Do higher levels of immersion in driving simulators lead to faster learning?

Abstract: As technology is becoming ever more present in the world, the use of simulators as a teaching tool is more prevalent than ever, with good evidence to back up their usefulness. Drivers’ education is one area among many that is seeing this change. These types of simulators are often classified by their level of fidelity, or how alike the simulator is to reality. However, fidelity is a far from precise term with many sub-categories that different researchers treat differently. This means, along with a lack of research, that the knowledge on how fidelity affects learning in simulations is diffuse. This study aimed to investigate how specifically changing the immersive feeling of a truck simulator affected the speed of learning to reverse with a virtual truck and trailer. More immersion was achieved by constructing a crude roof and walls on the simulator mimicking the inside of a vehicle. Results showed that there was no significant increase in the learning speed. However, there was a relatively near significant difference (p=0.148) between the groups, where more immersion was linked to faster learning. Participants also judged the simulator as being more useful in their learning if experiencing the immersive setup, which could be a potential cause of the near significant difference. Because of the low sample size of 23, no definitive conclusions could be drawn from this study. Taken together, it seems that a larger study stands a good chance of revealing the effect simulator fidelity can have on learning from a relatively simple change of immersion.