A QUANTITATIVE STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF VIRTUAL REALITY ON STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT AND SELF-EFFICACY FOR LEARNING

Abstract

This paper is a quantitative study about learners’ engagement and self-efficacy within a Virtual Reality (VR) learning environment while studying vocabulary in English in a classroom implementing a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach. VR was used as a tool for students to learn and better understand specific concepts studied in psychobiology. Participants belonged to the psychology faculty from a private university in Colombia. Data gathered from a vocabulary test and two questionnaires revealed that VR promoted an increased performance in comprehension skills, listening and reading, and retention of psychobiology vocabulary in English. VR sessions also improved partici-pants’ self-efficacy, providing an environment where learners perceived control over the task, which in turn, affected their motivation and favored learners’ adjustment of the expectancy about the foreign language task difficulty. Regarding students’ engagement towards learning in English, results showed that VR sessions were perceived as more appealing and positively affected the learning process by increasing learners’ motivation and confidence. These findings contribute to understanding the role VR multimodal scenarios play in students’ motivation to learn specific content vocabulary in a foreign language.