Does spatial ability affect students' learning performance in virtual reality environments? A study on desktop virtual reality systems

Spatial ability is considered to be an effective predictor of student performance in STEM fields, and the educational benefits of Virtual Reality in STEM are becoming increasingly evident. However, it is not clear how students with different initial spatial ability benefit from virtual environment. The ability-as-enhancer hypothesis and the ability-as-compensator hypothesis explain the benefit difference of students with different initial spatial ability in virtual environment from the perspective of cognitive load. However, the existing research has not formed the teaching guidance on the participation of students with different initial spatial ability in virtual reality environment. This study first discusses the performance differences of students with different initial spatial ability in virtual reality environment, and examines the correlation between students' initial spatial ability and learning performance. We verify the training effect of virtual reality environment on spatial ability, and find that students with different initial spatial ability have similar learning performance. Then, through the delayed sequence analysis of student behavior, we found that students with high spatial ability tended to optimize the model, while students with low spatial ability focused on model design. This provides a new perspective for the teaching guidance of students with different initial spatial ability.