“You Get to See for Yourself”: Immersive Media to Facilitate Observation and Engagement in Remote Schooling

Abstract

With protracted school closures forcing young people to learn remotely, schools are in urgent need of innovative approaches that can keep students engaged in their education and support their learning. Immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 videos have been shown to increase motivation to learn and student focus, but little is known about their effectiveness in a remote schooling model. This short paper reports preliminary results of a mixed methods case study using 360-degree videos and Google Cardboard viewers in a remote high school civil engineering class. The initial students’ surveys and interviews indicate that students find online learning difficult, but that 360 videos are more engaging than other instructional media and may be particularly useful for facilitating observational learning.