Leveraging Agency in Virtual Reality to Enable Situated Learning

TL;DR

Traditional schooling often deprives learners of authentic, context-rich tasks; this paper argues VR can remediate this by foregrounding agentic experiences that enable legitimate participation. It distinguishes presence and interactivity from agency, and proposes a design space where interactivity is used productively to support situated learning. Concrete design directions include balancing guided and unguided discovery, blending 360-degree videos with interactive tasks, and narratives that show consequences of actions, illustrated by a VR field trip in automotive manufacturing. The claim is that heightened agency can improve self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation and broaden learning outcomes beyond content recall, provided experiences are carefully designed to avoid cognitive overload and over-control. The work offers a practical framework for deploying VR to deliver authentic, situated learning in classrooms.

Abstract

Learning is an active process that is deeply tied to physical and social contexts. Yet schools traditionally place learners in a passive role and focus on decontextualizing knowledge. Situating learning in more authentic tasks and contexts typically requires taking it outside the classroom via field trips and apprenticeships, but virtual reality (VR) is a promising tool to bring more authentically situated learning experiences into classrooms. In this position paper, I discuss how one of VR's primary affordances for learning is heightening agenct, and how such heightened agency can facilitate more authenticlaly situated learning by allowing learners legitimate peripheral participation.