Effectiveness Of Virtual Environment Research Articles

An Exploratory Study on the Effect of Virtual Environments on Cognitive Performances and Psychophysiological Responses.

Research shows that reduced exposure to natural contexts is associated with an increase in psychophysical disorders. Recent evidence suggests that even a brief experience in natural scenarios can positively affect people's health and well-being. However, natural contexts are not always easily accessible. This study investigates the effects of natural and indoor virtual environments (VREs) on psychophysiological and cognitive responses. Following a within-subject design, 34 healthy participants were exposed to two VREs (i.e., a forest and a living room) in a counterbalanced order through a head-mounted display (Oculus Rift). Participants were asked to explore the scenarios and execute a modified version of the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test. Physiological parameters (heart rate, skin conductance level [SCL], and respiration rate) were recorded during the whole session. After the exposure to VREs, participants filled a set of visual analog scales to rate their subjective experience of presence, relaxation, and stress. Participants reported a higher perceived sense of relaxation in the virtual forest. Moreover, their SCLs were significantly higher in this environment, showing that the forest elicited higher physiological arousal than the living room. Furthermore, their SCLs were significantly higher during the attentional task in the virtual living room. The results suggest that a natural virtual environment can make people feel more relaxed and physiologically engaged than an indoor scenario. The latter instead can be linked to a performing venue, as reported for real contexts. However, these changes were not related to modulations of attentional performance.

Effective Social Work Online Education in Response to COVID-19

ABSTRACT Online education has shown consistent growth in social work curricula over the past two decades despite some questions about the effectiveness of virtual environments in teaching critical elements of social work practice and professional competency. With the COVID-19 pandemic, programs have been forced to exclusively utilize online teaching formats. This study explores student and field instructors’ perceptions of the most effective teaching practices during the transition to online teaching. Findings indicate that students preferred asynchronous course content, such as recorded class lectures and discussion boards to live discussions and lectures because of its flexibility. Students completing the practicum process observed significant disruption to traditional social work education, although both students and field supervisors adapted by allowing increased use of video conferencing and telephone practice. Findings indicate clear student preferences and could foster ways to improve e-learning in the future.

A review of the uses of virtual reality in engineering education

AbstractThe use of virtual environments as pedagogical tools within the domain of education has become an increasingly popular phenomenon over the last few decades especially. However, the uses and effects of virtual environments as pedagogical tools within the specific domain of engineering education have not been explored in extensive detail. The limited body of current research regarding the uses of virtual environments in engineering education affords a unique opportunity. This review provides an overview and synthesis of the uses of virtual reality within the domain of engineering education through the systematic analysis of journal articles and conference proceedings published across two databases (IEEE Xplore and Scopus) between 2015 and 2019. In summary, 17 studies were analysed utilising a systematic approach and using a coding scheme including four main categories and 12 binary items. The findings indicate an escalation in the use of virtual classroom environments as supplementary to traditional teaching environments, as well as reported substantial benefits to cognitive and skill‐based learning outcomes. The findings suggest that evaluation metrics and processes that lack clarity, together with unrealistic virtual scenarios and small evaluation sample sizes, may confound comparison and, hence, the reported substantive and beneficial use of virtual reality environments in engineering education. Scholars and educators within the domain of engineering education should continue investigating the uses and merits of virtual reality environments as pedagogical tools, taking these issues into consideration.

The effectiveness of virtual environments in developing collaborative strategies between industrial robots and humans

Testing and implementation of Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) could be dangerous due to the high-speed movements and massive forces generated by industrial robots. Wherever humans and industrial robots share a common workplace, accidents are likely to happen and always unpredictable. This has hindered the development of human robot collaborative strategies as well as the ability of authorities to pass regulations on how humans and robots should work together in close proximities. This paper presents the use of a Virtual Reality digital twin of a physical layout as a mechanism to understand human reactions to both predictable and unpredictable robot motions. A set of established metrics as well as a newly developed Kinetic Energy Ratio metric are used to analyse human reactions and validate the effectiveness of the Virtual Reality environment. It is the aim that Virtual Reality digital twins could inform the safe implementation of Human-Robot Collaborative strategies in factories of the future.

Applicability of Virtual Reality in the Study of Environmental Stress

People’s behavior in the fire circumstances of the high-rise building is a typical study instance of environmental stresses. We replicated this scene in our virtual environment using Unity 3D. The technology creates a virtual environment by combining 3D modeling technology, computer graphics, wide-angle stereo display and a series of hardware and software technologies. The project built a high-rise building fire escape system which providing a highly immersive virtual environment and giving participants a more realistic experience. Virtual reality was used to simulate the fire scene, and data of how people reacted was collected to analyze the credibility and effectiveness of virtual environment on studying environmental stresses.

Effectiveness of a Semi-Immersive Virtual Environment in Understanding Human–Environment Interactions

Virtual environments and related technology generate interest and excitement. Their power is strengthened with empirical evidence of their utility for scientific inquiry and decision-making. This paper reports on a study to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual environment (VE) presentations about issues typical of those facing decision makers in a rapidly growing urban area. The presentations consisted of the explanation and visualization of two phenomena—groundwater overdraft and the urban heat island. The virtual environment utilized in this study, Arizona State University's Decision Theater, is purported to help policy makers and the larger community visualize complex model output and make decisions about scientific issues. To begin to assess these claims, we carried out a user test during which a group of research participants were given two surveys, one before the presentations, to determine a priori understanding, and a second afterwards, with the same questions. This methodology allowed us to carry out within-subjects tests concerning contrasting phenomena, in order to assess two primary hypotheses: (1) knowledge and perceptions of environmental phenomena will change after the viewing, and (2) understanding will vary based on the phenomena in the presentations. Our analysis shows at least some level of support for the hypotheses, with evidence that the virtual environment positively influenced understanding, and that there may be important differences in insight generation based on characteristics of the phenomena represented. Finally, we outline critical areas of future research to further knowledge about the impact of visual VE settings on understanding and decision making.

Training in a Virtual Stereoscopic Environment

This study investigated transfer-of-training for a pick-and-place task in monoscopic, stereoscopic, and real-world environments. Ten training trials were given to 30 subjects in the three environments (10 subjects each). The averages of task completion time in the stereoscopic and real-world environments were less than those in the monoscopic environment. In a post-training real-world trial, there were no differences due to the training environment (including another group of 10 subjects who received no training). Subjects, who had training in the stereoscopic or real-world environments, were more accurate in the placement of cans at near targets than those who received monoscopic or no training. Thus training in a virtual stereoscopic environment was beneficial in terms of task accuracy. The effectiveness of virtual environments may continue to improve as advances in computer hardware enable higher resolution presentations and reduce system lags.

Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire

The effectiveness of virtual environments (VEs) has often been linked to the sense of presence reported by users of those VEs. (Presence is defined as the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another.) We believe that presence is a normal awareness phenomenon that requires directed attention and is based in the interaction between sensory stimulation, environmental factors that encourage involvement and enable immersion, and internal tendencies to become involved. Factors believed to underlie presence were described in the premier issue of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. We used these factors and others as the basis for a presence questionnaire (PQ) to measure presence in VEs. In addition we developed an immersive tendencies questionnaire (ITQ) to measure differences in the tendencies of individuals to experience presence. These questionnaires are being used to evaluate relationships among reported presence and other research variables. Combined results from four experiments lead to the following conclusions: the PQ and ITQ are internally consistent measures with high reliability; there is a weak but consistent positive relation between presence and task performance in VEs; individual tendencies as measured by the ITQ predict presence as measured by the PQ; and individuals who report more simulator sickness symptoms in VE report less presence than those who report fewer symptoms.