In online lectures, learners often passively watch an instructor deliver a one-way lecture, which can lower their engagement and make it hard to sustain their motivation to learn. In contrast, lectures in which the instructor and learners interact through dialogue are considered effective for promoting active learning and maintaining motivation.
In this research, we developed a VR system that lets a learner take part as one of the learners in a virtual, interactive classroom. Our aim is to investigate whether being surrounded by dialogue between the instructor and other learners can improve a learner’s motivation through conformity, even when the learner does not personally take part in the conversation.
System Overview
The figure above shows the positions of the learner’s avatar, the instructor character, and the other learner characters. As the VR environment, we built a lecture hall with a stage. The instructor character stands on the stage, while the learner’s own avatar and 17 other learner characters form the audience seated before it, with the other characters arranged around the learner so that they remain visible throughout the experience.
For the experimental lecture, we chose the topic “Why is the sky blue?” and created two types of lecture video: an interactive version, in which the instructor poses questions to the other learner characters, and a one-way (lecture-only) version, in which the instructor simply explains the topic. In the interactive version, the other learner characters answer the instructor’s questions and ask the instructor questions of their own, while performing lip-sync and gesture animations that match their speech. This lets the learner feel as if they are taking part in a lecture where lively dialogue is unfolding around them.
By presenting this kind of dialogue around the learner, the system is designed to encourage the learner to align with the motivation of the surrounding learners through conformity, thereby improving their motivation to learn.