The effect of task specific aids on students' performance and minimization of cognitive load in a virtual reality chemistry laboratory

Abstract Different cognitive aids (such as arrows, audio, etc.) are used in virtual laboratories for the enhancement of students' performance during their experimental tasks. However, excessive use of aids in virtual laboratories can lead to increased cognitive load, which affects task performance. In this article, we first conducted a subjective study with field experts to investigate about the practical implementation of our existing virtual chemistry laboratory. To consider the suggestions of the field experts, we propose task specific aids based virtual reality chemistry laboratory (TSA‐VRCL) to minimize students' cognitive load and enhance their performance. The task specific aids consist of an arrow, animation, and audio aids that are separately rendered with each step of the experimental tasks. During evaluations, eighty students performed the experiments in four different groups using four different experimental conditions. Evaluations revealed that the proposed TSA‐VRCL minimizes students' cognitive load and enhances their performance.