Implicit Learning of Professional Skills through Immersive Virtual Reality: a Media Comparison Study

This study investigates the effectiveness of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) compared to traditional slideshow lessons in teaching implicit knowledge. For this purpose, the research focuses on professional decision-making skills in viticulture. Most existing research on immersive learning concentrates on explicit learning strategies. In contrast, this study explores the potential of IVR to foster the transfer of implicit knowledge to real-world situations.

Forty third-year engineering students were randomly assigned to an IVR or a traditional slideshow group. They learned to assess vine vigour through an implicit learning phase, followed by a real-world evaluation in an actual vineyard. Learning outcomes were measured by decision-making accuracy, response time, and intrinsic motivation.

The findings show that the IVR group did not significantly outperform the slideshow group in decision-making accuracy. However, the IVR group took more time to make decisions. This observation suggests an impact of immersion during the transfer to real-world situations. Additionally, the IVR group showed a higher level of intrinsic motivation than the slideshow group.

These results suggest that although the immersion effect does not directly enhance learning outcomes for this cognitive objective, it does affect how knowledge is transferred to the real world. They also confirm that the positive impact of immersion is difficult to generalize and may depend on the nature of the knowledge. Still, the immersion effect significantly improves learner motivation. This consistent finding could be a key factor in long-term educational success. Further research exploring the nuanced effects of immersion on different learning strategies and educational objectives could offer new practical perspectives for the future of educational technologies.