Assessing young learners’ situational interest in an immersive virtual reality learning environment: the role of epistemic curiosity

Abstract

This study aimed to assess young learners’ epistemic curiosity and its role in the learners’ situational interest aroused in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) learning environment. There were 30 elementary school students invited to use an IVR system, namely “Find The ROOT,” for science learning in this study. The results showed that the students’ situational interest could be generally aroused, particularly for the males. Compared with the D-type epistemic curiosity, the students’ I-type epistemic curiosity likely played a more crucial role in their perceptions of situational interest. Moreover, this study supposed that the gender variable might interfere with the relationships between epistemic curiosity and situational interest when young learners were involved in IVR learning activities. Future work was suggested to enlarge the research sample to verify the relationships between epistemic curiosity and situational interest with the consideration of gender issues.