Students’ Perceptions of a 3D Virtual Environment Designed for Metacognitive and Self-Regulated Learning in Science

Immersive and 3D virtual environments have the potential to offer more authentic science inquiry learning that allows for metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies. While metacognition and self-regulated learning are important for science inquiry learning, little research exists on linking these skills with students’ experience in a 3D immersive environment designed to teach science inquiry. The authors conducted two studies to explore how curricula delivered via immersive technologies have the potential to create learning experiences that allow for authentic inquiry learning and enable metacognitive processes and self-regulated learning. In the first study, they examined the relationship between students’ metacognition and their self-identified experience with the curriculum. The authors found a relationship between students’ metacognition and feeling like a scientist and like they were participating in authentic science (conducting an experiment). These findings influenced the design of a treatment that contains embedded metacognitive and self-regulated learning scaffolds. In their second study, the authors examined the causal effect of the treatment on students’ self-identified experience with the curriculum. They found that students who participated in the treatment identified with the role of a scientist and felt like they were doing authentic science.