Fully immersive learning with virtual reality for assessing students in art history

Abstract Immersive learning systems using consumer grade headsets for virtual reality (VR) software can now reach the classroom. VR represents an important step toward situated learning for bringing realistic experiences to show to students different types of content the way it appears in real life. With the three-dimensional effect, it adds an immersive dimension that can bring the student into a unique environment that is directly connected to the learning content. While VR experiences can be helpful in educational settings, they must satisfy the learning objectives of the course and the specific needs of the students. In this paper, we propose a customizable VR application for displaying paintings for their analysis, and their associated questions designed for instructors in art history. To improve the accessibility and adaptivity to instructors and specific learning materials, we propose the definition of the paintings’ characteristics and the questionnaires associated with the paintings in the JSON open-standard file format, facilitating application changes without any prior programming knowledge. We compare the proposed VR modality with a web-based application on a computer desktop with 35 undergraduate students with art history experience. In both modalities, we assess the workload and usability; the VR sickness symptoms and the motivation in the VR condition. The results indicate better usability and lower workload with the VR condition. While there are no differences in terms of students’ performance for answering the questions, 77% of students prefer the VR condition. The Reduced Instructional Materials Motivation Survey shows a high motivation in the student population. Finally, the system evaluation supports the conclusion that the proposed VR system can be deployed in the art history classroom as the system has a high usability and medium workload.