Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Education and Information Technologies, 2025 (SSCI)
Writing is a crucial skill for students’ academic success; however, various studies have indicated that many students struggle with writing due to uninteresting and limited techniques and a lack of contextual experience, which may affect their writing motivation and disposition. Initiating the writing process with prewriting activities that actively engage students and offer authentic context can mitigate these challenges. While various pre-writing methods exist, integrating technology, especially for digital natives, can boost writing motivation and disposition. This study examined the effect of Virtual Reality-enhanced prewriting activities on students’ writing motivation and disposition, a topic scarcely addressed in extant literature. The study participants were comprised forty-seven 10-year-old fourth-grade primary school students enrolled in a public school in Türkiye during the 2022–2023 academic year. A quasi-experimental design was employed to examine this effect, necessitated by the intact class enrolment of primary school students. Random student assignment to groups was unfeasible; therefore, two classes within the school were randomly selected to serve as the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG). The study lasted for eight weeks, and pretests were administered in the first week. In the subsequent six weeks, the experimental group engaged in virtual reality-enhanced pre-writing activities, whereas the control group utilized traditional pre-writing activities and was instructed to produce drafts. The post-tests were administered in the eighth week. Six weeks of unique Virtual Reality-enhanced pre-writing content were developed utilizing CoSpaces software, a widely accessible virtual reality creation tool, and implemented in the experimental group using smartphone-compatible head-mounted displays (HMDs). Students’ writing motivation and disposition were analysed using Repeated-Measures ANOVA with two group levels (EG and CG) and two-time levels (pretest and post-test). The results indicated that virtual reality-enhanced pre-writing activities had a substantial effect on improving primary school students’ writing motivation and writing disposition.