الجولات الافتراضية وأثرها على التفكير البصري والتحصيل الدراسي لدى طلاب تكنولوجيا التعليم في كلية التربية بجامعة السلطان قابوس في سلطنة عمان

This research aims to perceive the impact of employing virtual tours on visual thinking and academic achievement. The study scrutinizes three types of virtual tours: virtual tours with images, videos and 3D. The research pursues the quasi-experimental approach, where the study population comprised of educational technology students from Sultan Qaboos University. The research’s sample composed of (180) students who were divided into six experimental groups. Each group includes (30) students. The research’s instruments are represented in designing an interactive electronic program that enclose learning with images for the first group, video for the second group, and 3D for the third group. The experiment period lasted for three months. A test for cognitive achievement and another one for visual thinking were prepared formerly and later for the three groups. The research employed the following statistical processors: repeated measures test, one way Anova test, and independent sample tests. The results of the analysis revealed that there is statistically significant incongruity between the students' scores in the pre and posttests of cognitive achievement. In the first group (image), the effect size shows that 74% of variance is in favor of posttest, 82% in the second group (video) is in favor of posttest, and 90% in the third group (3D) is in favor of posttest. In the visual thinking test, the results also showed that 92% in the first group (image) is in favor of posttest, 70% in the second group (video) is in favor of posttest, and 83% in the third group (3D) is in favor of posttest. This portrays the effectiveness of the virtual tours of images, video and 3D. The results revealed out that the best virtual tours are the 3D tour, since the students who were taught in the 3D approach had a higher level of cognitive achievement (C=24.53) compared to the students who were taught by image approach (C=23.13). In the visual thinking test, the results manifested that there were statistically significant differences between the scores of the first experimental group (image) and the scores of the third experimental group (3D) in the posttest are in favor of the third experimental group (3D) (C=24.70). In the light of results obtained, the research recommends developing the use of virtual tour technology in learning, by virtue of its impact on learning for both scientific and applied aspects.