Research: Teaching programming skills inside virtual reality
Helping learners to develop sought-after digital skills by teaching difficult-to-grasp concepts in virtual reality.
Summary
Research summary
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March to December 2021
We are working with Northcoders to investigate how virtual reality (VR) can help overcome barriers to learning computer programming.
Many learners struggle with programming concepts, which can be abstract and difficult to grasp.
We have developed a teaching framework for VR environments and are trialling an application to explain key ideas.
Our study shows most of the participants found the application intuitive, flexible and easy to use.
They also report:
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enjoying using VR to learn programming
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feeling engaged using the application
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support for using VR in addition to traditional teaching methods
Subject to funding, the next step will be to develop a VR application for teaching cascading style sheets (CSS).
Statistic
Outputs
Research outputs
Book chapter
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Edifor, E, Swenson, A and Aiyenitaju, O (2021) A Virtual Reality Framework for Upskilling in Computer Programming in the Business Context, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, ISBN:978-3-030-68085-5
Team
Research team
Lead researcher
Co-researchers
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Dr Neil Gordon, University of Hull
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Prof Emeritus Andrew Basden, University of Salford
Collaborating with:
Contact
Contact us
For general enquiries about our Transforming Industry 4.0 knowledge platform, you can contact its lead Prof David Bamford.
