Virtual Reality Program for Enhancing Learning in a High School Human Biology Course

Abstract

The creation of virtual environments and their implementation have been a matter of
greatest importance in the last decades, becoming a breaking point for progress in different fields
like communication, entertainment, and education. Additionally, the learning and teaching of
human biology have been more relevant through the increase of biology-related research and
medical advances. However, learning human biology, especially anatomy, is perceived as
difficult by students. The objective of this study is to improve the learning of human biology by
implementing a Virtual Reality Program (VRP) in a high school human biology course,
measuring academic performance in a final knowledge evaluation. The VRP used immersive
Virtual Reality (VR) devices (Oculus-Go® and Oculus-Rift®) and consisted of three stages:
exploration, virtual reality lab, and knowledge reinforcement. In the exploration, the students had
a guided approach of the topics with a professor’s explanation; afterward, they had guided and
independent collaborative experience in the Virtual Reality lab; and finally, their knowledge was
reinforced in communication with the professor. A post-test only with a control group design was
employed with 120 students. There were two experimental groups (63 students) and two control
groups (57 students). After completing the stages of the VRP, all the groups had a final
knowledge evaluation where the experimental groups obtained a mean of 77.24, while the control
groups had 69.11. There was a significant statistical difference between the groups with a P<0.05
using a two-sample t-test. This proves that implementing a long-time and collaborative
immersive VR approach in high school human biology courses is effective for enhancing
learning and improving academic performance.