Educational use of spherical video-based virtual reality: A preliminary study from the teacher perspective

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR), which is regarded as one of the important educational technologies in recent years, has become more popular to be adopted in teaching and learning contexts in Hong Kong. The present study investigated the changes in teachers’ pedagogical and technological knowledge, attitude and satisfaction after attending a teacher training course on the educational use of VR. Participants were 29 in-service teachers in Hong Kong taking the course. Data were collected from the pre- and post-participation in the course by using four scales: (i) Pedagogical and Technological Knowledge, (ii) Technological Knowledge, (iii) Positive Attitude towards Harnessing VR, and (iv) Teacher Satisfaction. The results showed good reliability of the scales and significant differences between the pre-test and post-test on using VR in their teaching. Participants had significant improvement in the knowledge of the VR technology and the ICT integration after the training course. They also showed a positive attitude towards harnessing VR in their teaching. Since the factor of content knowledge was not significant in the present study, we will reinforce the teacher training course based on the subject content via school-based development. Thus, the teaching training package will be more comprehensive and suitable for training teachers to adopt VR in practice.