Supporting K-12 Students on Learning Programming Using Mobile Immersive Virtual Reality

As programming becomes fundamental in several areas and a desirable skill for children, teenagers, and adults, many teaching and learning approaches have been developed. Despite mobile learning, immersive virtual reality (VR), block-based programming (BBP), and storytelling have been used to support the learning of programming, to the best of our knowledge, there aren't any studies in the literature considering their jointly usage. Therefore, we created SSPOT-VR (Space Station for Programming Training in Virtual Reality), a low-cost mobile learning application that integrates methods for the teaching and learning of programming and the simulated experience of an immersive digitally created world. Results from surveys conducted with K-12 students and focused on user acceptance (n1=124 and n2=16) demonstrated that students accepted SSPOT-VR for usage. In a different perspective, a knowledge retention evaluation (n3=31) provided evidence that students retained programming knowledge after experiencing the application. Considering both results, new research opportunities became available, as adding collaboration and scaffolding to SSPOT-VR.