Veranstaltungsprogramm

<p>Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) offers unique opportunities for participatory learning by enabling collaborative knowledge construction and co-creative engagement in digital environments. Theoretical approaches such as the Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL; Makransky &amp; Petersen, 2021) propose that learning in VR is shaped by technological features such as immersion and users’ degree of control, which give rise to psychological affordances like presence and agency, which, in turn, shape cognitive and affective processes and learning outcomes. While a growing body of empirical research supports the relevance of presence and agency, much of this evidence relies on media comparison studies contrasting VR with less interactive formats. Such designs have been criticized for confounding technological and instructional features, limiting causal interpretations (e.g., Lawson &amp; Martella, 2023; Mulders et al., 2023) and offering little guidance for designing VR environments that effectively foster presence and agency. Moreover, studies that manipulate interactivity (e.g., Petersen et al., 2022) often rely on relatively weak operationalizations, such as contrasting user-controlled navigation and initiation of pre-defined content with passive observation of a pre-recorded walkthrough, thereby varying user control only to a limited extent.</p>

<p>To address this gap, a controlled experimental pilot study was conducted as part of a supervised high-school research project (N = 10). In both conditions, participants could freely move and interact within the VR environment while an instructor provided explanations. However, in the lower activity condition the instructor controlled the devices and experiments, whereas in the higher activity condition participants operated them themselves. This design enabled a controlled comparison of user control while keeping core design features comparable. Results indicate that participants in the higher activity condition reported lower negative agency (z = −1.09, r = .33, medium effect). Contrary to expectations, they also reported lower positive agency (z = −1.19, r = .36, medium effect) and presence (z = −0.86, r = .27, small-to-medium effect). Effects on learning outcomes were small, with minor advantages for the higher activity condition in retention (z = −0.33, r = .10) and conceptual understanding (z = −0.46, r = .14), while delayed effects were negligible and partly favored the lower activity condition. None of these effects reached statistical significance, likely due to the small sample size.</p>

<p>These findings suggest that increasing activity does not necessarily enhance perceived agency and presence and may even reduce them under certain conditions, highlighting the importance of carefully designing user control rather than simply increasing interactivity. The study points to the need for further research on how control and instructional design jointly shape learning in immersive environments.</p>