Abstract:
As technology continues to evolve, its integration into instruction will undoubtedly play
a vital role in shaping the future of education. Serious educational virtual reality games
provide interactive and immersive three-dimensional environments to explore and experiment with complex scientific concepts. This is particularly true for visual concepts
such as those frequently occurring in chemistry subjects. This research presents a game
titled “VR Stereo Thrills & Spills” to understand and review an important chemistry
concept of stereoisomerism. Learning stereochemistry relies on students’ representational competence and visuo-spatial thinking skills. So, a game is developed to address
these cognitive challenges faced by chemistry students and the Bloom’s taxonomy based
game design follows a step-wise approach to present the content. The effectiveness of
the developed game in learning stereoisomerism is evaluated by conducting a user study
on 31 student participants. The results indicate that the developed game has a positive
impact on student performance. The paired t-test indicated a significant improvement
(t = 4.85, p = 0.00) in post-test marks (M = 0.64, SD = 0.22) compared to pre-test
marks (M = 0.44, SD = 0.14) and a moderate correlation between game scores and
post-test results (r = 0.47, p = 0.01). This demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed
game as a valuable learning tool. Our findings support the use of immersive technologies and serious games in stereochemistry educational settings, as they can provide
significant cognitive advantages through interactive and engaging methods.
