iLRN2021 7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

Presentations

Teaching in VR and Cognitive Load: a Teacher’s Perspective
Sarune Savickaite, Elliot Millington
University of Glasgow, United Kingdom, Scotland
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Technology based learning offers a wide range of opportunities in education. However, technological applications pose additional processing demands on the learners’ cognitive resources (Kalyuga & Liu, 2015). High levels of cognitive load in high-tech situations are generally a result of several modes and sources of information being presented simultaneously. Learners are also required to to deal with the uncertainty and non-linear relationships. Instructions, clear procedures and best practise techniques can reduce cognitive load in high-tech environments. Many such environments allow a high degree of learner control, which is beneficial for advanced user, but increases cognitive load for the novice (Kalyuga & Liu, 2015).
Research on cognitive load in VR is dispersed over many specific areas (i.e., navigation, group processes, social interaction, virtual presence and more) and it has been challenging to determine how positive the effects of VR are. Increased CL in VR has been established (Lai & McMahan, 2020; Huang et al., 2020; Schrader and Bastiaens, 2012; Makransky, Terkildsen & Mayer, 2019; van del Land et al., 2013 to name a few), however, there is no consensus on how it can be reduced just yet. Moreover, majority of the literature examines only the learner’s perspective and does not consider the difficulty teacher face learning, adapting and presenting new material in VR. Further, it has been demonstrated that even experienced teachers encounter cognitive difficulties when asked to teach in novel contexts (Kim and Klassen, 2018).

Learning Through Play
Ryan Rosenthal
Rasmussen University, United States of America

This session will explore the parallels of game design and education. We will discuss the similarities in the experiences of students and gamers and how it can impact the classroom. Ideas on how to leverage expectations, advancements and progression will be presented.