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We tested the impact of a 15-minute VR training on spatial skills and performance on a geoscience task with a control group. The VR group improved more on the Water Level Task-a measure of understanding of horizontal (B = 0.68, p=0.008). Both groups performed equally on the geology task, except for an orientation rule not well instructed in the VR module (B = -1.33, p=0.0057). In the post-survey, the VR group reported higher ability to link knowledge (X2=4.45, p=0.035) and more interest than in past activities (X2=8.47, p=0.004). This is encouraging, given the brevity of the VR lesson. 

Measuring strike and dip is a common but complicated spatial task introduced to students in undergraduate geology courses. Students must employ multiple spatial reasoning skills in addition to geology-specific content knowledge. These spatial skills include disembedding - to recognize a suitable bedding or foliation plane to measure, spatial perception - to understand the plane’s relationship to horizontal and vertical, and aspects of spatial visualization, perspective taking, and mental rotation to determine how to position and read the compass tool. We tested a virtual reality (VR) training module to help teach the use of the compass tool to measure strike and dip. Students in a large introductory course in a public university were placed by lab section into either a “standard” classroom instruction or VR instruction for their initial training, then all completed a simplified mapping exercise in which they measured five planes set up around the classroom. Pre and post tests of spatial skills and scores on the measurement portion of the map assignment were collected and compared between the 2 types of training groups. Of 12 lab sections, half were assigned to VR and the other half to standard. The instructional assistants each taught at least one section of each type, and the instruction types were distributed evenly across the scheduled lab times. The VR group showed 11% higher improvement scores on the Water Level Task (WLT) compared to the standard group (p = 0.008, n=159). Because students in some lab sections had identical responses to the strike and dip task, we used a subset of four lab sections in which students submitted unique responses (n=41). We found no significant differences on the strike and dip task except with application of the right hand rule (RHR). The classroom instruction group performed 26% higher on the strike task when the RHR was taken into account (p = 0.006), but this difference does not persist when scoring is agnostic to the RHR. The VR module contains only a text explanation of the RHR. These results suggest that VR is at least as good as classroom instruction for building geology skills and, through targeted instruction, can significantly impact performance on a spatial test. Feedback on the VR activity will be used to further refine the module and develop best practice strategies for VR spatial training. 

Spatial reasoning skills have been linked to success in STEM and are considered an important part of geoscience problem solving. Most agree that these are a group of skills rather than a single ability, though there is no agreement on the full list of constituent skills. Few studies have attempted to isolate specific spatial skills for deliberate training. We conducted an experiment to isolate and train the skill of recognizing horizontal (a crucial component in measuring the orientation of planes) using a dedicated Virtual Reality (VR) module. We recruited 21 undergraduate students from natural science and social science majors for the study, which consisted of a pretest, 15-minute training, and posttest. The pre- and posttests consisted of a short multiple choice vocabulary quiz, 5 hand-drawn and 5 multiple choice Water Level Task (WLT) questions, and the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotation Task (MRT). Participants were sorted based on pre-test Water Level Task scores, only those with scores <80% were placed in an intervention group and randomly assigned to training, either in VR (experimental) or on paper (standard), of about 15 minutes. The high-scoring participants received no training (comparison). All three groups of participants completed a posttest after the training (if any). After removing three participants who did not return for the posttest session, we had 18 participants in total: 6 in VR, 7 in the comparison group, and 5 in the standard group. Repeated measures ANOVA of the pre to post hand-drawn WLT scores shows at least one group is different (p=.002) and Tukey’s Post-Hoc analysis indicates that the VR group improved significantly more that the high-scoring comparison group (Mean Difference = -1.857, p = .001) and the standard group (Mean Difference = -1.200, p = .049). While any significant result is encouraging, a major limitation of this study is the small sample size and unequal variances on both the pretest (Levene’s HOV test, F = 7.50, p = .006) and posttest (F = 13.53, p < .001), despite random assignment. More trials are needed to demonstrate reproducibility. While more tests are needed, this preliminary study shows the potential benefit of VR in training spatial reasoning skills.