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TopLiterature Review
VR is a technology which possesses unique qualities, and therefore can afford unique benefits. Burdea and Coiffet’s (2003) seminal book identified the three I’s of VR technology, which are still widely used as the framework for studying VR today. These I’s are Immersion, Interaction, and Imagination.
Immersion is the quality of feeling present in, and a part of, a virtual world. Blyth (2018) saw immersive virtual environments as a new frontier for experiential learning through creating increasingly authentic contexts for learners to engage with.
Interaction, the second characteristic of VR technology, can be understood in several ways. Interaction in VR environments can be very different from using a computer mouse or a touch screen smartphone because VR offers the ability to interact as one would in a real-world environment. Users of VR can walk around a virtual room with their feet and pick up virtual objects with their hands. But interaction can also be understood in terms of users engaging in real-time contact, communication, and collaboration with other users.
The third component of the framework is imagination, which Burdea and Coiffet (2003) define as the attribute of VR applications to solve real world problems. A VR application, if designed well, can evoke a user’s imaginative and creative abilities to “perceive non-existent things” (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003 p.3). For example, a VR flight simulator can be used to see if a pilot in training is capable of landing a particular airplane on an aircraft carrier. In other words, as Dalgarno and Lee (2010) describe it, imagination is the capability of putting users in improbable or impossible scenarios, such as inside a human heart or the surface of Europa, where they can increase perceptual knowledge or discover new connections between ideas.
In research, VR technology has been found to be conducive to constructivist learning (Girvan & Savage, 2019), and the majority of studies on VR technology in language learning use the constructivist framework to focus on such things as interaction, transfer, and experiential learning (Wang, Lan, Tseng, Lin & Gupta, 2019; Lin & Lan, 2015). Researchers and practitioners have been using VR technologies in this context to better understand its uses and efficacy, however the focus in language learning has been focused more on task-based activities and general English, leaving academic uses of the technology yet unexplored.
While the question of how VR may best be applied in the realm of EAP is still being explored, a number of studies have investigated the leveraging of VR for more general aspects of language learning which could be adapted to EAP. In regards to the writing process, virtual worlds have been used as platforms for digital story telling (Xu, Park, & Baek, 2011) and investigative writing (Warren, Stein, Dondlinger & Barab, 2009); VR 360 degree videos have been used to provide context and information for academic writing assignments (Dolgunsöz, Yildirim, & Yildirim, 2018); and Google Earth VR has been used in expository writing (Chen, Smith, York, & Mayall, 2019). Speaking skills have also been a focus in research. Hassani, Nahvi and Ahmadi (2013) found the use of virtual environments to be effective in improving speaking and listening skills among English learners, and Niebuhr and Michalsky (2018) observed an improvement in public speaking and presentations skills when learners practiced in front of a virtual audience as opposed to practicing alone.