Anne Frank House VR, Paired Explorer and Recorder

Context

History (Holocaust unit), middle school. One headset + one casting iPad per pair. 20-minute in-headset turns.

Learning Objective

Factual knowledge of the Secret Annexe and its inhabitants AND perspective-taking, deliberately pursued through different roles.

Why XR?

The headset supplies presence in the annexe that no text can; but research on this exact app (Mulders 2023) shows unstructured headset use trades factual recall for that presence. The paired structure exists to keep both.

Before VR

Context lessons on the Frank family; comfort/hygiene briefing; controls demonstration; pairs assigned; casting pre-flighted on every iPad.

In VR

Explorer wears the headset, hunts named icons, narrates aloud in detail. Recorder watches the cast beside a question set the explorer cannot see and answers from the narration, asking the explorer to look again or go closer. Roles swap.

After VR

Class debrief: what the questions established (facts) and what the narration carried (feeling). Teacher-facilitated; content sensitivity is real (historical trauma).

Student Evidence

Per-pair answer sheets (produced outside the app, which also solves shared-account attribution).

Assessment

Answer sheets plus a short individual reflection; participation is not evidence (the research notes).

Differentiation

Role choice for anxious or motion-sensitive students; recorder is a full role, not a waiting room.

Accessibility / Alternative Route

Recorder role plus the cast gives a complete non-headset route through the same content.

Safety / Setup

Generous guardian (students reported cramped boundaries); fallback role for anyone feeling unwell; wipes between users.

Teacher Preparation

Moderate: casting pre-flight is the critical step; a mid-session casting failure disables half the class.

Cross-Curricular Links

English (testimony and diary as sources), ethics, media literacy (what a reconstruction can and cannot claim).

Extension

Compare the VR annexe with diary passages: what does each medium claim, and how would you check?

Reflection Questions

What did your partner’s narration miss that the questions caught? What did the questions miss that the narration caught?

Sources / Evidence

Mulders 2023 (doi:10.3390/mti7030028); post-session survey (in the deployment record); the research notes.