Engaging students in virtual tours to learn language and digital literacy

In today’s digital world, emerging technologies have advanced language learning in K-12 education. Globalization facilitates the process of interaction and collaboration among learners. In recent years, virtual tour creation has been used in school settings to motivate students to enhance their language literacy through writing and using technological skills to make their digital books and tour guides. CoSpaces is a well-known virtual reality platform that allows learners to observe and interact with other students’ creations. This tool consists of a library of ready-to-use 3D models and digital making tools that students could study their work using their mobiles and build their own digital objects, virtual reality (VR) artifacts, scenes, tour guides, and storylines. To examine the potential of using virtual tours to learn language digital literacy, this study examined 19 CoSpaces’ open projects via thematic analysis based on the resources. The projects were categorized and analyzed in terms of the contexts used and the learning goals of the virtual tour creation in terms of language learning and technological skills. Results suggest the potential of using VR virtual tours as a context-aware language pedagogy across disciplines for language educators to encourage students to enhance students’ digital literacy. Further, this study contributes to conceptualizing digital language literacy in three dimensions: (1) knowledge across contexts, (2) learning skills (e.g., research skills, creativity), and (3) technological skills (e.g., 3D creation skills, coding) in a virtual tour-supported language learning. Copyright © 2023 Beijing Normal University.