Virtual Reality in Construction VET: Impact on Creativity and Motivation

Duration: March 2022 – December 2024
Status: Completed
Educational Level: Upper Secondary Level – Vocational Education
Topic: Digital Tools
Keywords: VR- Virtual Reality

Initial Situation

Fostering creativity in vocational education and training is essential for developing critical skills and achieving success in a variety of professions and industries. Creativity fosters confidence, problem-solving skills, and active engagement with learning materials, leading to innovative problem-solving approaches and improved problem-solving abilities. The growing popularity of Virtual Reality (VR) in education is due to its interactivity, immersion, and presence. However, there is a lack of research on the extent to which immersive virtual reality (IVR) can enhance creativity in vocational education and training (VET). With this project we aimed to fill this gap.

Objectives

So far only a few studies explored whether IVR could enhance creativity and task motivation in VET. Prior to this study GardenVR–a VR application allowing to design a garden and navigate it–was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of IVR applications in supporting designing skills (Kim et al., 2020). However, the role of immersion in GardenVR and the comparison of desktop vs immersive VR has never been assessed, which is the main objective of this research project. GardenVR has been applied to draftsman apprentices to investigate the impact of VR/IVR on situative motivation and creativity

Method

We adopted a pre-post between subject research design. 70 draftsman architecture apprentices, at the age of 15-18 years, were randomly assigned to the IVR or desktop conditions. The main task for participants was to design a garden through the support of GardenVR. GardenVR can be used in Design mode, where objects such as trees are placed on the garden area in top view (exocentric view), and in the Explore mode, where the user is placed inside the garden (egocentric view) and can walk through it. This modus also allows to visualize trees at all seasons, after growth for 5 to 20 years, and on different daylight.

Results

Results showed that learners in the IVR condition reported significantly higher levels of spatial presence, involvement, and realness, confirming the strong experiential affordances of immersion. IVR also enhanced intrinsic motivation and identified regulation, while reducing reliance on external regulation, indicating that immersion functioned as a catalyst for more self-determined forms of motivation. In addition, IVR learners reported higher attention and satisfaction, while relevance and confidence remained comparable across conditions, suggesting that immersion primarily boosts affective engagement rather than perceptions of task value or competence. Creativity outcomes were more nuanced: neither general creativity nor domain-specific creativity revealed consistent modality-based differences. The data revealed that baseline creative ability played a major role in determining outcomes, likely overshadowing any short-term effects of the immersive learning condition.

Implemented Translation

As for the other projects led by SFUVET, also in this case translation is inherent to the nature of the project from the very beginning. Teachers from gibb Berufsfachschule Bern and researchers from SFUVET collaborated in the design, planning and implementation of the pilot experience. This collaboration went beyond the project itself, and followed up in new ideas to implement technology in the educational curricula of gibb. A new project will start in January on the use of augmented reality for sanitary installers and a new project idea on BIM – Building Information Modeling – has successfully completed the evaluation at BeLEARN and will be funded as a follow-up project.

The study highlights both the promise and limitations of IVR in vocational learning, offering theoretical and practical insights into designing immersive environments that foster motivation, presence, and creativity. From a practice-oriented point of view, this study was the premise for a longer-term collaboration with the school on the effective integration of innovative technologies in vocational education.

Participating Institutions