Teaching CLIL Courses Entirely in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has been found to be effective for increasing student motivation and engagement (Parong & Mayer, 2018), experiential learning (Hu-Au & Lee, 2018), and even improving spatial memory (Pollard et al., 2020). However, few studies have moved beyond the novelty of single-lesson VR experiences, nor have they used VR as the primary method of lesson delivery in language learning curricula (Kavanagh et al., 2017). Longitudinal data will help to elucidate a VR-specific pedagogy, providing evidence to support best practices, but they will not necessarily ensure that VR is actually adopted in classroom contexts. For that to take place, teacher buy-in is necessary, but there is also a lack of literature investigating the teacher side of planning and delivering VR lessons. The authors designed a longitudinal case study at a language-focused university, in order to investigate the experiences of university lecturers who conducted eight-week Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) courses in VR using Immerse (www.immerse.online), a multi-user VR language learning platform. The study analyzes teachers’ perspectives on planning and implementing a VR curriculum. Post-lesson surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the instructors. The analysis findings for both the instructors’ experiences will be discussed, along with their implications for integrating VR into extended course curricula.