The impact of virtual technology on students' creativity: A meta-analysis

As an interactive simulation technology with multi-source information fusion, virtual technology can be used to create learning scenarios, enhance the learning experience, and promote teaching innovation. However, there is no unanimous answer whether virtual technology can effectively improve students' creativity. Therefore, this study adopted a meta-analysis method to analyze 62 experimental (quasi) studies published in international journals between 2014 and 2023 to examine the Impact of Virtual Technology-Based Teaching on Student Creativity. The results found that: 1) Virtual technology has a moderately positive impact on students' creativity (the combined effect size is 0.596), and there is no significant difference in innovative thinking, innovative practical ability, innovative personality quality, and other aspects; 2) Compared with other learning levels, teaching based on virtual technology had the best effect on the creativity of school-age children; 3) Virtual technology could stimulate students' creativity more when applied to the teaching of declarative knowledge than the teaching of procedural knowledge; 4) The use of virtual technology combined with inquiry-discovery and task-driven methods had a more positive impact on creativity; 5) Compared with observational learning and social learning, operational learning had a more improving effect on students' creativity; 6) The use of detailed explanations and true-false feedback in teaching based on virtual technology was more optimistic for the development of students' creativity; 7) Distributed virtual reality and augmented reality had a higher degree of impact on student creativity than other virtual technologies. These analyses provide a reference for future research and practice of using virtual technology to enhance students' creativity.