Abstract
As a result of growing Artificial Intelligence technologies, many immersive Metaverse platforms have emerged for various purposes including teaching and learning. Although many studies have explored the use of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) platforms in university courses, little research on the application of these digital tools at English Medium Instruction (EMI) Higher Education institutions in Hong Kong has been conducted. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the teacher and student perceptions about the effectiveness of EMI in the Metaverse supported by Spatial, an immersive VR platform. Twenty non-English-speaking university students from diverse academic backgrounds were invited to two-hour virtual classes and evaluating the effectiveness of EMI on Spatial by responding to the 5-point Likert Scale survey and the Spatial platform and a follow-up focus-group interview. The teacher also shared the teaching reflection on VR classes based on classroom observation notes. The responses of the students show that VR classes on Spatial can be more engaging than Zoom sessions in terms of motivating and facilitating and classroom interaction and communication, but they were still very different from face-to-face classes. The platform could also support the effective delivery of lessons about interesting cultural topics and allowed the teacher to provide students with adequate learning support. According to the teacher, although the classes seemed to be smoothly run, in immediate feedback provision and classroom management were sometimes difficult as the teacher could not supervise all students at the same time while they were navigating freely through different 3D portals.
Author Information
Tuong Vy Nguyen, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Zihan Gao, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
Paper Information
Conference: WorldCALL2023
Stream: Virtual Reality / Virtual Worlds
This paper is part of the WorldCALL2023 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Nguyen T., & Gao Z. (2024) English Medium Instruction on Spatial as a Virtual Reality Classroom ISSN: 2759-1182 – WorldCALL2023: Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2759-1182.2023.26
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2759-1182.2023.26
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