Sentiment Analysis of Students Opinion on the Use of Virtual and Augmented Reality in STEAM Education

The modern fit-for-purpose approach to education is STEAM education, which offers students the opportunity to study through problem-solving techniques so they can acquire new knowledge through integrated learning. This helps the students have a greater degree of multidisciplinary knowledge while solving practical scenarios that are offered as problems to the students. On the other side, being immersive and imaginative through Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality(AR) is becoming a new trend and many educational institutions have embraced the idea of using these technologies interactively within the classes. These technologies are being integrated into teachers planning to offer more practical learning and meanwhile raise student motivation, foster greater student interaction and cooperation, and most important part, through them overcome the obstacle of lacking suitable labs. The purpose of this research paper is to determine whether or not using VR and AR in STEAM classes impacts students' motivation. The research is situated in lower high school, respectively in Math and Chemistry classes where the students are asked to provide written opinions in the first week and last week of the experiment for using both technologies in their classes. The sentiment analysis of these opinions is conducted through the use of a deep-learning multilingual BERT model, named RoBERTa. From a purposive sample of 29 students, the sentiment analysis of using Virtual Reality technologies from the very beginning to the end fluctuated between 69 and 50% for positive, 0.25 and 0.10% for neutral, and between 6% and 40% for negative. The same case was not emphasized for Augmented Reality technology. In conclusion, the Faculty of Education educational programs will be recommended to consider these opinions, especially for the STEAM and ICT programs.