Teaching psychology in virtual reality.

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been applied to instruction in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine and dentistry, but less to teaching of psychology. The objective of this study was to pilot VR as a medium for inducing a satisfying, immersive experience of spatiotemporal presence during asynchronous online teaching of psychology using prerecorded 360degree videos during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Forty students watched psychology lectures on the topics of meditation and psychobiology that had been recorded using a 360degree camera either while wearing or not wearing a VR headset and reported on their satisfaction, sense of spatiotemporal presence, and understanding of the learning activity. As hypothesized, students experienced greater satisfaction with psychology teaching while wearing the VR headset than when not wearing it, an effect that was correlated with their greater experience of spatiotemporal presence in the teaching environments depicted by the videos, whereas there were no prominent differences for content learning. This pilot study suggests that delivering direct instruction in psychology using VR headsets can increase students' satisfaction partly through increasing their felt sense of presence with the instructor in space and time. These pilot results suggest the potential for VR applications to provide satisfying experiences of psychology teaching in the context of remote e-learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)