Authenticity, Interactivity, and Collaboration in Virtual Reality Games: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Annie Wang,Cigdem Uz-Bilgin,Eric Klopfer,Meredith Thompson

doi:10.3389/frvir.2021.734083

Abstract

Virtual reality has become an increasingly important topic in the field of education research, going from a tool of interest to a tool of practice. In this paper, we document and summarize the studies associated with our 4-year design project, Collaborative Learning Environments in Virtual Reality (CLEVR). Our goal is to share the lessons we gleaned from the design and development of the game so that others may learn from our experiences as they are designing, developing, and testing VR for learning. We translate “lessons learned” from our user studies into “best practices” when developing authentic, interactive, and collaborative experiences in VR. We learned that authentic representations can enhance learning in virtual environments but come at a cost of increased time and resources in development. Interactive experiences can motivate learning and enable users to understand spatial relationships in ways that two dimensional representations cannot. Collaboration in VR can be used to alleviate some of the cognitive load inherent in VR environments, and VR can serve as a context for collaborative problem solving with the appropriate distribution of roles and resources. The paper concludes with a summation of best practices intended to inform future VR designers and researchers.

Highlights

Virtual reality can bring new perspectives to classroom learning
Learning through collaborative problem-solving can be useful for learners of all backgrounds and levels of knowledge
Through different studies and physical settings, we note that a clear understanding of the subject matter, critical frameworks or models, allowed users to gain the most benefit from a VR experience

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Virtual reality can bring new perspectives to classroom learning. In the last 20 years, immersive VR has become an increasingly common topic in the field of education research (Hew and Cheung, 2010; Merchant et al, 2012; Ahn et al, 2017) as the technology becomes more viable for classroom use (Castaneda et al, 2017), prompting educators to explore how to leverage VR for educational purposes. Studies with various types of users, and reviews by subject matter experts have enabled us to collect valuable qualitative and quantitative data that have enhanced our understanding of how to incorporate authenticity, interactivity, and collaboration in VR learning games (Thompson et al, 2018b; Wang et al, 2019; Thompson et al, 2020; Uz Bilgin, Anteneh, & Thompson, 2020; Wang, 2020; Uz Bilgin, Anteneh, & Thompson, 2021; Uz Bilgin & Thompson, 2021). We look across all of the studies and papers to synthesize our experiences as lessons learned and best practices,” in designing learning games that include authenticity, interactivity, and collaboration. User testing (2017–2018)–Using a design-based research framework, we ran ongoing user testing with subject matter experts (11), adult volunteers (35), and teachers (8), 54 people in total, between 2017 and 2019 These user tests occurred once every 8 weeks and included individuals that were invited to test different games and simulations being developed for educators.

How do you design for authenticity in VR?

How does a stereoscopic view impact players’

11 Spring 2021

Two pieces of evidence supporting positive interdependence

SUMMARY OF BEST PRACTICES

CONCLUSION