Research on The Educational Courseware Based on VR Content

Abstract

With the development of media technology, virtual reality (VR) technology is widely used in education, medical care, aerospace, entertainment and other fields. Among them, application in teaching courseware is a relatively new topic. Compared with traditional coursewares, virtual games visualized and extruded abstract teaching contents. Thus it strengthened teaching effects and expanded dimensions of learning. We hypothesized that virtual coursewares could increase users'sense of presence and enhance their focus. In this study, virtual courseswares were compared with traditional coursewares. At the same time, its feasibility and advantages of application were analyzed through literature researching, practical researching and statistical analysis from questionnaires. Furthermore, we designed a teaching system for VR coursewares and explored its performance in multidimensional and contextual teaching situations. It was found that Virtual coursewares have changed the boring traditional teaching methods. The teaching content was displayed in the form of three-dimensional images, videos and sounds through VR equipment, which effectively improved teaching efficiency. In addition, the feasibility of virtual courseware was demonstrated through factor analysis in questionnaires. Compared with traditional teaching courseware, VR coursewares can attract students' attention and improve learning efficiency. It provides a good example and is valuable for the research of virtual realities in education.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research background

With the rapid development of virtual reality (VR) technology, novel technologies such as augmented reality technology and mixed reality technology continue to emerge. They are applied in various fields, such as education, medical care and entertainment. In VR assisted education system, virtual coursewares were utilized to built a virtual environment for users who can fully enjoy the vivid, immersive and interactive three-dimensional (3D) virtual atmosphere. It different from the traditional boring teaching courseware, provides a realistic-like learning experience for users [1]. In addition, as an innovative teaching aid tool, it provides a one-to-one or one-to-many interactive environment for users, thus can effectively improve users’ sense of presence and concentration compared with traditional teaching courseware.

1.2 Research purposes

The purpose of this research is to change the one-way teaching method in traditional teaching courseware, and analyze the structure, vision, sound and other functions of virtual teaching courseware. In order to make up for the shortcomings of traditional teaching coursewares, we will vividly simulate the teaching courseware with virtual reality technology in the hope of enhancing users’ interests and focus in learning. With the realizing of deep-immersive learning, users’ sensitivity to learning contents is supposed to be increased, thus a deep understanding could be achieved [2].

Users’ experience, interactive animation and emotional design have been investigated deeper and deeper in the researching of education system based on VR technologies. Humanities’ demands were divided into three levels in “Emotional design” by Donald A. Norman, which are instinctive level, behavioral level and reflective level. The research of design factors in VR teaching coursewares enables users to immerse in the teaching content by using VR equipment such as helmet, gamepad and tracking sensors. It realized both people-to-people interactions and people-to-object interactions in the behavioral level. The teaching content could be understood visually and directly, thus realizing the goal of teaching.

1.3 Research method

This paper uses literature research methods, practical research methods, and survey research methods as the primary methods for researching design elements of VR teaching courseware. Through factor analysis, this research organized and summarized information of VR and teaching courseware. We also researched on the feasibility, application advantages, and critical development methods of VR technology in teaching courseware design. At the same time, the reliability analysis reflected the reliability and stability of the data. A clear idea for the design of VR teaching courseware using VR technology was established. Moreover, this paper conducted a detailed feasibility analysis of the system design, fully integrating the available data in the literature to get the final design in case analysis.

2. THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION

2.1 Analysis of traditional teaching courseware

The traditional teaching courseware transfers knowledge to learners in an easy-to-understand way through books, paintings, radios and videos. The traditional teaching courseware is unilateral, and the content is limited to books. Because of the lack of interaction, the learning process is monotonous and learns will lose their initial interest. At the same time, learner's concentration is limited with traditional teaching courseware. On the other hand, VR teaching pays more attention to the sensation of teaching gamification. It designed the game pattern according to the requirement of teaching, including the aspects of sensory, operation system and interface design, thus realizing the application of VR technology in teaching.

2.2 Analysis of virtual reality teaching courseware

VR teaching is interactive, immersive, and perceptible [3]. Perceptibility is the essence, and interactivity and immersiveness are essential elements for VR teaching to be attractive. Teaching based on VR technology has following characteristics:

(1) Three dimensional and dynamic teaching scene was generated, and human sensory included hearing, touching and moving was simulated in VR teaching courseware (Fig. 1). With the user interface and VR equipment, users can understand the teaching content intuitively.

Fig. 1. VR teaching structure diagram.

(2) VR technology provides an immersive experience for users with its realistic-like design and easy-handled interface (Fig. 2).

Fig 2. Teaching simulation experience.

(3) The user interface design in VR technology is different. Compared with traditional teaching courseware, Non-Diegetic User Interface (UI), spatial UI, Meta UI and diegetic UI were included, which eliminated the concept of screen in traditional teaching methods [4].

2.3 Research on Somatosensory interaction

The design of somatosensory interactive VR teaching courseware is designed to fully meet the psychological needs and behaviors of learners (Fig. 3). VR teaching courseware allows students to enhance their learning experience through exposure to 3D models and enables students to use 3D models to enhance their visual perception of real situations. Students can observe 3D models through various perspectives to enhance their understanding of real things. For example, a VR teaching system can use virtual elements such as particles, vectors, and symbols to allow learners to observe abstract scientific concepts such as airflow or magnetic fields and difficult-to-observe phenomena with the naked eye. With the support of mobile devices, wireless networks and local registration technology, the mobile VR system can enable ubiquitous cooperative and contextual learning with the help of computer simulation technology, games, models and virtual objects in the natural environment. The characteristics of this system include convenience, interactivity, contextuality, connectivity, and personalization [5].

Fig. 3. User somatosensory design.

The VR teaching system cultivates students' intuition by providing instant feedback and voice or non-voice hints. The somatosensory interactivity can give learners a sense of existence, enhance their intuition, and improve learners' learning concentration. The immersive somatosensory interactive environment transfers learning content to be things in the real world, promoting the development of situational learning methods [6].

3. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

3.1 Aim of design

The purpose of this research is to change the traditional paper-based teaching method, to carry out structured, visualized, sound, and functional design research on the teaching content based on VR technology, to make up for the shortcomings of the one-way installation method in traditional teaching, and to achieve more learning space Dimensions [7]. In exploring interactive teaching applications, the research on user experience, interactive animation, and inspirational design related to this has become more in-depth. The design and research of VR teaching enable learners to control the teaching game through hardware devices such as virtual reality helmets, gamepads, tracking sensors, etc, interact with the game content in a fun, intuitive understanding of the teaching content achieve the ultimate goal of teaching.

3.2 Design research

Virtual reality can create a real teaching scene, allowing learners to accept the teaching guidance of the teacher in a virtualized scene [8]. It can also be designed according to the learner's interests and hobbies to achieve the purpose of teaching [9]. Therefore, this research will carry out related VR design based on the existing technology while combining with its own advantages.

1) Conduct in-depth theoretical research on the unity of traditional education and existing teaching methods; use the characteristics of VR technology to drive the characteristics of education, and map the teaching knowledge points to game elements (Fig. 4)

Fig. 4. VR teaching courseware elements.

2) Use the Unity3D platform to build a virtual reality education platform to simulate teaching classroom scenes (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5. VR teaching classroom.

3) Explore how to use artistic methods to design UI and gamified teaching content to better magnify the advantages of VR teaching courseware in four aspects, including model, sound, material, and vision (Fig. 6-7).

Fig. 6. UI interface.

Fig. 7. Teaching courseware scene.

4) Use HTC VIVE as a VR helmet to achieve simulated 3D effects and improve user's sense of immersion.

5) Explore how to use peripherals such as Arduino and Leap Motion to carry out related designs to increase user's immersive experience and realize trigger responsed interaction.

4. DATA ANALYSIS

4.1 Hypothesis verification

In this experiment, a questionnaire from 120 testers was collected. The problem is that VR teaching courseware can improve the concentration of students more than traditional teaching courseware. 120 users used virtual reality technology to experience virtualized teaching, and did not use virtual reality technology, and then used the Like rating scale to give a score between 1-5. (1=has an impact, 5=has a great impact).

(1) Null hypothesis (H0): In teaching, the difference between using VR teaching courseware on students' concentration and not using VR teaching courseware is zero. H0: U1-U2=0

(2) Alternative hypothesis (H1): In teaching, the difference between using VR teaching courseware on students’ concentration and not using VR teaching courseware is not zero. H1: U1-U2≠0

4.2 T-test analysis

The measurement results using 120 standard samples showed that the cognitive accuracy score of the control group was 7.53, while the cognitive accuracy score of the experimental group using the VR teaching system was 8.20. (Table 1). With or without using the VR teaching system, the effect of the user's learning efficiency is 0.650, and the p-value of 0.023 is less than 0.05 (Table 2). Therefore, rejecting the null hypothesis that the mean values are equal, the following conclusions are drawn: VR teaching systems can have a beneficial effect on the learning efficiency of users.

Table 1. Paired Samples Statistics.

Table 2. Paired Samples Test.

5. RESULT ANALYSIS

5.1 Descriptive analysis

This questionnaire survey adopts the form of the online survey, mainly through the professional questionnaire survey platform "Questionnaire Star" to publish the electronic version of the questionnaire to conduct the survey. In this paper, a questionnaire survey is designed according to the impact of the use of the VR teaching system on the learning efficiency of users. As a result, a total of 120 questionnaires were submitted and distributed. After manual and machine surveys, the questionnaires with untrue and incomplete information were excluded, and a total of 111 valid questionnaires were returned. Among them, 61 were men, accounting for 54.95%, and 50 were women, accounting for 45.05%. 45 elementary school students, 40.54%, middle school students 26, 23.42 %, high school students 18, 16.22%, college students 12, 10.81%, master's 7 students, 6.3%, doctoral students 3, 2.7%.

5.2 Factor and validity analysis

The influencing factors were extracted for this research, and factor analysis and reliability analysis were carried out. (Table 3). Data compiled through SPSS analysis and EXCEL showed that the KMO and Bartlet verification results of the influencing factors of the VR teaching courseware on improving the concentration of students showed that, KMO value is 0.709, more significant than 0.5, P-value <0.05, indicating that it is suitable for factor analysis.

Table 3. Factor analysis and reliability analysis results.

Factor analysis extracted three factors. As can be seen from the following table, the accumulation based on the feature value greater than 1 is 78.774%, which is greater than 50%, indicating that the three dimensions currently explored can better represent the actual data. Taking into account the questionnaire items, the three extracted factors are named: (factor 1) feasibility, the design of the difficulty of VR courseware content, which is conducive to the smooth progress of teaching, (factor 2) effectiveness, the situational teaching of VR courseware Improve students' learning enthusiasm, (factor 3) innovation, gamification of the knowledge structure, so that the abstract concepts of the teaching content are physically output, and the students' concentration in listening to the class is promoted.

The result analysis shows that KMO=0.709, which is greater than 0.7, indicating a specific connection between the structural design elements, visual design elements, and sound design elements in the VR teaching courseware in the questionnaire design. Sig.<0.001, which can be seen from The variable and the dependent variable are correlated, proving that the VR teaching courseware has substantial use-value in enhancing the concentration of students.

5.3 Reliability Statistics and Correlation analysis

Generally speaking, the reliability of questionnaires mainly depends on Alpha (a coefficient), a<0.7 indicates that the reliability of the designed questionnaire is unreliable, 0.7<a<0.8 indicates that the questionnaire has a certain degree of reliability, 0.8<a<0.9 indicates that the questionnaire is reliable. The reliability is excellent. It can be seen from (Table 4). that a=0.817, indicating that the application of VR teaching courseware has a high degree of reliability in this research.

Table 4. Results of reliability statistics.

In order to further study the impact of VR teaching courseware on improving students' concentration, relevant analysis was carried out. The results of correlation analysis show that there is no correlation between the feasibility of (Table 5). factor 1, the effectiveness of factor 2, and the innovation of factor 3 (P>0.05), indicating a reasonable degree of discrimination between the factors.

Table 5. Results of correlation analysis

6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH

Virtual reality has a vast development space in the teaching field. The use of virtual reality technology has changed the ideology of education. The new educational concept based on VR technology will strengthen the teaching effect and expand the learning space. The immersion, fidelity, and interactivity of VR teaching make up for the shortcomings of reading and operation in traditional teaching, visualizing, and three-dimensional abstract learning content, thereby enhancing the user’s sense of presence and thinking concentration in learning, and can be The new teaching method brings users a real-time virtual experience effect.

Future research: Driven by the development of virtual reality technology, there are considerable challenges in the design of VR teaching systems. In the future, according to the new technologies brought by technology, the optimization of game content, and the enhancement of somatosensory effects, technology and art will be combined. Art elements are added to the game scene to improve the digital emotional world of the teaching game, thereby promoting the interaction and interest between the user and the teaching content.