  When educational institutions worldwide scrambled for ways to continue their
classes during lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of
information and communication technology (ICT) for remote teaching has become
widely considered to be a potential solution. As universities raced to
implement emergency remote teaching (ERT) strategies in Japan, some have
explored innovative interventions other than webinar platforms and learning
management systems to bridge the gap caused by restricted mobility among
teachers and learners. One such innovation is virtual reality (VR). VR has been
changing the landscape of higher education because of its ability to "teleport"
learners to various places by simulating real-world environments in the virtual
world. Some teachers, including the authors of this paper, explored integrating
VR into their activities to address issues caused by geographical limitations
brought about by the heightened restrictions in 2020. Results were largely
encouraging. However, rules started relaxing in the succeeding years as more
people got vaccinated. Thus, some fully online classes in Japan shifted to
blended learning as they moved toward fully returning to in-person classes
prompting educators to modify how they implemented their VR-based
interventions. This paper describes how a class of university students in Japan
who were taking a Filipino language course experienced a VR-based intervention
in blended mode, which was originally prototyped during the peak of the ERT
era. Moreover, adjustments and comparisons regarding methodological
idiosyncrasies and findings between the fully online iteration and the recently
implemented blended one are reported in detail.
