Virtual reality (VR) opens exciting new possibilities for immersive learning experiences by allowing users to navigate three-dimensional virtual worlds. These environments can range from emulating medieval cities and museums to chemical laboratories (Checa and Bustillo, 2020; Giangreco et al., 2019; Hu-Au and Okita, 2021). Moreover, these environments also allow to teach abstract content like climate change in an efficient way [e.g., Markowitz et al. (2018), Thoma et al. (2023)]. Presenting learning content in VR is a promising alternative to conventional learning materials. For instance, earlier research compared knowledge acquisition between a group of students who completed an architecture lesson using VR and a group who completed the lesson using presentation slides, videos, and pictures. The students who used VR for learning showed higher scores in a subsequent knowledge test (Wu et al., 2021). In a similar vein, Gloy et al. (2022) compared immersive VR anatomy atlases with anatomy textbooks. Results showed that students who learned in VR completed the test faster and achieved a higher proportion of correct answers. Indeed, the beneficial effects of VR on learning have been shown in multiple meta-analyses [e.g., Villena-Taranilla et al. (2022), Wu et al. (2020), Yu (2021)]. Learning often involves the acquisition of declarative knowledge which refers to an individual’s knowledge about facts or ideas (Anderson, 1976; Shavelson et al., 2005). Webster (2016) compared the acquisition of declarative knowledge between a VR setting and a lecture-based setting, showing that VR enhanced the acquisition of declarative knowledge. Thus, VR is also effective for learning new declarative knowledge.

In VR, locomotion is a key element to optimally exploit the benefits of VR, leading to better immersion and improved presence (e.g., Kim and Rhiu (2021), Langbehn et al. (2018)). The methods of navigating in VR vary, with navigation relying on joysticks, teleportation, or physical walking. Each method for navigation in VR has its benefits and disadvantages. The usage of a joystick for movement has been shown to result in more motion sickness than walking and teleportation (Buttussi and Chittaro, 2019; Caputo et al., 2023; Frommel et al., 2017; Langbehn et al., 2018). However, walking in VR requires more physical effort, time to traverse a VR environment, and a larger physical area compared to movement using a joystick or teleportation (Bozgeyikli et al., 2016; Buttussi and Chittaro, 2019; Kim and Rhiu, 2021; Shewaga et al., 2017). Additional hardware like omnidirectional treadmills could resolve the problem of available physical space but they are currently still expensive. Redirected walking solves the problem of available space by adjusting participants’ path as soon as they reach the end of their available physical space (e.g., Banakou and Slater (2023)). Based on users’ preferences, Langbehn et al. (2018) highlighted that both teleportation and redirected walking should be favored over movement by joystick in VR. The development of current VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 seems to align with these suggestions by offering a dynamic shift between teleportation and walking–for instance in the hub environment. Despite this, Sayyad et al. (2020) observed a preference for walking over teleportation in their study, and multiple studies also showed that physically walking through VR increases the sense of presence and spatial orientation compared to teleportation (Kim and Rhiu, 2021; Langbehn et al., 2018; Shewaga et al., 2017; Slater et al., 1995; Usoh et al., 1999). It remains unclear how walking and teleportation affect the acquisition of declarative knowledge. More research is needed to investigate which type of locomotion is best suited for declarative knowledge acquisition in VR, and this has motivated us to conduct this study.

Embodied cognition theories suggest that the acquisition of knowledge is linked to the sensory experience of one’s body and its movements, highlighting the significance of physical engagement and real-world context in learning (Barsalou, 1999). Indeed, the body is involved in a wide array of cognitive functions, including language comprehension (Glenberg and Kaschak, 2002), numerical understanding (Link et al., 2013), or metaphorical understanding (Wilson and Gibbs, 2007). However, some educational contents merely rely on the acquisition of purely declarative knowledge with limited potential for embodied alignment. Nevertheless, embodiment also enables the potential of physical activation, which has been shown to enhance academic performance and achievements (Rasberry et al., 2011; Wretman, 2017; Zabriskie and Heath, 2019). Moreover, physical activation through movement breaks during classes has been shown to increase students’ attention (Daly-Smith et al., 2018; Lynch et al., 2022). These studies suggest that physical activities in the learning process may be crucial. Notably, the amount of physical activation is possibly more intense in these studies compared to walking. However, studies in the educational context also showed the positive effects of walking on learning (Biber and Heidorn, 2021; Weight et al., 2021). The walking classroom is a didactic approach in which students listen to education podcasts while walking. This approach has been shown to increase students’ long-term retention, as well as their self-perceived learning efficacy, happiness, and energy (Biber and Heidorn, 2021; Erwin et al., 2021; Weight et al., 2021). The walking classroom also enhances students’ alertness and information processing (Erwin et al., 2021; Weight et al., 2021) which might facilitate the acquisition of declarative knowledge. While findings from the walking classroom approach show the cognitive benefits of physical activity, it is an open question to what extent the same mechanisms also apply to walking in VR environments.

Previous research has shown that walking in VR has a positive effect – for example regarding presence and motion sickness (Ibánez et al., 2016; Saredakis et al., 2020). However, further research is needed to investigate the effect of physically walking in VR on learning – especially regarding the acquisition of declarative knowledge. This aspect is particularly important for designers of future educational applications in VR, as they are faced with the important decision of whether to include physical walking or teleportation in VR. The enhanced learning and cognitive functioning during the walking classroom suggest that walking in VR enhances declarative knowledge acquisition. However, the walking classroom shows that continuous walking during knowledge acquisition enhances learning. In VR applications, however, walking is rather used to move between points of interest at which declarative knowledge can be acquired. The short physical activity of walking between points of interest might also enhance cognitive functioning and thereby enhance learning. Riecke et al. (2010) have shown enhanced performance in a navigation task when participants navigated through VR by physical walking instead of using joysticks. Earlier studies could not corroborate these findings (Moreno and Mayer, 2002), but VR headsets have dramatically improved in usability and movement possibilities over the last decade. Recent research by Queiroz et al. (2023) found that movement in VR reduces the amount of learning compared to sitting in VR. Contrary, Johnson-Glenberg et al. (2021) showed enhanced learning due to movement, albeit their study varied movement only in regard of hand movements. Consequently, there has not been any conclusive evidence if walking and teleportation in VR might affect the outcome of declarative knowledge acquisition differently.

In this study, we examined if learners who are able to walk in VR differ regarding their declarative knowledge acquisition from learners who are teleported in VR. Recent meta-analyses have shown that VR enhances learning (Wu et al., 2020; Yu, 2021), and these effects were also observed for the acquisition of declarative knowledge (Webster, 2016). However, these studies did not compare whether the type of movement in VR affects knowledge acquisition. Previous research on embodied cognition suggests that physical activity is beneficial for learning [e.g., Rasberry et al. (2011), Weight et al. (2021), Wretman (2017), Zabriskie and Heath (2019)]. Therefore, we expected that in VR the outcomes of declarative knowledge acquisition of walking learners are better than those of teleported learners. To investigate whether the knowledge acquired in VR is still available on the following day, we compared immediate and delayed recall.

We examined if learners enabled to walk in VR differed regarding their declarative knowledge acquisition from learners that were teleported in VR. We found no evidence for an advantage of walking when compared to teleportation. However, a post hoc power analysis revealed that the power for the comparisons of the between-subjects factor was low. Thus, further studies will be needed to replicate the absence of differences in declarative knowledge acquisition between walking and teleportation. Moreover, we did not find any differences in motion sickness or presence between the two experimental conditions. Hence, our findings do not confirm previous findings showing enhanced learning due to physical walking or an increased sense of presence when walking in VR (Slater et al., 1995; Weight et al., 2021; Zabriskie and Heath, 2019).

Our study focused on the planetary solar system, and we assessed different types of declarative knowledge such as lexical knowledge (e.g., planet names), relational knowledge (e.g., the order of planets in relation to each other), and conceptual knowledge (e.g., identifying all gas planets). Hence, it is possible that walking in VR can affect the learning of other types of knowledge, especially that of procedural knowledge. This may be hypothesized to occur when walking movements in a learning task are meaningfully related to the process of knowledge acquisition (Skulmowski and Rey, 2018), for instance by being aligned with each other. VR allows for the creation of educational settings that align with body movements, and developers of VR applications should consider the advantages of VR during development (Bailenson, 2018).

Previous studies found evidence for the beneficial effect of walking classrooms on learning [e.g., Weight et al. (2021)]. Our study did not detect any noticeable improvement in learning attributed to walking in VR. This contradicts studies observing cognitive benefits after walking or physical activity (Erwin et al., 2021; Johnson-Glenberg et al., 2021; Oppezzo and Schwartz, 2014; Rasberry et al., 2011; Wretman, 2017; Zabriskie and Heath, 2019), but aligns with earlier studies finding no enhanced learning due to body movement in VR (Moreno and Mayer, 2002; Queiroz et al., 2023). One explanation might be that participants in the teleportation condition – despite not moving – remained in a standing position during the VR experience. Previous studies have shown that a standing position enhances both executive functions and working memory when compared to sitting (Mehta et al., 2016). These beneficial effects of standing could also improve the acquisition of declarative knowledge. However, there is no evidence for standing in a classroom setting having an advantage regarding learning outcomes (Chim et al., 2021). Therefore, it is unlikely that the standing position is responsible for the absence of differences in our experiment.

Teleportation has been shown to result in spatial disorientation compared to walking in VR (Cherep et al., 2020; Cherep et al., 2023). Thus, teleportation in VR could result in cognitive costs, whereby these costs can be reduced by the usage of rotational self-motion cues guiding marks, mini-maps, trails, or heatmaps (Kelly et al., 2020; Kraus et al., 2020; Lim et al., 2020). In our study, we used automatic teleportation to avoid inferences due to the usability and unfamiliarity of the teleportation system or hand movements. This could have affected the spatial orientation of our sample in the teleportation condition. However, spatial disorientation in the teleportation condition would probably have resulted in differences between the two conditions regarding the scores in the knowledge quiz, motion sickness, or presence. Instead, the usage of rather small museum rooms might have helped participants in the teleportation condition to keep spatial orientation despite being teleported automatically.

Our results remain unaffected by the hardware utilized for teleportation, as participants were teleported automatically without the use of controllers. Different controllers are used in VR, ranging from those featuring joysticks to others incorporating touchpads (Novacek and Jirina, 2020). This stands in contrast to the evolution of controller prototypes seen in console or PC gaming over decades, where standardized designs have emerged (Maggiorini et al., 2019). For VR, however, controllers show more variation in design, thus resulting in larger differences in usability between different hardware models. Consequently, the method of teleportation in VR using controllers may differ from automatic teleportation and thereby influence learning outcomes (Maraj et al., 2019). Thus, forthcoming studies comparing walking to teleportation should consider the use of controllers for teleportation.

No beneficial effects of walking in VR have been demonstrated in this study. It is by all means possible that there are positive effects of walking in VR which were not revealed in this study. For instance, walking has been shown to have a positive impact on health, including reduced risk for development of chronic diseases, reduced depressive symptoms, and better quality of life (Hanson and Jones, 2015; Lee and Buchner, 2008; Varma et al., 2014). Additionally, previous studies also highlight the beneficial effects of walking in other cognitive areas beyond mere acquisition of knowledge. Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014) observed enhanced creativity both during and after walking which also enhanced the formation of new and more qualitative analogies. As such, even if walking in VR does not enhance the acquisition of the displayed content, it can potentially increase the quality of the respective classroom lesson. Furthermore, the current study exclusively compared the effect of physical walking for knowledge acquisition in VR with teleportation in VR. Other types of physical activity like cycling or running involve a higher level of physical activity than walking (Zabriskie and Heath, 2019). The current findings are limited to walking and further research is needed to investigate how different types of physical activity in VR could affect the acquisition of declarative knowledge.

Finally, it is important to note that it was not the goal of our study to investigate if VR can enhance learning in general. Instead, it aimed at comparing specifically the effects of walking and teleportation in VR on declarative learning outcomes. Since this comparison represented the focus of the current study, we refrained from a pre-test to assess participants’ prior knowledge, which represents a limitation of the present study. A considerable body of research has shown that VR has a medium-large effect on learning outcomes (Villena-Taranilla et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2020; Yu, 2021), for instance for learning anatomy or landscape architecture (Gloy et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2021). Furthermore, immersive VR applications result in more pronounced learning benefits (Villena-Taranilla et al., 2022). Given the growing significance of VR, which is driven by more affordable headsets and wider usage scenarios, the number of educational applications for VR is likely to increase. Research needs to align with this trend, exploring how these applications should be designed to optimize learning in a VR environment.

In summary, our study could not support that walking in VR is beneficial for the acquisition of declarative knowledge compared to teleportation in VR. This does not question the benefits of VR for learning in general. Instead, our findings provide important information for the development of VR-based learning apps. Developers of such learning apps will need to consider whether their app should enable users to walk. In educational contexts, our findings suggest that teleportation can keep up with walking when declarative knowledge has been acquired. In these cases, teleportation in VR represents a promising avenue within future, immersive VR learning environments.