Virtual reality based executive function training in schools: The experience of primary school-aged children, teachers and training teaching assistants

Abstract

Executive function (EF) is a set of higher order cognitive processes through which learning and everyday goals are realised. They comprise the fundamental building blocks of how we plan, execute, monitor and regulate tasks, and impact our cognitive, socioemotional and behavioural responses. An important question to consider is how we can support children to develop effective EF skills through motivating and age-appropriate training. Virtual reality (VR) offers an interesting avenue to enhance motivation due to the experience of presence and immersion, however, whether children experience presence and immersion similarly to adults is unknown and could impact the educational utility of VR over other media. In order to understand whether VR is suitable for an educational setting we must understand the experience of key stakeholders, such as school-aged children and adults that will be facilitating use in the educational context. Therefore, the current study aims to understand the experience of key stakeholders using EF training delivered in a VR environment, to enable reflection on the feasibility and usability of the technology. This study aimed to explore the qualitative experiences of 8 primary school-aged children, 5 teachers and 13 training teaching assistants, after playing an EF training game, Koji's Quest, on a VR head mounted display. Firstly we found that most teachers and trainee teachers gave good ratings of usability, but in their subjective descriptions of use focused on hedonic experiences, whereas, children focused on pragmatic experiences. Results also indicate that adults may favour ‘being’ definitions of presence, whereas child participants appear to incorporate both ‘being’ and ‘doing’ definitions into their accounts. This research has implications for how VR based EF training can be maximised within an educational setting.