Strolling through a city of the Roman Empire: an analysis of the potential of virtual reality to teach history in Primary Education

Virtual Reality is an emerging educational technology due to its potential immersive, interactive and imaginative characteristics supporting pupils in the learning process towards meaningful learning. Furthermore, the current teaching of history is generally too traditional, making the subject being perceived as pointless and boring by students. These aspects lead to poor academic performance. In this context, this study focuses on analysing the eventual benefits of Virtual Reality in the teaching of history at Primary Education and compares its results with those of traditional teaching resources in two dimensions, academic performance and the motivation of students. Thus, an intervention was performed with 98 fourth graders divided into two groups, control and experimental. For the collection of the data referring to motivation, an adaptation of the Instructional Material Survey instrument from Keller [(2010). Motivational design for learning and performance: The ARCS model approach. New York, NY: Springer] was used while, in relation to the evaluation of the academic performance, a specific test was designed taking as reference the tests of the coursebooks for the unit of work ?The Roman Civilization? of the subject Social Sciences. The results show statistically significant differences in favour of those students who used Virtual Reality, both in motivation and in academic performance.