Abstract:
The emergence of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education
has enabled the development of new tools and platforms that serve to create better learning
content. The education sector is expected to have significant change by using these
technologies. The goal of using these technologies in the education sector is to make
learning easier, faster, and more engaging for the students. In some specific domains,
students need to work on the practical activities using specific equipment to clarify and
understand their concepts. To sustain engagement and provide learning proficiency to the
learner, there is a need to provide them real-time exposure to labs, so that they can perform
scientific experiments. However, in developing countries like Pakistan where there is an
increasing number of learners, it is difficult to give each learner appropriate tools to
perform such activities. To address this issue, an experimental research study will be
conducted in physics subject on 9th-grade students to measure the learning and
engagement of students in a school named Govt. Girls High School Sameejabad No. 1 in
Multan, Pakistan. A total of 53 students will take part in the research. The purpose of this
research is to make learning interactive and engaging for the students and to provide an
immersive virtual environment to users by using 3D interactions and simulating these
experiments on the high school level. The research is divided into three phases. In the pre intervention phase, a pre-test will be conducted to assess students’ knowledge regarding
Physics. During the intervention phase, students will be given a Virtual Reality (VR)
application in compliance with VR headsets, so that students can have the experience of
VR physics experiments. Students will be observed on Student Engagement Walkthrough
checklist1. In the post-intervention phase, the post-test will be conducted based on the
learning outcomes of learners. In the end, data gathered through observation, pre-test, and
post-test will help to analyse the student’s engagement and learning behaviour. This
research will help us to take an insight into using the Virtual Reality application approach
in the classroom on students learning and engagement. Furthermore, this study will add
up significantly to the existing wealth of literature and help educators to further explore
the methods of making education engaging and available to all learners.
