group, the VR group had significantly higher listening comprehension scores, reported significantly more enjoyment and sense of presence, and reported experiencing less cognitive load. Thus, the findings suggest that VR could be used as a pedagogical tool to enhance foreign language listening skills.Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topicPractising listening skills is key for language development.Virtual reality (VR) is motivational and engaging.Research on practising listening skills in VR is scarce.What this paper addsVR can be beneficial for practising listening skills.Language learners highly enjoy practising listening in VR.Interactivity can improve engagement and support listening comprehension.Implications for practice and/or policyLearners should be provided pretraining and scaffolding prior to using VR.The duration of VR activities should be considered.Interactivity in VR may increase its effectiveness in attending listening tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational computer games have been recognized as being a promising approach for motivating students to learn. Nevertheless, previous studies have shown that without proper learning strategies or supportive models, the learning achievement of students might not be as good as expected. In this study, a knowledge engineering approach is proposed for developing educational computer games to help students learn about the knowledge for differentiating a set of learning targets in an interesting and meaningful way. Based on the proposed approach, an educational computer game has been developed for an elementary school natural science course. The experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly improved the students' learning achievement as well as their learning attitude and motivation. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic Educational computer games have been recognized as being an important instructional strategy for promoting learning motivation of the learners., Educational computer games have great potential in helping learners acquire abilities and construct knowledge., Knowledge engineering methods have been recognized as being an effective approach for helping people organize knowledge of specific domains., The process of organizing the derived knowledge enables learners to make explicit their own interpretations and reasoning, and hence engages them in higher-order thinking., What this paper adds Proposing a knowledge engineering approach for developing educational computer games to help students learn about the knowledge for differentiating a set of learning targets., Investigating whether the students who learn with the educational computer game have better learning achievements and attitudes than those who learn with the conventional information technology-applied approach., Investigating the feelings of the students about using the educational computer game in terms of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness., Implications for practice and/or policy The educational computer games developed with the knowledge engineering approach not only promoted the learning attitudes of the students, but also improved their learning achievements., Educational computer games are able to create enjoyable and realistic learning environments for learners to acquire abilities and establish their knowledge in the process of playing games., It is worth investigating more research issues concerning the effects of educational computer games from different aspects, such as students' learning styles or cognitive styles., It is important to develop educational computer games by taking pedagogical theories or instructional strategies into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce an analytic approach to examine preservice teachers' technology integration learning as a process mapped against their technology‐related course experience in a technology integration course. The approach assumes that (1) the preservice teachers have common course learning experience; (2) their data are collected pre‐ and post‐course and paired; (3) the sample size is large enough to generate a structural covariance model; (4) the measurement is contextualized to the course characteristics around the types of technology tasks/tools used in the course and whether or not they were explicitly taught. The approach was applied to 368 preservice teachers' paired data to illustrate how the approach addresses the methodological issue of construct validity in TPACK measures, highlights the importance of technology integration course experience, and provides useful insights into a particular technology integration learning to its stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]