Exploring User Experience and Design Opportunities of Desktop Social Virtual Reality for Group Learning Activities

Conducting group learning activities (GLAs), e.g., group discussion and presentation, can improve course outcomes. But when GLAs are carried out online, they may face challenges such as a reduced sense of social presence. Social virtual reality (VR) that enables a group of people to interact in virtual space could better support social presence than the video conferencing systems commonly used for online courses. However, few works explore the use of social VR for online GLAs. In this paper, we conduct a co-design study with five small groups of students in an online course to investigate user experience and design opportunities of desktop-based social VR for GLAs. Participants experience a desktop social VR platform Mozilla Hubs in their group projects and use techniques like storyboarding and prototyping to propose new social VR designs to support GLAs. We contribute design ideas about social VR applications that support various kinds of online GLAs.