Exploring the impact of virtual reality on engagement and accessibility of tutorials for students studying S296

Project leader(s):  Sarah Daniell Lorraine Waters Katja Rietdorf

• Theme:  Technologies for STEM learning
• Project faculties:  STEM
• Status:  Archived
• Date:  May 2023 to June 2025

One of the key challenges within the Open University (OU) is the lack of student engagement, which impacts students’ continuation and completion of their studies. Particularly in STEM we often struggle to get students to come along to live tutorials and to interact with their peers and ALs within those sessions. Students are reluctant to talk and so are limited by engagement predominantly via a chat box, which limits discussion and collaboration.

Our approach was to pilot the use of Mozilla Hubs, a social Virtual Reality (VR) platform, for delivering a series of four targeted tutorials open to 488 S296, Cell and molecular biology students, of which 49 consented to take part. The tutorials supported learning outcomes by presenting interactive 3D models within a VR room. The VR space facilitated interaction with the 3D models and offered potentially a more natural environment for communication and collaboration compared to our traditional online platforms.

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