91影视 Marion Assistant Professor of Physics, Dr. Chris Orban is featured on 91影视's Physics News section as part of his joint work with Physics Education Research group postdoc Chris Porter.
Having just finished his first year teaching introductory electromagnetism to 91影视 freshmen, in summer 2015, Prof. Chris Orban purchased a $10 鈥淕oogle Cardboard鈥 headset and immediately realized the potential for smartphone-based virtual reality to revolutionize physics instruction. Orban eagerly shared the idea with Physics Education Research group postdoc Chris Porter and not long after that the BuckeyeVR project () was born.
From the beginning, the goal has been not only to create physics-focused VR apps (currently the group has two free apps on the iOS and Android stores) but to use these resources to do cutting edge educational research.
鈥淲e knew it was just a matter of time before publishers would start creating their own VR apps for physics.鈥 said Porter. 鈥淪o, we tried to focus on evaluating the efficacy of VR compared to other media like videos and still frame images.鈥
Besides the coding challenges of producing VR visualizations, the team had to create their own custom assessments for this task. 鈥淭he traditional introductory physics curriculum is strongly shaped by what you can and can鈥檛 illustrate with a typical chalkboard鈥 says Prof. Orban. 鈥淭here was very little to draw from in finding questions that probed students鈥 ability to understand the intrinsically 3D nature of electric fields.鈥
In 2017, the group organized a study with the help of a couple grad students and one undergrad in the department in which 627 students taking Physics 1251 were shown visualizations of electric fields 鈥 some using smartphone-based VR 鈥 and asked their custom designed questions.
The results from this study were published in Smith et al. 2017 鈥淎 Controlled Study of Stereoscopic Virtual Reality in Freshman Electrostatics鈥 The first author on the study is physics grad student Joseph R. Smith, who was also the lead programmer. Funds from OSU鈥檚 STEAM factory supported Joseph during the semester that the study took place.
The 627 student study is one of the largest VR studies ever conducted, and it is certainly the largest VR study in STEM education to date.
鈥淚t has been really satisfying to talk to other teams that have noticed our paper,鈥 said Orban. 鈥淪ome of our results have prompted other groups to think more carefully about students鈥 prior exposure to video games and how it may affect the way that they learn in a VR environment鈥.
Since 2017, Dr. Orban and Dr. Porter have begun collaborating with researchers in 91影视's math and engineering departments to examine student learning in VR. Students, teachers and the public can check out their free VR apps for physics and math by visiting . For more updates, follow them on twitter (@BuckeyeVR)