Leveling Up Physics Education with Gamified Virtual Reality Simulations

Abstract

Traditional physics education often struggles to convey abstract, three-dimensional concepts, leading to low student engagement and high cognitive load. While Virtual Reality (VR) offers immersive visualization, passive VR environments can still suffer from novelty wear-off, limiting their long-term pedagogical value. To address this, this study introduces PhysiVerse, an immersive VR experience structured around a task-based progression style that guides students through a hypothesis-testing learning loop. In this environment, students commit to a prediction before acting, test the prediction by running the experiment, and compare the results against their initial hypothesis. This cycle is reinforced by a gamified scoring system where users win points based on the closeness of their prediction to the empirical truth, incentivizing precise conceptual understanding over trial-and-error interaction. Focusing on concepts related to Mechanical Energy, this study evaluates the PhysiVerse experience through psychometric questionnaires, pre/post knowledge assessments, and in-experience behavioural metrics, including prediction accuracy as a measure of prior understanding.