Life sciences in virtual reality: first-year students learning as creators

Students commencing tertiary studies in life sciences over the next decade are going to arrive at universities with a more advanced digital literacy and shifting expectations of how technology supports learning. This poses a challenge to traditional approaches to tertiary science education. As the increasingly digitally literate students arrive, and the barrier to entry to Virtual Reality (VR) drops, there is an opportunity to develop new learning activities in VR. Students may learn by using VR, but students can also explore complex scientific concepts by creating their own VR content, while developing digital and creation fluencies. We describe how first-year students explored biological science concepts with a series of learning activities based in content creation for VR. We outline the feedback students provided on these activities and how this feedback informed further development of the learning activities.