Abstract
Redundancy effect has been investigated in many controlled experimental studies, however, it is seldom investigated whether the same redundant material may cause different results in classroom, which is a major learning place for students. Considering that it is not easy to control the internal validity in classroom environment, this study proposed a new research approach with the use of virtual reality (VR) classroom as the experimental platform to investigate this issue. In the current study, one hundred and four fifth-grade students were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions with two different presentation formats (redundant and non-redundant) and two learning environments (lab and VR classroom). The retention test scores, cognitive load, and performance efficiency were used as dependent variables. The results revealed that the redundancy effect occurred in the lab environment and the reverse redundancy effect occurred in the VR classroom environment. In the lab environment, participants who had learned with non-redundant materials demonstrated better learning performance than those who had learned with redundant materials. On the contrary, the results were reversed in the VR classroom environment. The programmed interferences in the VR classroom are suggested as the main factor influencing the results.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the editor of Educational Technology Research & Development and anonymous reviewers, who provided all the valuable comments and suggestions. Also, we would like to express our gratitude to the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan for its financial support to this research under Grant No. MOST 101-2511-S-003 -061 -MY3 and MOST 109-2511-H-003 -016 -MY3. Moreover, we sincerely appreciate the funding offered by the “Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences” of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) from The Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan. Finally, we would like to thank the research assistants who assisted with the experiments and the students who participated in this study. This research would not have been possible without them.
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Liu, TC., Lin, YC., Wang, TN. et al. Studying the effect of redundancy in a virtual reality classroom. Education Tech Research Dev 69, 1183–1200 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-021-09991-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-021-09991-6