Weaving Opportunities for Reflection into a Virtual Reality Learning Game

This paper revisits and extends the Virtual Playground, a virtual environment originally developed two decades ago to explore the effects of interactivity in VR on children’s learning of abstract mathematical concepts. Initial findings from 2005 revealed that while interactive VR enhanced engagement and motivation, it sometimes hindered reflective processes critical to deep conceptual understanding. Recent advancements in VR, particularly affordable head-mounted displays and accessible development platforms, provided an opportunity to revive and modernize the Virtual Playground. The updated version, designed for the Quest headset, integrates structured reflection moments into the interactive experience to address the previously observed tension between interaction and reflection. We report preliminary work on embedding reflection opportunities in VR learning games and explore the design challenges encountered in balancing action and reflection. This work aspires to ignite a discussion about what makes immersive VR effective for learning, focusing on the interplay between interaction, reflection, and conceptual understanding.