Virtual reality in introductory physics laboratories

Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio State University’s existing labs are not meeting their educational goals and students consistently rate them as having low value. This paper explores some of the reasons that standard introductory physics laboratories are not having the expected impact, and describes the implementation of Virtual Reality based experiments to improve upon lab effectiveness. Student response to these experiments and preliminary results regarding their impact on student learning will be discussed.