Digital Transformations of Classrooms in Virtual Reality

TL;DR

This study explores how virtual classroom design elements like seating, avatar styles, and peer behaviors affect learner engagement and information extraction in immersive VR environments, providing insights for future VR classroom design.

Contribution

It offers an empirical analysis of interaction factors in VR classrooms, highlighting the impact of seating positions, avatar visualization styles, and peer behaviors on learner engagement.

Findings

Learners at the back of the VR classroom have difficulty extracting information.

Realistic avatar visualization improves engagement with lectures.

Eye movement varies with peer performance levels, warranting further study.

Abstract

With rapid developments in consumer-level head-mounted displays and computer graphics, immersive VR has the potential to take online and remote learning closer to real-world settings. However, the effects of such digital transformations on learners, particularly for VR, have not been evaluated in depth. This work investigates the interaction-related effects of sitting positions of learners, visualization styles of peer-learners and teachers, and hand-raising behaviors of virtual peer-learners on learners in an immersive VR classroom, using eye tracking data. Our results indicate that learners sitting in the back of the virtual classroom may have difficulties extracting information. Additionally, we find indications that learners engage with lectures more efficiently if virtual avatars are visualized with realistic styles. Lastly, we find different eye movement behaviors towards different performance levels of virtual peer-learners, which should be investigated further. Our findings present an important baseline for design decisions for VR classrooms.