From physical feelings to empathy: An immersive virtual reality approach to facilitate physical empathy

Studies have suggested that virtual reality (VR) as an ‘empathy-making machine’ has the potential to trigger historical empathy. Different VR technologies offer different levels of immersion with different educational implications. Higher immersive VR technology has shown promise in enhancing learners’ empathy levels. However, how highly immersive VR promotes learners’ historical empathy in real-life classroom settings has not been explored. Hence, this study focuses on comparing two levels of immersive VR-supported learning for historical empathy acquisition among secondary learners. A total of 49 students were recruited. A quasi-experimental design was employed and the quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed to explore participants’ historical knowledge and empathy. The quantitative data show no significant difference between immersive virtual reality (IVR) approach-supported learning and flatscreen VR-supported learning. However, the qualitative analysis suggests that the students from the IVR group showed stronger ‘physical empathy’. Intriguingly, even though the tests did not demonstrate that the students learned more in IVR-supported learning, they self-reported that they learned better in IVR-supported learning. The paper identifies implications for the connection between ‘physical empathy’ and the level of immersive technology.