ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1669505
This article is part of the Research TopicEnabling EnvironmentsView all 6 articles
Virtual Reality Field Trips as Enabling Environments for Emotions and Motivation in STEM Education
Provisionally accepted
- Northeastern University, Boston, United States
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While emotions and motivation are key to the process of learning, typical classroom instruction lacks engagement of such affective dimensions of learning. Virtual reality (VR) technologies are powerful tools for engendering emotions and increasing intrinsic motivation that may enable science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning that enhances learners' affect. This study explored whether VR field trip experiences can be enabling environments for emotions and motivation in classroom learning. Thirty high school engineering students used VR experiences over four lessons, and mixed methods of surveys and interviews assessed what emotions they felt, the degree to which they were intrinsically motivated when learning with VR, and whether participating in the VR field trips changed their longer-term beliefs and motivation toward STEM. The results point to VR as an enabler of powerful emotions and high levels of intrinsic motivation, but that it may not have an effect on longer-term beliefs and attitudes.
Keywords: virtual reality, VR, Emotions, Motivation, stem, affective dimensions of learning, intrinsic motivation, epistemic emotions
Received: 19 Jul 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 McGivney. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eileen McGivney, e.mcgivney@northeastern.edu
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