An educational experience in ancient Rome to evaluate the impact of virtual reality on human learning processes

Abstract

Immersive Virtual Reality technology has recently gained significant attention and is expanding its applications to various fields. It also has many advantages in education, as it allows to both simplify the explanation of complex topics through their visualization, and explore lost or unreachable environments. To evaluate the impact of immersive experiences on learning outcomes we developed an educational experience that lets users visit an ancient Roman Domus and provides information about daily life in Roman times. We designed a between-subjects data collection to investigate learning ratio, user experience, and cybersickness of participants through anonymous questionnaires. We collected 76 responses of participants (18–35 y.o.) divided into three conditions: a Immersive Virtual Reality experience, a slide-based lecture and a 2D desktop-based experience. Our results show that the virtual reality experience is considered more engaging and as effective as more traditional 2D and slide-based experiences in terms of learning.