Collaborative Learning in an Immersive Virtual Environment: The Effects of Context and Retrieval Practice

Sammanfattning: The accessibility of Virtual Reality (VR) enables the investigation of desirable difficulties originating from memory research with increased ecological validity. The two desirable difficulties include contextual variation and retrieval practice. Most studies investigated individual learning in VR and found indirect effects (such as enjoyment and motivation), but knowledge acquisition was not necessarily enhanced (Mayer et al., 2022; Makransky et al., 2019). Therefore, the effects of desirable difficulties on learning in an immersive collaborative setting were investigated. This study experimentally tested in a 2x2 factorial design (N=159) whether the desirable difficulties of contextual variation and retrieval practice are applicable in a collaborative VR lesson (H1&H2) and if they interact (H3). Students retrieved the encoded information through active vs. passive mapping with a collaboration partner in the same vs. varied context. Hypotheses were tested with a linear mixed model, with the experimental condition as the fixed effect and the dyads as the random effect. Results show a significant main effect of retrieval practice in factual and conceptual learning. Further, results indicate that combining varied contexts and passive retrieval leads to detrimental conceptual learning effects. Results align with retrieval practice research (Agarwal, 2021) and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2014). Further research is necessary to make more reliable inferences about the effect of contextual variation.