Instructional Guidance in Extended Reality for Learning

Abstract

Experiential learning is the process of learning through experience or more specifically “learning through reflection on doing”. These experiences can be simulated in Extended Reality (XR) systems– interactive environments generated by computer technology combining real and virtual worlds. Such systems have shown to be excellent tools for providing guidance to teach different skills and activities. In this research, we introduce a comprehensive design space grounded in (i) XR technologies, and (ii) theoretical underpinnings of experiential learning and guidance. We use this design space to describe key design decisions in prior work and elucidate existing gaps. Employing the design space, we intend to build an adaptive, personalised instructional guidance system in XR, which offers various levels of guidance that adapt to users’ learning progress. We utilise the Kolb’s experiential learning cycle considering all four stages and transitions within it. With XR technologies, we offer the environment that can provide guidance to support learners to move spontaneously from one stage to another in the experiential learning cycle and further progress on the learning spiral. It is the latter that we explore in this research by adopting potential learning scenarios such as language learning and spatial navigation. We attempt to investigate how different factors of instructional guidance, such as the amount (minimal guidance, full guidance, and adaptive guidance) and the type (from direct instructions to associative models based examples), would affect the experiential learning process and learning outcomes of different learning scenarios in XR environments.