Learning with 10k Science: Student responses
137 students from Oakland School for the Arts participated in our pilot study where students were randomly assigned to use the 10k Science VR experience, or to watch a video with the same content.
This study compares student engagement, learning, and thoughts for the same 10k Science content in two different mediums (VR vs. Video).
Below are responses from students who were interviewed and surveyed on their experience afterwards.
QUESTION
How did learning about CRISPR with VR compare to learning about it through reading or video?
22 out of 28 students thought the 10k Science VR experience was better than reading/video. The top reasons were:
More interactive/ engaging
Provided better visualization and spatial information
Gave them a better understanding of the content or made it more memorable
More motivating, interesting, fun, or personal
More immersive and experiential
“This was definitely easier for me to focus on and engage with.”
“Reading you don’t get a very good description of how it really is, with VR you get to actually experience it.”
“Being able to physically see something was better for me, I’m a physical learner, being able to see is much easier, I can remember it better.”
QUESTION
What was your favorite part about the experience?
23 students shared their favorite part of the CRISPR experience. Overall student responses fell into these categories:
Seeing nucleus, blood vessels, cells
Interacting with patient
Zooming into the human body
Overall interactivity
360 view / animation / immersion
Learning something new
“Zooming in, seeing inside, what was inside the inside, seeing the cells fly by.”
“Going inside the veins and seeing all the cells, was surprising at first.”
“I liked the last part when you could heal the patient, that’s when I could understand more about CRISPR cuz I was wondering how it all went together in the end.”
QUESTION
What did you learn?
21 students responded to this question. The majority of students indicated that they learned about how CRISPR works, and many others shared that they learned about sickle cell and its treatment. Other responses included learning about cell structure or human physiology. Some students indicated things that they didn’t learn about, or wanted to learn more about.
How CRISPR works
Sickle Cell and its treatment
Cell structure/ anatomy / human systems
Future interests/ new questions
Reinforced prior learning
Wanted to learn more about a topic
“How CRISPR can clip the DNA and alter it by using a different piece of DNA and can remove the RNA.”
“Wanted to learn about negative impacts, and what could go wrong [using CRISPR].”
“I learned that I might want to become a doctor one day because it’s very interesting to me, being able to help others and save people’s lives is really important to me.”
QUESTION
What was the most interesting thing you learned?
Students in the VR condition described more ideas in more detail overall than the video condition.
For the VR condition, the top three responses were something related to the body system in general (40%), being able to visualize something and how it works (36%), and understanding how CRISPR can be used to treat disease (24%).
As learning about how CRISPR technology works was one of the primary learning objectives, the VR condition was more successful in achieving this with 24% of students mentioning this compared to 16% in the video condition.
“The most interesting thing for me was seeing everything in its actual size and shape.”
“I got to see how gene editing plays out.”
“The most interesting thing I experienced was probably the ribosomes reading information from RNA strands and creating proteins. I also enjoyed the ER section. Something I learned was that was that health red blood cells turn from ball-shaped to donut-shaped in bone marrow.”
QUESTION
Did this experience change how you think about science in your life?
47% of students did feel that the VR experience changed how they think about science in their life at least somewhat, as opposed to 25% in video condition.
Overall, the VR condition saw a greater portion of responses that included “yes” or” somewhat,” (35 responses for VR vs. 15 responses for Video) indicating that more students' thinking about science in their lives was impacted by the VR condition than the Video condition.
“Yes I see science more different, and I can understand why people want to be a scientist.”
“I have a better understanding of why it’s important for health.”
QUESTION
Anything else you’d like to share?
More than three times as many students wrote in a positive response (describing the experience as “interesting,” “fun,” or “cool”) for the VR condition with 34 responses than the Video condition with 12 responses.
“I thought it was really cool and I loved that it zoomed in and talked about the definitions of the different parts of DNA, DNA, cells, nucleus, etc.”
“This game should be released. It would help children better understand the human body.”
CONCLUSION
Students who participated in the VR condition reported significantly higher levels of interest than those in the video condition.
Our data on engagement demonstrate a clear advantage to experiencing 10k content on a VR device rather than video. Since the control videos still have the high-quality, 3D visualizations generated by 10k, the video content in this study already represent a significant improvement on existing materials (highlighting concepts that are otherwise very abstract).
It can be said that regardless of the medium, we have demonstrated that 10k content is potentially effective in increasing content knowledge and student engagement, and that VR-based experiences showing a greater potential for increasing engagement in students.
