Primary Schoolers' Response to a Multisensory Serious Game on Cartesian Plane Coordinates in Immersive Virtual Reality

The Cartesian coordinate system is a fundamental concept for mathematics and science and poses a teaching challenge at primary school level. Learning the Cartesian coordinate system has the potential to promote numerical cognition through number-space associations, as well as core geometric concepts, including isometric transformations, symmetry, and shape perception. Immersive virtual reality (VR) facilitates embodied forms of teaching and learning mathematics through whole-body sensorimotor interaction and offers benefits as a platform to learn the Cartesian coordinate system compared with "real world"classroom activities. Our goal was to validate the Cartesian-Garden, a serious game designed to provide an educationally robust but engaging vehicle to teach these concepts in primary-level mathematics in a multisensory VR environment. In the game, the child explores a Cartesian-Garden, that is, a field of flowers in which each flower corresponds to x and y coordinates. Specifically, we tested whether exploring numbers spatially represented improved spatial and numerical skills independently from the use of VR. Children (n = 49; age 7-11 years old) were divided into experimental and age-matched control groups. The experimental group explored the Cartesian-Garden and picked flowers corresponding to target coordinates; the control group played a VR game unrelated to Cartesian coordinates. To quantify potential improvements, children were tested before and after training with perceptual tests investigating number line and spatial thinking. The results point toward differential age-related improvements depending on the tested concept, especially for the number line. This study provides the guidelines for the successful use of the Cartesian-Garden game, beneficial for specific age groups.