Training in IVR: investigating the effect of instructor design on social presence and performance of the VR user

Abstract

We investigate instructor representations (IRs) in the context of virtual trainings with head mounted displays (HMD). Despite the recently increased industry and research focus on virtual training in immersive virtual reality (IVR), the effect of IRs on the performer (VR user) has received little attention. We present the results of a study (N=33), evaluating the effect of three IRs - webcam, avatar and sound-only - on social presence (SP) and performance (PE) of the VR user during task completion. Our results show that instructor representation has an effect on SP and that, contrary to our assumption based on prior work, it affects performance negatively.