As a passionate User Experience Design student at Loughborough University, I have developed my UX research, empathy, critical thinking, and usability skills. My expertise is in prototyping, creative problem solving, and analytical thinking. My go to platform is Figma.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for engaging alternatives to in-person education. With advancements in technology, Virtual Reality (VR) emerged as a potential solution. Inspired by research on social presence in virtual environments (Lege, 2024) and classroom layouts (Hanaysha et al., 2023), this project explores the impact of VR classroom design on student engagement and social presence. Qualitative user interviews revealed a preference for cluster layouts to facilitate collaboration. This is shown below.
This investigation is guided by three key research questions:
The prototype design process followed the five phases of design thinking:
User testing involved quantitative scoring of 36 statements per prototype (1-5 scale) and qualitative exit interviews. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS. A within-subject design alternated prototype order to minimize knowledge transfer effects. The 21 participants were current university students or recent graduates, with 2 having also participated in the qualitative user interviews. The statements are shown below and ‘my partner’ was replaced with ‘the group’ given that these were group sessions.
The number of the participants was calculated to be 34, although given the time constraints and the availability of participants, only 21 participants were recruited for the user testing as mentioned above. The screenshot of the GPower tool which was used to calculate the number of participants is shown below.
The social presence questionnaire revealed intriguing findings. Of the six measures assessed (each with six corresponding statements), four showed significant differences between the Microsoft Teams and FrameVR prototypes. Contrary to initial expectations based on the literature review and qualitative user interviews, the Microsoft Teams prototype scored higher on these measures. This could be attributed to participants’ familiarity with the platform and the ability to see each other’s video feeds, fostering a sense of connection. These measures were; Co-Presence, Perceived Affective Understanding, Perceived Emotional Interdependence, and Perceived Behavioral Interdependence. The results are shown below in 2 images.
However, observations during the VR prototype testing suggest untapped potential. Participants exhibited genuine engagement and interaction within the virtual environment. It’s possible that incorporating VR headsets and enabling the display of facial expressions in the VR world could further enhance social presence, potentially surpassing even the scores of the familiar Microsoft Teams environment.
Furthermore, the provision of a virtual whiteboard sparked increased engagement in three out of five group sessions, highlighting the importance of interactive tools in fostering collaboration within VR learning spaces. An example of this is shown below.
Statistical analysis of the six social presence measures was conducted using paired samples t-tests and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank tests to assess the significance of the observed differences between the two prototypes.
