A Network Analysis Model of Interactive Strategies for Teaching Civics in Colleges and Universities in a Virtual Reality Environment

Abstract

Taking the ideological and political education course of contemporary colleges and universities as the main research subject, we consider VR technology, a brand new media technology, in improving the interactivity of the traditional Civics and Political Science classroom embedded possibilities as the research direction. A multi-channel virtual reality environment for human-computer interaction is built, and a VR-based interactive teaching system for Civic and Political courses is developed by introducing the B/S 3-tier architecture model. Subsequently, 40 teachers and students applying the VR Civic and Political Science course teaching system were selected to study the teaching interaction behaviours using the social network analysis model, and the student-student interaction behaviours were mined using the cohesive subgroup analysis method. The results show that students prefer watching micro-videos for knowledge learning, the overall online interaction and communication are more active, teachers and teaching assistants have high centrality (both greater than 20), and their timely feedback plays an important role in the motivation of student interaction. In addition, there are more factions composed of different learners, members in the factions interact closely, and there are some members with high faction overlap, which promotes communication and cooperation among subgroups and is the core of the whole network. The study aims to promote the occurrence and development of interactive behaviors within the online learning community, enhance the flow of information, and create a better learning environment for civics.