Use of virtual reality to engage undergraduate students in environmental field experiences

Field-based experiences enhance cognitive and affective skill sets of undergraduate students. Although field-based learning is a highly effective pedagogical modality, it is not accessible to all students, necessitating the development and evaluation of alternate modalities that convey equivalent benefits. Virtual reality (VR) may allow students to engage in experiences without requiring them to be physically present within a field environment. Although VR is gaining popularity, there are limited examples of using it to simulate field experiences and of its efficacy in influencing student learning gains and attitudes toward environmental content. Therefore, we created immersive 360° cinematic VR (CVR) experiences focused on coastal marine ecosystems and compared them to traditional modalities: a field course and 2D videos focused on the same content. Students (n = 86) across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM majors from three institutions—Bentley University, Florida International University, and Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium—were given a preassessment/postassessment to understand learning gains and attitude changes related to each modality. Although significant learning gains happened across all modalities, CVR students experienced the greatest learning gains, though postscores were correlated with prescores and CVR students had lower prescores than field course students. There were no cross-institutional or major-related differences in learning gains for field course students. Students across all modalities experienced shifts in attitudes, with consistent increases in the use of keywords related to coastal marine ecosystems in postassessments. Ultimately, CVR is an effective supplement or alternative for undergraduate students who cannot access in-person field-based experiences and may be particularly impactful for non-STEM majors.