The effect of virtual reality based virtual museum design application on student achievement in science education

The aim of this research is to create a virtual reality-based virtual museum about the unit of 7th grade "Pure Substance and Mixtures" on the topic of "Granular Structure of Substance" and to observe the effect of this design on the academic achievement of students in a science course. The study group, selected by the convenience sampling method, consisted of 7th-grade students from a secondary school in Konya Province in the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, which included 46 students in total, there were 23 students (17 girls and 6 boys) in the experimental group and 23 students (9 girls and 14 boys) in the control group. In the study in which the quasi-experimental design with a pre-test post-test control group was used as the method, the "Granular Structure of Substance Achievement Test" (GSSAT) was used as the data collection tool. As the GSSAT items were formed according to the outcomes of the 2013 curriculum and the science curriculum was updated in 2018, 4 questions measuring an outcome not included in the current curriculum were removed from the achievement test; thus, the current achievement test was applied to 110 secondary school 7th-grade students. The reliability coefficient (KR-20) of the data obtained from the achievement test was found to be 0.63 and it was concluded that the achievement test was reliable. In the implementation process of the research, first, a virtual museum environment was designed in accordance with the learning outcomes. Then, for four weeks, the experimental group was implemented in a virtual reality-based virtual museum design while the control group was taught as required in the science education curriculum. The data obtained from the GSSAT, which was applied as a pre-test and post-test, were analyzed and tabulated using the SPSS 21 package program. As a result, it was determined that the academic achievement of the experimental group students, who were implemented virtual reality-based virtual museum design, was significantly higher than the control group students in the science course.