Use of Virtual Reality as an Educational Tool: A Comparison Between Engineering Students and Teachers

Abstract

Today, teaching faces several challenges, including students’ difficulty in understanding abstract concepts and lack of motivation. To address these problems, the use of virtual reality (VR) has been explored as an innovative and potentially effective educational tool. However, so far, the effectiveness of VR applications and the perception of their use lack a clear and effective approach to be used to support education. The importance of addressing this problem lies in the need to improve the quality of teaching using emerging technologies. It is for this reason that it is important to find new strategies to improve the effectiveness of teaching using VR. In this context, this research presents the results of the FreeDev application, previously validated with 20 teachers and with 80 engineering students from a private university. FreeDev is a VR application designed to support the teaching of basic programming, it is aimed as an educational tool to provide an immersive experience to students on how to get started in programming and computational thinking. FreeDev has been well accepted, and both teachers and engineering students see it as a tool that can be used to support education. It is hoped that this research will contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field of education.

Keywords

• Virtual reality
• active learning
• VR application
• VR developer
• authentic learning
• active learning