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Writer's pictureJohnny Cho

Virtual Reality Storytelling in History Class

Updated: Aug 27, 2019

Johnny Cho

EDUC 639 Design of Learning Environment


Virtual Reality Storytelling in History Class

The need

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”. This is famous quote from George Santayana. As words itself, we should remember the past so that we can prevent the same problem in the future. Since the history is our passed story, it is essential for individuals properly understanding the societies and connecting the past, present and future. According to Department for Education (1995), students should develop substantive historical knowledge and an understanding of history as a form of knowledge. It is no doubt that somehow learning history would give us a full of benefits for the future such as the wisdom, understanding community and ancestors, the origin of certain phenomena. Then, despite of these advantage of learning history, how much does the students enjoy the history class?


Ironically, many students do not enjoy learning history. Some of students do not know reason why they should study history. In British, there were two major survey to seek how much the students think about the history as a useful subject. According to the Schools Council (1968), first survey resulted 71% of 15-year-olds thought that history as a school subject was not useful. Also, Hargreaves (1984) found that 47% of 15–16-year-old students thought the history was not useful. These students do not even have duty to study the history.


As a result, the way approaching history should be changed. Peter (1998) argued even though history is in fact very useful and indispensable, the products of historical study are less tangible and immediate than other subjects. As technology is developed, many teachers attempt to engage more students to increase the motivation for studying history by using video, role playing, game based learning or e-learning to make history course more fun and interactive. For example, when the teacher teaches gold rush history, teacher can use images, presentations and video to bring history to life. However, even though many teachers have attempted to use the technology in class, it is not enough to increase the student’s motivation especially in history education.


The Problem

There are two major problems of stimulating history content in current education system: (1) lack of interaction (2) lack of empathy. These two factors take an important role to affect to the students’ motivation. The current materials that used in traditional history classroom such as book, video or pictures were not enough to increase students’ motivation.


First, interaction takes a significant role in education. Interaction can promote learners’ active learning, direct instruction (Pan, 2006; Ezike, 2015). That is why many teachers have used the interaction as a teaching strategy in order to make the class more engaging or interesting. However, the interaction among the current history lecture is weak. Even in online learning, students are suffering to comprehend the lecture vividly since the lectures used text, audio or video respectively. The students in online lecture system are having a hard time to transfer what the lecturer talked even though they watched the content simultaneously. The students need to watch, listen, read and feel the lecture like face-to-face lecture. These traditional teaching methods cannot increase the learning outcomes. The higher interaction the students have, the more motivation they will gain. The technology is necessary to support students’ learning outcome with a higher interaction.


Second problem is lack of empathy. The more the students feel the same way as the teacher addresses, the more educational efficacy will be increased. In history class, most of teachers rely on the pictures or videos to demonstrate the historical events. However, these materials were not enough to touch the empathy. Song (2004) emphasizes importance of emotional connection with the learners via online courses. Vonderwell (2003) also reports that many online learning participants feel a lack of connection with their instructors. Thus, without the empathy, the students may have a difficult time to understand the historical content because they do not feel the history.


The Solution

I design a station rotation blended learning model and VR based learning to better understand the history. A blended learning utilizes online and offline learning. According to the What Works Clearinghouse, they analyze the effectiveness of using READ 180 software, which makes the students improving reading skills. Surprisingly, those who use the software in blended learning gained 12 percentile points for reading achievement and 4 points of reading comprehension (Clearinghouse, 2016). Thus, applying blended learning to history lesson is also quite efficient way to comprehend and learn the history context if the students collaboratively learn on/offline.


The simulation is based on VR. I hypothesize that the virtual reality (VR) can make the history education more interactive. One of the VR merits is to create a realistic virtual world in three-dimensional format. VR can generate something you never go or see. That is why VR have been utilized in many educational fields such as NA astronaut training (Loftin and Dede, 1993) or training soldiers (Johnson, 1994). With these immersive features, when students try the history VR content, they can feel that they are in the historical event. Also, according to Pan et al. (2006), digital storytelling in a virtual learning environment is more effective than offline storytelling. Thus, VR is a good medium to use in history learning because they can understand the historical events profoundly and vividly with the VR animation.


The Target & The Goal

The virtual reality (VR) module is designed for elementary students; American students who are taking science history class. The topic is ‘why the dinosaurs were disappeared in the earth?’. The goal of the VR module is to increase students’ motivation of learning history subject and the comprehension skills of dinosaur history. Students will watch lecture video and the simulation in the VR environment. The content is the lecture about two hypotheses of dinosaur extinction: intrinsic gradualist and extrinsic catastrophist. The students can have experience alive dinosaur right in front of them.


Another goal is fully understanding the lecture via blended learning. Through online and offline, the students can hear and feel about the dinosaur extinction. For blended learning, the students will have constructionist pedagogy to study themselves in collaborative activity and assessment section. The goal here is increasing awareness of solving problem through the independent study so that they can enhance memorization and comprehension skills themselves. As a whole, blended learning will help to reach the goal to learn history class precisely because it supplements the drawbacks of teaching history by only technology.


The Theory & Design

Activity theory The reality is that in all teaching and learning transactions, motivation is an inevitable construct that evokes and sustains effective learning. According to Wlodkowski (2008), motivation is an important condition in learning when it is low, potential for learning diminishes. In exploring the biology of learning, Zull (2002) concluded that motivation and learning are inseparable entities and from a motivational science perspective, Pintrich (2003) affirms a reciprocal relationship between motivation and academic achievement. Like the previous researches, motivation is the core element to bring positive attitude and learning outcome.


Since history class do not get a full of attention to students, the final goal is to enhance motivation of learning history and gain the comprehension skills of history. In order to do that, I applied the activity theory to analyze the use of virtual reality content in history class. Activity theory makes us better understanding the tools, goals and outcomes (Kain, 2014). The primary goal of applying activity theory is to evaluate the new educational system and predict the learning outcome.


I will explain the activity theory one by one (see figure 1). Tools are virtual reality and blended learning. Rules are the time limitation of blended learning per stations and assignments. Division of labor demonstrates blended learning 4 stations: (1) teacher-led instruction, (2) online/VR instruction, (3) collaborative activities and (4) assessment. Subject and community are elementary students who are taking science history class. Object is learning a history and outcome is increasing motivation and comprehension skills of the history.


Throughout the analysis on the activity theory, I verified the relation between use of technology and motivation. Using technology in education can support to enhance students’ motivation (Baker, Gearhart, & Herman, 1990; Dwyer, 1994). I use the virtual reality as a tool to increase student’s motivation, instead of using mere online module because VR has more benefits such as providing immersive simulation and high interaction. Gay and Santiago (1994) reported that high schools have effectively used VR to stimulate interest in algebra, geometry, science, and the humanities. In addition, research by Mikropoulos (1998) on the motivation of students towards virtual reality as a tool in the educational process, and towards virtual learning environments on specific disciplines, incurred students had a positive attitude towards virtual reality in the educational process. Like the research examples, VR is used to enhance students’ motivation.


Figure 1. Activity theory of history class with virtual reality

21st century skills

Among 21st century skills, the virtual reality module will increase creativity and innovation, information communication and technology (ICT) literacy (Partnership, 2007). Since the virtual reality content is a new innovative module to learn the history class, the students may learn how to use computer and VR devices. In this sense, they will help to enhance ICT literacy. Also, they need to imagine the extinction of dinosaur which will support to expand their creativity and imagination.


Design


Blended learning

The online and VR instruction itself are weak to convey the lesson to students. Also, I assume the class is large population. Thus, I designed station rotation blended learning model with online and VR module. Staker (2014) points out in order to make blended learning, there are certain points needed to include such as online learning, supervised brick-and-mortar location and an integrated learning experience. Based on the suggestions, the stations of history class consist of four sections: (1) teacher-led instruction, (2) online and VR instruction, (3) collaborative activities and (4) assessment (see Figure 2).


First, in teacher-led instruction section, the students will read a book together with the teacher and listen the short lecture in face-to-face situation. The book is the main material to review and study with chronological table. Also, if they have questions, a teacher is willing to answer of the questions.


Second, based on the teacher’s lecture, the students need to simulate to recall the lecture. Thus, online and virtual reality module can support their study with the immersive animation. According to Staker (2014), if the students cannot control over place, time, pace, it is not blended learning. Thus, online module has features to control the content and pop quiz as well. Teacher can use the quiz data to evaluate the weakness and strength for better understanding the students.


Third, the student will have group discussion to seek the short answer of the questions such as “What were two hypotheses of dinosaur’s extinction that you just watched in VR?”, “How long did the dinosaurs live?”, “Why the existence of dinosaurs is important?”. Since they are elementary students, the teaching assistant(TA) will help to learn the lesson. Regarding to the questions, the students need to prepare for presentation for the next section. They will discuss and share their idea each other.


Lastly, based on the discussion, they will have presentation to flesh out what they have learned from whole learning process. The independent discussion and presentation are constructivist which has benefit to have ownership (Hay, 2001).


Challenge & Conclusion

There are few points the students may have difficulty to use the Virtual Reality. First, the students could have information overload if they are not familiar with the VR technology especially if they use it at first time. Students may more focus on how to use VR rather than watching the content. Second, there is novelty effect, which means the students think it perceived VR as gaming technology rather than the educational tool.


Notwithstanding, station rotation blended learning model with virtual reality content will be an effective and efficient way to learn the history. It contains the online and offline instruction collaboratively. Thus, students can have instant feedback from the teacher. Also, virtual reality is a great technology to make an abstract concept visible. In this process, the students can experience the historical events through vivid animation. As a result, it will increase students’ motivation and comprehension skills of history class in the long term. For the next content, the history class will be extended to other series of histories such as American history or world war.


Reference

Baker, E., Gearhart, M., & Herman, J. (1990). The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow: 1990

UCLA Evaluation Study, UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation, Los Angeles.

Clearinghouse, W. W. Read 180: WWC Intervention Report (Washington: Institute of


Education Sciences) (2016). What Works Clearinghouse. SuccessMaker: WWC

Intervention Report.


Department for Education (DfE) (1995). History in the National Curriculum, London:

HMSO.


Ezike, C. O. (2015). The Use of Interactive Media in Teaching of Human Kinetics

(Kinesiology). AFRREV STECH: An International Journal of Science and

Technology, 4(1), 104-118.


Hargreaves, D. H. (1984). Improving Secondary Schools: Report of the Committee on the

Curriculum and Organisation of Secondary Schools, London: Inner London

Education Authority.


Hay, K. E., & Barab, S. A. (2001). Constructivism in practice: A comparison and contrast of

apprenticeship and constructionist learning environments. The Journal of the

Learning Sciences, 10(3), 281-322.


Kain, D., & Wardle, E. (2014). Activity theory: An introduction for the writing

classroom. Wardle and Downs, 273-283.


Mellssaseldeman (2013). Documentary Series: Gold Fever, Not Another History Teacher,

retrieved from http://notanotherhistoryteacher.edublogs.org/2013/10/12/documentary-

series-gold-fever/


Pan, Z., Cheok, A. D., Yang, H., Zhu, J., & Shi, J. (2006). Virtual reality and mixed reality

for virtual learning environments. Computers & graphics, 30(1), 20-28.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2007). The Intellectual and Policy Foundations of the

21st Century Skills Framework. Tucson, AZ 1-24.


Peter N. Strearns (1998). Why Study History? retrieved from

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-

archives/historical-archives/why-study-history-(1998)


Staker, H., & Horn, M. B. (2014). Blended learning in the K-12 education sector. Blended

learning research perspectives, 2, 287-303.


Schools Council. (1968). Enquiry: London: Schools Council, London: Schools Council.

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