Does Learners’ Attention Really Matter in an Educational Virtual Reality World? A Design-Based Scaffolding Approach
Abstract: For online students, it is challenging to be aware of resources available to them, expectations in academia, or to be familiar with the staff and students without any information sessions. Therefore, online orientation is crucial to distance learners to be successful as an online student. The purpose of our study was to investigate the importance of learner’s attention to the instructional details within the online orientation. An educational desktop 3D virtual reality (VR) world orientation was created based on cognitivism learning theory and behaviorism. We observed the behaviors of new online students over an academic year and utilized a mixed-method approach for acquiring the data and analysis. Online students (N=56) participated in an hour and a half testing session with a pre-test and a post-test survey along with a handout to fill. Results show that learner’s attentiveness to details within the 3D VR world supports the success of the learner