Enhancing Geography Education through Virtual Reality: Exploring Pedagogical and Technological Principles Ieva Tenberga

The new educational content framework Skola2030, which was implemented from 2020 to 2023 in Latvia, made it possible to improve the teaching of geography at the secondary level in order to deepen students’ understanding of the intricate relationships between natural environments and human activities. All traditional educational tools, such as textbooks, infographics, movies, maps, and simulations focusing on the movement of plate tectonics, are available to students. Still, they address only a small portion of the complex internal operations. Textbooks may provide simplified diagrams of volcanoes that do not accurately portray their many characteristics, and videos showing volcanic disasters could misinterpret the true nature of volcanic eruptions. There are also examples when simulations, as well as cartographic resources, just disregard many unique features of some types of volcanoes, overlooking the diverse attributes of different volcano types, concentrating merely on their geographical occurrences. This well-designed education model allows students to carefully explore a vast number of such features as part of a useful learning experience. This can help in fostering a deep awareness of internal processes and their real-world ramifications. The study question focuses on the educational and technological principles needed to create an interactive learning tool for comparing various types of volcanoes in a virtual reality setting. These concepts were identified through a systematic literature review. The established principles can be used as recommendations for developing interactive learning aids to compare different types of volcanoes or to assess similar educational resources.