VREdu: A Framework for Interactive Immersive Lectures using Virtual Reality

Abstract

In the current education system, we expect the comprehension level of all the students in a classroom to be same. However, this is not the case. There are many factors that may affect the comprehension of lectures in the classroom including class size, visibility of the whiteboard, student's level of concentration, student's level of comprehension to name a few. Our main aim is to find a better way to offer the best education experience for students using the latest innovative solutions in technology. During our survey of Virtual Reality (VR) applications, we identified several readily available applications most of which were related to either medical education, tourism or other domains of sciences. None of the applications were available for general education where a complete classroom is transported into virtual reality. In this paper, we developed a VR framework that enhances the learning experience of students who face difficulties in the classroom. Moreover, we developed a complete prototype system to validate the framework. The proposed framework makes learning immersive, interactive and narrative offering enhanced motivation to students. The prototype system setup involves setting up a camera in the classroom to capture the whiteboard. Visuals from the whiteboard augmented with the course material (lecture slides) are compiled together to create a virtual space for the students. Students can interact with the virtual classroom by a provided set of tools in the virtual space. The VR application is developed using Unity 3D Engine and interaction is implemented using a handheld Bluetooth device.