Fostering Critical Thinking and Environmental Awareness to Support Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security Through the Labvir Geospatial-Mobile App

This study designs and evaluates the Labvir geospatial mobile app as a virtual laboratory application to support geography learning, specifically on sustainable agriculture and food security. By applying a modified Borg and Gall research and development model, this study combines expert validation, practitioner evaluation, and field trials using a one-group pretest–posttest design in three high schools in Indonesia. The application combines Android-based access with virtual reality features, spatial resources, videos, web links, worksheets, and interactive quizzes. Research validation was obtained from material, language, and media experts, and user responses from lecturers, teachers, prospective teachers, and ninety-nine students who used the application in the classroom learning process. The assessment results showed a high level of feasibility and practicality. In addition, the reliability test confirmed the quality of the instrument, as indicated by a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.836 and an average variance extracted of 0.625. In the field trial, students’ critical-thinking performance increased across the three schools, with normalized gain scores of 0.61, 0.71, and 0.67, while environmental awareness also improved, with gain scores of 0.79, 0.76, and 0.78. Partial least squares structural equation modeling results showed moderate explanatory power for critical thinking (R² = 0.622) and environmental awareness (R² = 0.636). These findings indicate that the Labvir geospatial mobile app is a feasible and promising instructional medium for strengthening critical thinking and environmental awareness in geography lessons related to sustainable agriculture and food security. Because the field trial did not include a control group, the effectiveness claims should be interpreted as preliminary and should be validated in future comparative studies.