Implementation of Virtual Reality in school

Service Learning as a teaching and learning format of cooperation between teachers and students across stages

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative study of cross-phase collaboration between students and teachers in the context of a teaching project. In order to further develop teacher education in the digital world, this project takes up the current challenges of developing digitization-related concepts and implementing them in practice at two universities and a high school. Through service learning and using the example of the innovative educational technology virtual reality (VR), students and teachers jointly survey the current needs of the school and develop concrete media arrangements for the classroom in project groups. Two sub-studies will be conducted to determine the conditions for the successful implementation of VR in schools, the contribution of service learning involved, and the didactic possibilities for using VR in subject lessons: A) three interdisciplinary rating conferences with the actors and B) ten guided interviews with teachers and school administrators. The results obtained through qualitative content analysis will be presented and conditions for success such as VR's own experience and purposeful collaboration will be discussed, as well as the profitable contribution of service learning to collaboration in Phases 1 and 3 of teacher education. While students not only gain insights into school and also shape digital school development together with experienced teachers, the school benefits from theoretical and technical resources of students and universities. The actors see the didactic potential of VR in subject teaching, but relativize this due to insufficient framework conditions (technology, time, implementation) and thus confirm previous theoretical assumptions with a perspective from practice.