Foreign Language Teaching Meets 360° and Virtual Reality Student Perspectives in a Master of Education Program

Abstract

In the winter semesters 2020/21 and 2021/22, the Chair of Didactics of romance languages, literatures and cultures at the University of Potsdam along with the BMBF-funded project «Forschen/Lernen Digital (FoLD)» partnered for a project seminar. In this cooperation, participating students examined selected 360° and virtual reality applications from the perspective of foreign language teaching and learning. The seminar was also guided by the partially standardized questionnaire (pre- and post-design), which included a 360° and VR-specific section. The current article focuses on the students’ assessments of four applications used in the seminar (Panolingo, MondlyVR, AltspaceVR, and Lapentor) regarding their possible implementation in the foreign language classroom and elaborates on the argumentations and evaluation criteria given by the future teachers in the second survey (post design). It is part of a preliminary study of a larger research project on foreign language teaching and learning processes in and through VR.