Comparing Visualizations to Help a Teacher Effectively Monitor Students in a VR Classroom
Yitoshee Rahman, Arun K. Kulshreshth, Christoph W. Borst · 2023
Educational virtual reality (VR) applications are the most recent addition to the learning management tools in this modern age. Due to health concerns, financial concerns, and convenience, people are looking for alternate ways to teach and learn. An efficient VR-based teaching interface could enhance student engagement, learning outcomes, and overall educational experience. Typically, teachers in a VR classroom do not have a way to know what students are doing since students are not visible. An efficient teaching interface should include some mechanism for a teacher to monitor students and alert the teacher if a student is trying to catch the attention of the teacher. An ideal interface would be one, which helps a teacher effectively monitor students while teaching without increasing the cognitive load of the teacher. In this paper, we present a comparative study of two such student monitoring interfaces. In the first interface, the student activity related information is shown using icons near the student avatar (representing a student in the VR environment). While in the second interface, a set of centrally-arranged emoticon-like visual indicators are present in addition to the student avatar, and the student activity related information is shown near the student emoticon. We present a detailed user experiment comparing the two interfaces in terms of teaching management, student monitoring capability, cognitive load, and user preference. Participants preferred and performed better with Indicator-located interface over avatar-located interface.