Home // IARIA Congress 2023, The 2023 IARIA Annual Congress on Frontiers in Science, Technology, Services, and Applications // View article
Authors:
Gerhard Hube
Kevin Pfeffel
Nicholas Mueller
Keywords: Virtual Learning Environments; Online Teaching; Tertiary Education; 2D Environments; Desktop Virtual Reality; Zoom; gather.town.
Abstract:
This is a follow-up to the study "2D Virtual Learning Environment for Tertiary Education", which was carried out in 2022. The main focus was to analyse the suitability of a 2D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for tertiary education using the desktop based 2D immersive environment 'gather.town'. The study was conducted with a selected course of a Master's programme at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt over one semester. Accompanying the course, subjects were asked to complete the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLLES) questionnaire weekly for analysis, and additional qualitative interviews were conducted afterwards. The descriptive analysis suggests that the immersive 2D environment used is holistically suitable as a learning environment in the tertiary sector, due to high and very high values for presence, participation, collaboration and active learning. For this paper, two seminars were conducted using Virtual Learning Environments. One of them in ‘gather.town’ and one in ‘Zoom’. In addition to the OLLES questionnaire and the qualitative interviews, the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) was also queried. Additionally, the exam grades were also collected as a performance measure. This made it possible to compare the different learning environments. When comparing the questionnaires, only some dimensions showed a difference between Virtual 2D Learning Environments and classic video conferencing systems. In contrast, with exam grades, subjects were found to perform better with Virtual 2D Learning Environments than with traditional videoconferencing systems.
Pages: 48 to 57
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2023
Publication date: November 13, 2023
Published in: conference
ISBN: 978-1-68558-089-6
Location: Valencia, Spain
Dates: from November 13, 2023 to November 17, 2023