Authors:
Maé Mavromatis
1
;
Ronan Gaugne
2
;
Rémi Coulon
3
and
Valérie Gouranton
1
Affiliations:
1
Université Rennes, INSA Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA, France
;
2
Université Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA, France
;
3
Université de Bourgogne, CNRS, IMB, France
Keyword(s):
Virtual Reality, Education, Simulation, Non-Euclidean Geometry, User Study.
Abstract:
With the democratisation of digital technologies, new pedagogical approaches are emerging that leverage these innovative media to enhance student engagement and promote different ways of learning. This article compares three learning modalities—slides, screen, and VR—in terms of knowledge acquired, time spent, and usability. The slides modality involves an illustrated slide presentation, the screen modality uses an onscreen simulation with navigation, and the VR modality shows the same simulation in virtual reality with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). In this study, we investigated the impact of these modalities on students’ understanding of the essential properties of the unintuitive non-Euclidean geometries S3 and H3. All three modalities helped participants improve their answers to the mathematics questionnaire, though further research is needed to fully exploit the unique benefits of virtual reality.