A study of high school students’ experiences and perceptions of prosocial immersive content

Abstract

Although it is still in its incipient stages, there appears to be an increasing interest in immersive learning content, which offers students innovative educational experiences due to its particular way of telling a story and its unique viewing devices. This study explores this new pedagogical scenario with the aim of analysing students’ experiences and perceptions related to the use of this type of content. The research involved the performance of a pre-test and post-test on a sample of 90 high school students aged from 15 to 17, in an effort to identify attitudinal changes after viewing immersive content (360º video) with VR headsets. The originality of this study lies in the fact that the specific immersive content used for the analysis takes a gender perspective on the scientific, social, cultural and political achievements of a group of women in the early 20th century. The main findings suggest that prosocial immersive learning content constitutes a valuable educational tool that makes acquiring new knowledge more attractive to students; however, no significant findings were observed in relation to the gender issue, as participant responses to the questions asked on this point tended towards the middle of the Likert scale used in the survey.