The Effect of Multimodalityand 3D Interaction in a Virtual Laboratory on Students’ Learning in Chemistry Education

Abstract

Virtual reality is the emerging technology in the field of education and many researchers have been attracted by the concept of virtual laboratory in which the students can perform their practical work the way they do in the actual laboratory. We developed a 3D interactive multimodal virtual chemistry lab oratory (MMVCL) for high school level students. This paper describes the potential contribution of the MMVCL for the students’ learning improvement which is based on advanced 3D interaction interface and multimodality (audio and text information). The aim of MMVCL is to provide to students the detail information about the physical and chemical properties of chemical items and to simulate their chemistry experiments in a virtual environment. The system enhances the learning skill of students in chemistry education which is very useful for their exam scores improving. We evaluated the MMVCL by high school level students in two groups, which shows that the average learning of untrained student is 29.4% while that of trained students increased to 81.2%