Coding in Virtual Reality: How Space and Movement Can Support Embodied Learning

This study explores how learners leverage the spatial and kinesthetic affordances of an immersive, fully 3D coding environment in virtual reality (VR). A workshop was conducted in which high school students engaged in creative coding activities using a new node-based VR coding platform. Their code histories were recorded in video format through screen casting from their headsets. Audio-free videos were subsequently annotated to characterize users’ interactions with nodes and user interface (UI) elements during code construction, execution, and debugging. At a minimum, creating a computer program using this platform requires loading appropriate nodes and making connections with wires between event and data ports. However, it was found that users engaged with elements of their code in much more complex ways, treating them at times as though they were tangible objects. Learners moved and rearranged nodes, hovered objects in space, fidgeted, and virtually touched, gestured or traced over nodes and wires. These actions served to enact relational features and computational concepts underlying their code in support of planning, prediction, modeling and other cognitive processes important for CS learning. Preliminary outcomes suggesting growth in CS abilities and guidelines for VR platform design are discussed.