THE IMPACT OF THE WILDLIFE NEWTON VIRTUAL REALITY APPLICATION AND VIRTUAL LAB ON KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION IN STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

This research paper investigates the impact NEWTON Wildlife - a combined Virtual Reality (VR) and Virtual Lab (VL) application has on knowledge acquisition, learning experience and children perception on STEM topics when deployed to learners with hearing impairments. 30 children with hearing impairments aged between 13 and 15 from St. Maria School, Bucharest, Romania took part in a case study. The children were exposed to two learning sessions that involved two Wildlife stages labelled Wildlife part 1 and Wildlife part 2. Wildlife part 1 provides a nature VR environment that introduces a number of wild animals with their habitat life, whereas Wildlife part 2 offers a virtual lab that provides a 3D close view of the animals explored in Wildlife part 1. The evaluation process consisted of knowledge pre- and post- tests administrated to all participants before and after their interaction with the Wildlife application. STEM motivation and affective state questionnaire was also administrated before interacting with the Wildlife application and at the end of the learning session. Results analysis of the collected data shows an increase in knowledge acquisition for all students. A t-test for paired-sample shows that the difference between means of the pre-test and post-test, for both lessons, are statistically significant. This study underlines the benefits of NEWTON technologies as virtual reality and virtual laboratory in the learning experience of children with hearing impairments.