THE EFFECT OF IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL REALITY ON STUDENTS’ INTEREST AND MOTIVATION IN CHEMISTRY

Integrating immersive virtual reality (IVR) into chemistry education offers valuable potential to enhance student engagement through interactive visualisation. However, empirical studies regarding the effect of this new technology on students’ affective factors in school chemistry, particularly in developing countries such as Indonesia, remain limited. This study aimed to explore the effect of IVR on Indonesian upper-secondary school students’ interest and motivation in learning chemistry. Employing a quasi-experimental pretest and posttest non-equivalent control group design, the research involved 68 twelfth-grade students who were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group, with the experimental group experiencing learning through an IVR app and the control group following conventional teaching methods. The instruments included an interest in chemistry scale and a chemistry motivation scale. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U tests with a .05 significance level. The results revealed that while both groups demonstrated improvement in their interest and motivation scores, students in the IVR group achieved significantly higher gains. These results highlight that IVR-supported chemistry teaching is a powerful learning tool to foster twelfth-grade students’ interest and motivation, offering valuable implications for integrating immersive VR into science classrooms. Keywords: immersive virtual reality, upper-secondary school students, interest in chemistry, chemistry motivation