Effects of environmental education on environmental ethics and literacy based on virtual reality technology

Published date07 October 2019
Pages860-877
Date07 October 2019
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/EL-12-2018-0250
AuthorQiong Liu,Zhongming Cheng,Min Chen
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management
Eects of environmental
education on environmental ethics
and literacy based on virtual
reality technology
Qiong Liu
School of Marxism, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China, and
Zhongming Cheng and Min Chen
Academy of Financial Research, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, China
Abstract
Purpose This study aims to propose the corresponding ways and methods to strengthen the
environmental moral education based on scientic research methods, rigorous scientic theory and the
specic contentof environmental moral education.
Design/methodology/approach In this study, taking 360 volunteers of Yangtze University, Hubei,
as the research samples, the 32-week (3 h per week) experimental research was preceded in this study.
Among the 360 distributed copies of questionnaires, 289 copies are valid, with the retrieval rate
80 per cent.
Findings The research results show signicant correlations between environmental education and
environmental ethics; environmental ethics and environmental literacy; and environmental education and
environmentalliteracy.
Research limitations/implications The research on the environmental moral education in China
was still in the primary stage, and there were few results that can be used for reference. As a result,
there was a lack of empirical research in this paper, which needed to be further expanded and
improved.
Practical implications This study put forward a series of new judgments and new views to solve the
problems, which provided a good theoretical basis for the current education and teaching work of the
majority of educators and valuable reference for future research on related topics. This study was helpful
to further enhance the environmental moral awareness and environmental moral level. Aiming at the
problems existing in environmental moral education, this study proposed a series of solutionsto make the
whole society, schools and families work together for the improvement and development of environmental
moral education.
Originality/value This study was helpful t o promote environmental moral q uality and level, promote
the harmony between m an and nature and form a goo d habit of environme ntal protection in th e whole
society.
Keywords Databases, Data analysis, Data storage, Database management, Virtual reality,
Environmental education, Environmental ethics, Environmental literacy
Paper type Technical paper
This research was supported by the Research on the soft power construction of Hubei province under
the perspective of historical materialism (project no. 17Q060) of Hubei Provincial Department of
Education, and the National Social Science Fund of China (14BGL036).
EL
37,5
860
Received30 December 2018
Revised17 April 2019
Accepted22 April 2019
TheElectronic Library
Vol.37 No. 5, 2019
pp. 860-877
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-12-2018-0250
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Introduction
Since the Industrial Revolution,the establishment of factories, the invention of railways and
automobiles and the promotion of chemical productshave made human life convenient and
rich. Meanwhile, a large amount of resources on the earth are being consumed and the
massive use of fossil fuel increases carbon dioxide emissions, indirectly resulting in global
climate changes and obvious global warming. Environmental changes, such as changes in
rainfall, increasing strengthof storms, tornados, ood and drought and climate changes, are
threatening human health. People have innite expectations for technologies and believe
that the development of technologycould change the world. However, the living quality and
living environment are getting worse with changing technologies. Faced with worsening
environment and continuous ecological risks, people excessively depend on technologies to
solve environmental problems,rather than dealing with ethic relationship between humans
and the nature. New environmentalproblems are therefore emerged (Perovich et al.,2018).
The use of appropriate teaching methods for environmental education could achieve the
learning effect. Teachers who apply proper teaching methods and available materials to
enhance environmentalethics and environmental literacy could have smoother teaching and
better teaching effect (Paakkari and George, 2018). In this case, virtual reality is applied in
environmental educationto discuss the effect on ethics and environmental literacy. The core
of virtual reality is to emphasize the interaction between the two, that is, to reect the
experience of people in the virtual environment. It is a high and new technology involving
many subjects developed at the end of twentieth century. It sets computer technology,
sensing technology, simulation technology and microelectronics technology as a whole and
creates a virtual environment through the computer. Through the visual, auditory, tactile,
olfactory and other functions,the user produces the same feeling as in reality. To be specic,
modern high-tech, with computer technology as the core, generates a realistic virtual
environment with a specic scope of visual, auditory and tactile integration. Users interact
with objects in the virtual environment in a naturalway with the help of necessary devices,
so as to generate feelings and experiences similar to the real environment. Although the
environment is not real, it acts as a realistic three-dimensional environment, as if it is all
around us. In this way, the user will have an immersive feeling and realize the direct
interaction between the user and the environment. This technology is applied to learning,
that is to say, learners are no longer passiveto see, hear and accept the content provided, but
can participate in the development and change process of eventsin various forms, and play
a role in the change process of events. At the same time, learnersbehaviors will affect the
development direction of events, making learning like life and games. On the other hand,
teachers can also play a role in the virtual environment and coordinate learning with
learners to form a harmonious, interactive and cooperative teaching relationship (Marteel-
Parrish and Lipchock,2018).
Virtual reality has three characteristics: The rst is immersion, that is, users no longer
feel the external environment they are in, but integrate into the virtual world provided by
the computer. The ideal virtualenvironment should be such that it is difcult for users to tell
the difference between true and false. Thegoal of virtual reality technology is from the past
that people can only observe the resultsof calculation and processing from the outside of the
computer system, to the environment that people can immerse themselves in the computer
system, so that people become participantsinstead of observers. The virtual scene can move
in all directions from the participants point of view. For example, the visual scene should
change with the viewpoint, even beyond the real, to achieve more realistic lighting and
sound effects than the real. The second is interaction. It refers to the degree to which users
can operate objects in the virtual environment andthe natural degree to get feedback from
Environmental
ethics and
literacy
861

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