Effects of Learning Traits and Information Display on Incidental Learning in 3D Virtual Environments

In this chapter, the authors sought to determine if learning style or digital literacy predict incidental learning, that is, learning that occurs without learners being instructed to attend to or learn presented information. One hundred and fifty-five education undergraduate students completed a series of tasks in a virtual environment where additional information unrelated to the tasks was present. The results indicate that in addition to incidental learning taking place in virtual environments, learning style and digital literacy seem to predict incidental learning in some instances. An additional analysis explored learning styles by “strong” and “moderate” indicators and found that there was no significant difference in their incidental learning score by learning style strength. The results also suggest that information display, in this case visual salience, plays a role in incidental learning as the participants performed better on recalling information that was made more salient.