Evaluation of a Gamiﬁed 3D Virtual Reality System to Enhance the

Understanding of Movement in Physics

Diego Alonso Iquira Becerra, José Alfredo Herrera Quispe, Roni Guillermo Apaza Aceituno, Gaby

Mary Poma Vargas, Flor Gabriela Fernandez Zamora, José Luis Huillca Mango, Guadalupe Paulina

Anccasi Figueroa, Aldo Alexis Perez Vizcarra and Jaison Willian Torres Chana

Computer Science, National University of San Agustín, Arequipa, Perú

Keywords:

Virtual Reality, Gamiﬁcation, Mixed Reality, Interactive, Physics Learning.

Abstract:

The creation of new technological tools in education provides different learning opportunities to students.

The present research evaluates an application that we have developed for the use of virtual reality to enhance

the understanding of movement in physics, using gamiﬁcation techniques on the application allowed us to

improve the motivation of the students to learn, the validation of this research was made using a methodology

to evaluate the didactic value of educational software, and this evaluation was carried out on a group of

teachers.

1 INTRODUCTION

Education is constantly improving in every country;

however this improvement is affected by different fac-

tors like economic, political and social capacities, of

which the economic aspect is the most critical in dif-

ferent countries, creating a tangible limitation.

The use of technology in education allows low-

cost alternatives to improve education; one of these

technologies is virtual reality.

For instance the term virtual reality has two virtu-

ally opposite concepts: real (which has real and effec-

tive existence) and virtual (which has not physically

existing).

Consequently virtual reality is the name given to

a set of computer-based techniques and technologies

that approximate the visualization of concepts, ob-

jects and actions in three dimensions in an interac-

tive way, that resembles or not reality (Gobbetti and

Scateni, 1998).

In addition, virtual reality gives the possibility of

rebuilding the real world, creating digital scenarios so

realistic that create the sensation of being transported

to fantastic worlds in seconds, this is a reason why vir-

tual reality is a technology than can be used in various

areas.

On the other hand, many of the principals devel-

opments in virtual reality are focused on entertain-

ment, from video games to video consumption, there

are other less publicized but interesting application,

such as in the area of medicine and art (Mazuryk and

Gervautz, 1996).

The characteristics mentioned before turns virtual

reality into a technological tool with potential for the

creation of educational software, although this tech-

nology is not suitable for teaching directly, a set of

processes and procedures are necessary to guarantee

the correct use in the classroom.

In fact, educational software is a technological

tool created to improve the learning process at dif-

ferent learning levels (Fredes et al., 2012) (Bus-

tos Sánchez and Coll Salvador, 2010), this technol-

ogy combined with Virtual Reality allows to place

students in scenarios, that could not be accessed in

reality.

In addition the use of gamiﬁcation in education

helps to improve the student motivation to learn,

through the use of game elements in learning environ-

ments with the goal of maximizing entertaining and

engaging the student, which helps them to continue

learning. (Dicheva et al., 2015).

Summing up, the section 2 will show research re-

lated to virtual reality and the impact that generates in

the educational ﬁeld. The proposal of the immersive

laboratory for enhance the understanding of move-

ment in physics, that we develop will be discussed

in section 3. Section 4 shows the system that we de-

velop, exploring the conﬁguration, scenarios and ac-

Becerra, D., Quispe, J., Aceituno, R., Vargas, G., Zamora, F., Mango, J., Figueroa, G., Vizcarra, A. and Chana, J.

Evaluation of a Gamiﬁed 3D Virtual Reality System to Enhance the Understanding of Movement in Physics.

DOI: 10.5220/0006328003950401

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2017) - Volume 1, pages 395-401

ISBN: 978-989-758-239-4

395

tivities that the virtual laboratory contain. The exper-

iment and results are shown in section 5, where this

educational software was validated against teachers,

who have pedagogical experience. Finally, section 6

shows the conclusions.

2 RELATED RESEARCH

In recent years the investigations related to the use

of virtual reality in the educational ﬁeld has begun to

increase.

In fact, education is currently one of the most

promising areas for the design and development of

virtual reality applications, mainly thanks to the abil-

ity to introduce the student to immersive and multi-

sensory environments (sight, touch, ears). In which

students can interact with an virtual environment that

stimulates their learning process.

2.1 Educational Software

Educational software is the technological tool to the

new learning society (Fredes et al., 2012) (Colegio

and Minnaard, 2016), because of this, strategies have

been adopted at different levels, from an institutional

level to a classroom level, searching for the appro-

priately use of educational software. Simulation in

virtual environments can be a powerful tool to place

students in "practical" scenarios that could not be ac-

cessed in reality (Saxena et al., 2016).

For example virtual environments are au-

tonomous, intercommunicated worlds that interact

with an user that is also located inside the computer;

there are two types of virtual environments applica-

tions that can be applied on education: simulators

and video games.

At all the different levels of education, virtual re-

ality has the potential to be involved on the learning

process, to lead students to new discoveries, to moti-

vate and stimulate the process of learning (Ott et al.,

2015). In fact, students can participate in the learning

environment with immersion, that is a sense of pres-

ence of being part of the environment.

2.2 Virtual Reality in the Education

In brief virtual reality is an alternative world ﬁlled

with computer generated images that respond to hu-

man movements. These simulated environments are

usually visited with the aid of head-mounted goggles

and ﬁber-optic data gloves (Steuer, 1992).

For instance, some of the main characteristics of

virtual reality are immersion and presence, whose are

focused on generating the sensation of being present

in a simulated place, this allows to give a focused

viewpoint in terms of human experience rather than

technology to virtual reality. However, the concept of

presence does not refer to what surrounds one, as in

the physical world, but to the perception of the envi-

ronment through an automatic and controlled mental

process (Gibson, 2014), on the other hand Immersion

can be deﬁned as the feeling of being present in a cer-

tain environment.

In the past there have been certain difﬁculties in

the use of technologies focused on the use of vir-

tual reality, there were problems with the techno-

logical devices as they were expensive and not very

widespread, and on the other hand, their characteris-

tics were such that often cause a sense of aversion to

their users due to the mismatch between head move-

ments and the corresponding change in the scene

(Ohta and Tamura, 2014).

Now with the creation of commercial products

such as Google Cardboard which is a development

platform created by Google to use mobile devices as

virtual reality glasses. For example the glasses are

used by placing a mobile device in the back and mak-

ing the visualization through the lenses in the front

(MacIsaac et al., 2015) (Laffont et al., 2016).

Evidently, due to the versatility of virtual reality

technology, the uses of this technology is not lim-

ited in a speciﬁc area for such reason among the ar-

eas in which it can be used are: military training,

education, health, entertainment, fashion, museums,

business, engineering, sports, media, scientiﬁc visual-

ization, telecommunications and construction (Cum-

mings and Bailenson, 2016).

On the whole, education is an area in which vir-

tual reality is used through the creation of teaching

and learning situations, allowing large groups of stu-

dents to interact with each other in three-dimensional

environments (Helsel, 1992)

2.3 Gamiﬁcation in the Education

The term gamiﬁcation is the application of game el-

ements and principles of game designs in other non-

game contexts. In brief gamiﬁcation uses game de-

sign elements to improve user motivation, participa-

tion, and productivity (Deterding et al., 2011).

A general deﬁnition of gamiﬁcation is the use of

game design elements in contexts other than games

(Deterding et al., 2011).

In fact the use of gamiﬁcation in education, helps

to improve the motivation on students to learn through

play elements in learning environments, with the goal

of maximizing entertaining and engaging the stu-

CSEDU 2017 - 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

396

dent and inspiring them to continue learning (Dicheva

et al., 2015).

The main advantages of using gamiﬁcation in ed-

ucation are:

• Freedom for trial and error without negative reper-

cussions, increasing the fun in the classroom.

• Differentiated education according to the stu-

dent’s abilities.

• Visualization of the realized learning, providing a

set of tasks and subtasks

• Motivate students to continue their learning and

give the student the freedom to do their own learn-

ing.

2.4 Virtual Laboratories

Lessons made in classrooms are not always appreci-

ated by the students, in a classroom; both the learning

and the motivation of the student and the teacher can

be affected by external stimulus or by a lack of atten-

tion and interest.

Nevertheless, to be able to do the correct laborato-

ries practices of what is learned in a theoretical way,

it is necessary to manipulate instruments and objects,

the classes in these laboratories require a set time and

a suitable room.

Evidently, the large number of students enrolled

in the ﬁrst years of higher education, material limita-

tions (number of rooms, facilities) and lack of human

resources make it difﬁcult to learn only through prac-

tical exercises in the classroom.

Certainly taking into account the evolution of stu-

dents’ attention capacity, lack of time and resources

for acquiring knowledge through practice, an alterna-

tive that has been used is the application of virtual

labs in which classes can be held remotely; These lab-

oratories seek to consolidate the learning in class and

acquire additional knowledge (Ballu et al., 2016).

For example, the following are the main ad-

vantages of using virtual laboratories (Bonde et al.,

2014):

• Economic: Virtual systems turn out to be a more

proﬁtable alternative in schools and universities,

since it allows taking classes in a laboratory of

high quality.

• Flexibility: You can easily create different virtual

experiments and these can involve different com-

ponents.

• Multiple Accesses: Multiple students can use the

same virtual laboratory at the same time.

• Conﬁgurable: It is possible to modify the param-

eters, allowing the creation of more adaptable ex-

ercises.

• Damage Resistance: Allows interaction with the

different components without running the risk of

damaging the equipment if an incorrect interac-

tion is made by the user.

• Visibility of Components: Because you work in a

virtual environment it is possible to see the inter-

nal structure of the different components.

3 PROPOSAL

3.1 System Proposal

In this research, students of the National University

of Saint Agustín of Arequipa (UNSA) are expected to

use virtual reality to learn physics concepts through

a virtual environment in which they interacted with a

Google Cardboard.

This immersive laboratory of physics is oriented

to university students who follow who follow the

physics curriculum of the UNSA. About the labora-

tory, three types of users have been identiﬁed:

1. The user who makes normal use of the laboratory

and learns.

2. The user who already knows the educational con-

tent, therefore will have little interest in learning.

3. The user who has problems using the laboratory.

In terms of the competencies and skills, students

have to achieve according to the national standards of

learning, progress maps are established where learn-

ing goals are deﬁned, to identify what is expected to

be achieved with each competency.

One of the main problems identiﬁed when con-

ducting the different surveys and interviews with the

students is the great dependence that exists to a phys-

ical place when performing the laboratory practices,

due to this to realize the practices it is necessary to

request the laboratory classroom; which has time lim-

itations according to a pre-established schedule and

does not allow the repetition of such practices.

For this reason, experiments made on the labora-

tory are affected by a speciﬁc time interval and a lo-

cation with difﬁcult access.

Evaluation of a Gamiﬁed 3D Virtual Reality System to Enhance the Understanding of Movement in Physics

397

4 SYSTEM

4.1 Conﬁguration

The system is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: System Conﬁguration.

The software used for the development of the

system was the game engine Unity, the system was

created in conjunction with teachers of the area of

physics of the UNSA, the activities of the system

were based on the ﬁrst year courses in the area of

physics, Which correspond to the displacement of ob-

jects, throwing of projectiles and the laws of newton,

in any case students using the application must belong

to the physics area.

The architecture of the system consists of a mobile

device with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels with a

gyroscope sensor, an android version of 4.1 or higher;

Which will be used with a Google Cardboard that will

allow the virtual reality visualization and to achieve

the interaction with the system, a Bluetooth controller

will be connected to the mobile device.

We decided to use Google Cardboard to achieve

a greater accessibility using the app, because it is not

limited to a physical room. Before beginning to use

the application the user must place the mobile device

in his VR Box and start the application; when it starts,

show a splash screen; after this, user must select the

physics movement that they want to learn.

In order to make the selection, a hand-shaped icon

will be displayed in the center of the screen. To per-

form the interaction with the application, the Blue-

tooth controller must be used;

As for the visualization with the helmet, the

Google Cardboard gives the user freedom with re-

spect to the physical space to be able to realize a turn

of his head of 360 degrees and be able to observe the

whole scene.

4.2 Use Scenario

The system ﬂowchart is shown in Figure 2. Scene of

using the system is in Figure 3.

Figure 2: Flowchart of the virtual physics laboratory.

Figure 3: Using the system.

Before beginning to use the application the user

must place the mobile device inside the VR Box and

start the application; when the application starts is dis-

played a splash screen, in which the user must select

the Movement in Physics that they want to study.

In order to make the selection, a hand-shaped icon

will be displayed in the center of the screen. To per-

form the interaction with the application, the Blue-

tooth controller must be used;

As for the visualization with the Google Card-

board, the user has freedom with respect to the physi-

CSEDU 2017 - 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

398

cal space to be able to realize a turn of his head of 360

degrees and be able to observe the whole scene.

Once selected the subject to study, a screen is pre-

sented in which a voice will guide the user with the

actions to be performed to solve the activity in the

virtual laboratory is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: System menu on the application.

At ﬁrst the user must enter the data section to see

the different variables and their values, the formula

section must then be accessed in order to know the

formula needed to solve the problem, then you en-

ter the calculator section to make the corresponding

calculations, the calculations are saved in the notes

section, in the help section the user is allowed to use

coins obtained in the application to solve the problem,

where a step-by-step resolution of the problem is be-

ing carried out, and ﬁnally to write the correct answer

the user must write the answer in the resolution sec-

tion.

Once the correct answer is found the score is cal-

culated based on the time used to solve the exercise

and the numbers of attempts, to gain additional points

the user is asked a question about the subject of move-

ment in physics.

4.3 Educational Activities

In order to improve the user’s interest in carrying out

the educational activities, we chose to use gamiﬁca-

tion techniques in conjunction with educational activ-

ities.

A score system is created to evaluate the perfor-

mance of each activity in which the user is rewarded

according to his performance, this rewards can be

used to purchase virtual objects within the application

or as an aid resolving the activities

5 PEDAGOGICAL EVALUATION

The next step after the development of the educational

software would be to do the pedagogical evaluation

with the help of teachers, who have pedagogical expe-

rience, following this sequence, it is necessary to use

a methodology for pedagogical validation of the edu-

cational software mentioned above, the methodology

chosen will be the one developed by Abreu (Abreu,

2010), which was applied in other work, where they

wanted to evaluate the didactic point of view of an

educational material (Aceituno and Bruschi, ).

This methodology consists of three groups of cri-

teria to be evaluated, which are: general usability,

didactic usability and usability of distance learning

websites (Abreu, 2010)

For purposes of this work we used only the group

of didactic usability. This group is composed of 10

criteria. The criteria to be evaluated in the didactic

usability are the following:

• Control of the student.

• Student activity.

• Collaborative / cooperative learning.

• Orientation to Objectives.

• Applicability.

• Value Added.

• Motivation.

• Evaluation of previous knowledge.

• Flexibility.

• Feedback.

5.1 Objective

The main objective is to recognize the pedagogical

value of the educational software developed, using a

methodology oriented to measure the didactic usabil-

ity.

5.2 Procedure

Once the methodology is chosen, it is necessary to

make a survey to apply this methodology. This sur-

vey is based on the methodology criteria for didactic

usability, which has 18 questions. The questions have

the alternatives of "Agree", "Partially agree", "Unde-

cided", "Partially disagree" and "Disagree". Ques-

tions are scored from 1 to 5 and mean the following

(5) Agree, (4) Partially agree, (3) Undecided, (2) Par-

tially disagree and (1) Disagree.

Evaluation of a Gamiﬁed 3D Virtual Reality System to Enhance the Understanding of Movement in Physics

399

5.3 Result

The survey was applied to several teachers. The result

of the survey is shown in Table 1, Where the criteria

column represents the criteria evaluated, where some

criteria are represented with two questions in the sur-

vey, the second column represents the average score

obtained with each question.

Table 1: Results Obtained, Questions: 1. When I use the

application I felt that I had control over the tool and not the

other way around, 2. When I use the application, I have

different ways to get to the same action, 3. When I work

with the application, I can abstract myself so much that I

lose track of time, 4. The application allows me to interact

with other teachers, 5. You can deﬁne group jobs with the

application, 6. The application shows me through the prac-

tice how much progress I had in its use, 7. The application

itself shows why it is important to learn how to use it, 8.

The application is based on the idea "someone learns better

by practice", 9. The application ﬁts into the student abili-

ties, 10. The images in the application help to learn, 11. It

is easier to learn topics with the application, than to learn

using conventional methods, 12. I want to learn as much as

I can from the application, 13. I would like to receive a high

rating on future evaluations of the application, 14. I can use

my previous knowledge when I use the application, 15. The

application helps by displaying previous information before

performing a complex task, 16. The application allows the

development of consecutive tasks, 17. When I make a mis-

take the application sends me a friendly warning, 18. The

application sends me a motivational feedback.

Criterion Average

1 Control of the student 4.714285714

2 Control of the student 4.857142857

3 Student activity 4.142857143

4 Cooperative learning 4.285714286

5 Cooperative learning 4.571428571

6 Orientation to Objectives 4.714285714

7 Orientation to Objectives 4.285714286

8 Applicability 4.142857143

9 Applicability 3.714285714

10 Value Added 5

11 Value Added 4.285714286

12 Motivation 4.857142857

13 Motivation 4.714285714

14 Evaluation knowledge 4.714285714

15 Evaluation knowledge 4.714285714

16 Flexibility 4.142857143

17 Feedback 4.285714286

18 Feedback 4.571428571

The results show a high value in score, all close to

5 or 4, meaning a general acceptance to the criteria of

didactic usability.

The didactic value of this software is validated ac-

cording to this methodology.

6 CONCLUSIONS

Through the tests carried out in the previous section

and according to the objectives we can conclude the

following:

• The results obtained from the point of view of

the teachers demonstrate that the educational soft-

ware developed has a high didactic utility.

• It is veriﬁed that when using virtual reality com-

bined with gamiﬁcation the didactic value of the

educational software increases.

• It is shown that students of the UNSA can use vir-

tual reality to enhance the understanding of move-

ment in physics using Google Cardboard

• The educational software needs a feedback from

teachers with pedagogical experience.

The evaluation with more teachers and students to

measure the performance of the educational software

will be carried out as future work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by CIENCIACTIVA,

CITEC, CONCYTEC and the UNSA. We thank our

colleagues from the area of education in the UNSA,

who provided insight and expertise that greatly as-

sisted the research.

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