VR as an Innovative Learning Tool in Sports Education

Testing and application of suitable learning tools and methods can facilitate learning
environments conducive to skill acquisition for the target group. This also applies to sports education
at school level, including extracurricular activities. On the one hand, traditional learning methods
are still effective in sports education; on the other hand, keeping up with societal and technological
developments, new learning strategies are continuously being researched to complement existing
pedagogical tools. An innovative tool that has been increasingly used in various fields of application
in recent years is Virtual Reality (VR) as part of the Extended Reality (XR) domain. It enables learning
in immersive and specifically designed learning environments and is particularly suitable for learning
in (sports-)motor contexts due to its flexible use. In our study, we test a VR-based rotation task in an
extracurricular dance class with the objective of supporting the crucial didactic, collaborative, and
perceptual components of dance training in educational contexts. We conducted feedback sessions
with the students and used direct observation to examine their behavioural actions. Based on the
qualitative content analysis of the written feedback and the overview from the observations, we can
identify integrative potentials of this innovative tool in sports education, especially extracurricular
dance classes.