Research: Virtual reality game used to help students in science classes
Multilingual students face unique challenges that can hurt their performance in school. New methods of teaching may help close this gap, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.
Ai-Chu Elisha Ding, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Workforce Education and Instructional Technology, developed an immersive virtual reality game to communicate scientific concepts to students in new ways.
The virtual reality game used visual, audio and body movements to give students multiple ways to learn and express their knowledge on a subject. The study suggests that being able to construct meaning from multiple methods is critical for multilingual students.
“Virtual reality offers meaning-making processes or meaning-making opportunities that go beyond just verbal communications,” Ding said. “Multilingual learners performed pretty well because they got the support they needed, and they had different ways to express their understanding beyond the typical ways that they did in the science classroom.”