Bite-Sized Virtual Reality Learning Applications: A Pattern-Based Immersive Authoring Environment

Abstract

Bite-sized learning is a current educational trend in which educators divide content into relatively small, easily comprehensible chunks, called nuggets. In this paper, we introduce an authoring toolkit that relies on VR implementation of nuggets and show that a nugget-based approach is also facilitating the authoring of VR learning content. In particular, we present Immersive Nugget Tiles (IN-Tiles), a novel authoring toolkit aimed at authors who are not experts in VR. With IN-Tiles, manipulating VR nuggets and authoring VR learning content can be directly accomplished within a virtual environment allowing authors to immediately experience the results of their authoring efforts in VR. We discuss the underlying concepts of IN-Tiles, specifically how to visualize VR nuggets in a virtual environment and how to present affordances that support authoring and manipulating VR nuggets. We report the results of a user study where we evaluated the IN-Tiles toolkit and compared it to a conventional 2D authoring environment that also relies on component-based VR. The results support the hypothesis that nugget-based immersive authoring tools are suitable to create bitesized VR applications successfully and that authoring directly in VR has an added value particularly for authors who are no IT specialists.