Developing sculpting and carving skills among art college students remains a critical problem in art education, where the conventional approaches are not very constructive for creativity, skill generation, and spatial conception development. To overcome this challenge, 3D Virtual Reality (VR) technology was developed for the enhancement of sculpture and carving skills. This research examined the difference between sculpting in a VR environment and traditional clay modeling, including their impact on creativity, skill acquisition, student motivation and participation, learning time, spatial ability, and creativity. A mixed method was used that involved quantitative questionnaires and qualitative interviews, with 532 undergraduate students who were a part of both VR and clay models, focusing on data collection. The result showed that the students were able to perform better in VR environments with enhanced creativity, technical skills, spatial thinking, and higher levels of engagement and motivation when compared to clay sculpting. It was found that VR allowed students to learn and perform complex sculpting processes in a short time, and students were more innovative in the ways they designed sculptures. It was also shown that VR facilitated the acquisition of 3D space and, more importantly, provided an interactive setting that was immersive and promoted creativity. This study demonstrates the use of VR in the field of arts education, providing evidence that VR can change the course of traditional sculpting and carving. The results highlight the VR’s ability to improve technical skills as well as artistic skills. The research indicates that VR improves the process of teaching sculpting techniques and provides a better understanding of the creative function and faster learning of the sculpting process. © Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2026.
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