Social Virtual Reality during 2021

1. VIRTUAL
REALITY
LEARNING
ACTIVITIES
Emre Erturk
Principal Lecturer
EIT School of Computing
Daniel Dang
Lecturer
EIT School of Computing
Brad Taylor
Master of IT Student
EIT School of Computing

2. OUTLINE
SOCIAL VR EXPERIMENTS KEY POINTS
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3. SOCIAL VR
• Shared virtual reality
environment
• Can be used without a headset
• Presence, interactivity and
immersion (Matthews et al.,
2021)
• Examples: Mozilla Hubs,
AltspaceVR, VRChat
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4. REMOTE CLASSROOMS
• Video conferencing
• Remote and social presence
concerns (Matthews et al.,
2021; Yoshimura et al., 2020)
• “Zoom Fatigue”
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5. MOZILLA HUBS
• Open source by Mozilla
Foundation
• Online 3D builder (Spoke)
• Share media
• Cloud deployable
• Head-mounted display (HMD),
mobile, and browser access
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6. TRY HUBS
Go to Hubs.Link
Room Code: 287259
https://hub.link/U85zwbb
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7. BRAD & EMRE’S EXPERIMENT
Research Question
What are the differences in student attitudes toward presenting in a
Social VR environment compared to video conferencing?
Hypothesis
Students will have favourable attitudes toward presenting in a Social
VR environment compared to video conferencing.
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8. SOCIAL VR LIT REVIEW
• Platform evaluations (Hopp et al., 2020)
• Comparison with video conferencing for group meetings
(Steinicke et al., 2020)
• Comparison of remote lectures (Yoshimura et al, 2020)
• Virtual poster sessions (Holt et al., 2020)
• Live workshops with group activities (Bredikhina et al., 2020)
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9. OVERVIEW
• Testing session
• Compare student attitudes
• Participants: Keen Computing undergrads
• 3-5 Minute talk on “any subject” with Q&A
• Google Forms questionnaire
• Modified SUS-Presence test based on Yoshimura et al. (2020)
• 10 Likert-scale (1-5) questions; 1 Open response
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10. HUBS TEST
• Pizza!
• Held in lecture room
• 3 participants, 4-5 audience
• Presenter used Oculus Quest HMD
• Hubs meeting room
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11. MOZILLA HUBS
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PRESENTATION ROOM STUDENT PRESENTING

12. PRESENTER WITH HMD
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STUDENT PRESENTING
STUDENT EXPLORING VR

13. GOOGLE MEET
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MEETING STUDENT PRESENTING

14. FINDINGS
• Spatial presence greater in VR
• Social presence equal or greater in Meet
• Video conferencing preferred for presentations
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15. COMPARISON
• Greater spatial presence in VR
• More variation in responses for VR
• Video conferencing more familiar
• VR required greater technical support
• VR less available
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16. METHOD REVIEW
• Too few participants and audience
• Lack of clear virtual classroom rules
• Not purpose-built virtual classroom
• No prior VR training
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17. KEY POINTS
• Technology still emerging
• Benefits with proper implementation
• More experimentation needed
• Social presence can vary
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18. LIMITATIONS
• Small sample size
• Participants IT students only
• Only 1 HMD used at a time
• Varying familiarity with VR
• Limited audience feedback
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19. DANIEL AND EMRE’S
EXPERIMENT
• New Activity for the Website Development Course
• 2-hour Workshop: "Build a VR room to Present Your Website
Project"
• 45min: Learn how to build a VR room with "Mozilla Hubs
• 75 min: Students work and convert their web design document
into a showroom for their website project in order to pitch their
website project idea
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20. MORE ABOUT THE ACTIVITY
• Build a Mozilla Hubs Virtual Reality (VR) room related to the topic of your website.
• Give the room a meaningful name. Display the organization and products or goals.
• The room should have an interesting layout and a short story.
• Add images and/or other multimedia that enhance the room.
• Let the teacher and classmates test the room. Give feedback.
• This activity needs to contribute to: 1) Developing a good design for their website, and
2) Learning about design in general.
• As part of the assignment, each student is asked to write a short essay answer to the two
questions. The answers can be collated and analysed qualitatively, to explore the general
attitudes toward doing this activity.
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21. YOUR THOUGHTS
• Any Questions or Comments
• Volunteers for the Headset
• Discussion around VR & AR
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22. REFERENCES
Bredikhina, L., Sakaguchi, T. & Shirai, A. (2020). Web3D Distance live workshop for children in Mozilla Hubs. The 25th International
Conference on 3D Web Technology, 1–2.
Çoban, M. (2021). Effects of virtual reality learning platforms on usability and presence. In G. Panconesi, G. & M. Guida (Eds.), Handbook of
Research on Teaching With Virtual Environments and AI (pp. 236-262). Hershey PA, USA: IGI Global.
Holt, E. A., Heim, A. B., Tessens, E. & Walker, R. (2020). Thanks for inviting me to the party: Virtual poster sessions as a way to connect in a
time of disconnection. Ecology and Evolution, 10(22), 12423–12430.
Hopp, M., Pfiel, S., Schuster, R. M., Tiefenbacher, F. & Reiner, M. (2020). A debate about implementing immersive technology for higher
education: Pre-study examining the usability of virtual reality for lectures. Human Systems Management, 39(4), 565–571.
Matthews, B., See, Z. S. & Day, J. (2021). Crisis and extended realities: remote presence in the time of COVID-19. Media International
Australia.
Radianti, J., Majchrzak, T. A., Fromm, J. & Wohlgenannt, I. (2020). A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications for higher
education: Design elements, lessons learned, and research agenda. Computers & Education, 147, 103778.
Steinicke, F., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. & Meinecke, A. L. (2020). A First Pilot Study to Compare Virtual Group Meetings using Video
Conferences and (Immersive) Virtual Reality. Symposium on Spatial User Interaction, 1–2.
Yoshimura, A. & Borst, C. W. (2020). Remote instruction in virtual reality: A study of students attending class remotely from home with VR
headsets. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
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