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Purpose This study isolates the effect of immersion on players’ learning in a virtual reality (VR)-based game about cellular biology by comparing two versions of the game with the same level of interactivityand different levels of immersion. The authors identify immersion and additional interactivity as two key affordances of VR as a learning tool. A number of research studies compare VR with two-dimensional or minimally interactive media; this study focuses on the effect of immersion as a result of the head mounted display (HMD). Design/methodology/approach In the game, players diagnose a cell by exploring a virtual cell and search for clues that indicate one of five possible types of cystic fibrosis. Fifty-one adults completed all aspects of the study. Players took pre and post assessments and drew pictures of cells and translation before and after the game. Players were randomly assigned to play the game with the HMD (stereoscopic view) or without the headset (non-stereoscopic view). Players were interviewed about their drawings and experiences at the end of the session. Findings Players in both groups improved in their knowledge of the cell environment and the process of translation. Players who experienced the immersive stereoscopic view had a more positive learning effect in the content assessment, and stronger improvement in their mental models of the process of translation between pre- and post-drawings compared to players who played the two-dimensional game. Originality/value This study suggests that immersion alone has a positive effect on conceptual understanding, especially in helping learners understand spatial environments and processes. These findings set the stage for a new wave of research on learning in immersive environments; research that moves beyond determining whether immersive media correlate with more learning, toward a focus on the types of learning outcomes that are best supported by immersive media.

Cells are central to the study of biology, yet many learners have difficulties understanding the abstract yet fundamental foundation of life. Research suggests that students' conceptions of cells are reinforced by current biology learning materials, which represent cells as two dimensional, highly ordered, and mostly empty. These models also inaccurately represent the number, location, and size of organelles. We examine the effect of an inquiry-based three-dimensional virtual reality (VR) game on high school students' mental models of cells. Students reported that the game was more interactive and engaging than traditional ways of learning about cells and attributed an improved understanding of cells to their game experience. Students' post drawings of cells depicted more types of organelles, increased density of organelles, and additional complexity than their pretest drawings, indicating a movement towards more accurate mental models of cells. However, students' scores did not improve on their factual knowledge about cells between the pretest and the post-game biology assessments. We discuss the implications of incorporating game-based approaches and new technologies such as VR into biology education.

Compared to other helping professions, teacher training typically lacks sufficient opportunities for novices to practice new skills. When teachers learn, they listen to people talk about teaching, or talk about teaching themselves, but they very rarely do the work of teaching. Games and simulations offer a promising framework to advance practice-based professional training for complex skills such as teaching. In this work, we built a role-playing simulation ELK to help teachers develop effective questioning strategies to elicit learner prior knowledge. We evaluate ELK with 76 pre-service teachers in two modes, one is more akin to the kind of human-human interaction that is germane to teaching but requires more human resources and one that can be done independently. We find that in both cases ELK raises awareness about student misconceptions and the importance of student thinking, and teachers demonstrate a modest increase in effective questioning strategies after three rounds of playing.

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This study focuses on an educational game titled Cellverse, a two-player cross-platform VR project intended to teach high school biology students about cell structure and function. In Cellverse, players work in pairs to explore a human lung cell and diagnose and treat a dangerous genetic disorder. Cellverse is being designed by the Collaborative Learning Environments in Virtual Reality (CLEVR) team, an interdisciplinary team consisting of game designers, educational researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students. Using a design-based research approach, we have enlisted the help of both subject matter experts and user testers to iteratively design and improve Cellverse. The objective of this paper is to share how user and expert feedback can inform and enhance the development of learning games. We describe how we gather and synthesize information to review and revise our game from in-game observations, semi-structured interviews, and video data. We discuss the input of subject matter experts, present feedback from our user testers, and describe how input from both parties influenced the design of Cellverse. Our results suggest that including feedback from both experts and users has provided information that can clarify gameplay, instruction, subject portrayal, narrative, and in-game goals.