An Empirical Study of Geography Learning on Students’ Emotions and Motivation in Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

This paper assesses the impact of emotional arousal on learning through a virtual reality video of geography immersion learning. Validity was measured with traditional questionnaire data and using electroencephalography (EEG). Twenty-four human subjects were recruited and presented with eight geography immersive learning videos with different affective tendencies. EEG data of the subjects were collected while they were watching the videos. After the video watching, subjects were requested to fill in an emotion scale, a learning motivation scale, and a mind flow experience. The results of the study show that VR video learning materials can well induce the positive and negative emotions of the subjects. Compared with negative emotions, the alpha band power in the frontal lobe of the brain, beta and gamma bands in the temporal lobe region is significantly higher under positive emotions. In addition, the results of the subjective scales indicate that subjects have stronger intrinsic motivations and better flow experiences under positive emotions. However, there was no significant difference for the immersion under positive and negative emotions. Our findings demonstrate the usability of teaching virtual reality situational geography stories and the broad value of using this teaching method for future instruction.