Demonstration of ObserVAR: Visualization System for Observing Virtual Reality Users using Augmented Reality

Santawat Thanyadit, Parinya Punpongsanon, and Ting-Chuen Pong. 2020. Demonstration of ObserVAR: Visualization System for Observing Virtual Reality Users using Augmented Reality. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 XR (SA '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 13, 1–2. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3415256.3421495.SA '20: SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 [December 4 - 13, 2020

Substituting Teleportation Visualization for Collaborative Virtual Environments

Santawat Thanyadit, Parinya Punpongsanon, Thammathip Piumsomboon, and Ting-Chuen Pong. 2020. Substituting Teleportation Visualization for Collaborative Virtual Environments. Symposium on Spatial User Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 31, 1–2. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3385959.3422698.SUI '20: Symposium on Spatial User Interaction [October 30 - November 1, 2020

Tutor In-sight: Guiding and Visualizing Students Attention with Mixed Reality Avatar Presentation Tools

Remote conferencing systems are increasingly used to supplement or even replace in-person teaching. However, prevailing conferencing systems restrict the teacher’s representation to a webcam live-stream, hamper the teacher’s use of body-language, and result in students’ decreased sense of co-presence and participation. While Virtual Reality (VR) systems may increase student engagement, the teacher may not have the time or expertise to conduct the lecture in VR. To address this issue and bridge the requirements between students and teachers, we have developed Tutor In-sight, a Mixed Reality (MR) avatar augmented into the student’s workspace based on four design requirements derived from the existing literature, namely: integrated virtual with physical space, improved teacher’s co-presence through avatar, direct attention with auto-generated body language, and usable workfow for teachers. Two user studies were conducted from the perspectives of students and teachers to determine the advantages of Tutor In-sight in comparison to two existing conferencing systems, Zoom (video-based) and Mozilla Hubs (VR-based). The participants of both studies favoured Tutor In-sight. Among others, this main fnding indicates that Tutor Insight satisfed the needs of both teachers and students. In addition, the participants’ feedback was used to empirically determine the four main teacher requirements and the four main student requirements in order to improve the future design of MR educational tools

How easy is it to eXtend Reality? A Usability Study of Authoring Toolkits

Extended Reality (XR) has the potential to be a very successful teaching tool because it enables students to engage with a learning environment that incorporates both physical and virtual objects. Nevertheless, preparing an XR lesson requires technical skills and pedagogical storytelling, which might be challenging for many teachers who lack relevant knowledge. As a solution, support systems such as XR Lesson Authoring Toolkits (XRLATKs) are needed to provide educators with the resources and tools necessary to create effective and engaging XR lessons. The goal of this paper is to describe a mixed-method usability evaluation of MirageXR, an interactive XRLATK prototype. Ten participants were instructed to assume the perspective of a teacher and create an XR lesson with MirageXR. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted to gather feedback. The empirical data were analysed to contribute to the development of MirageXR

Digital Divide, Local and Global? Surveying Augmented Reality Educational Usage in Europe and South America

Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to enhance students’ learning experiences. To deploy AR as educational tool, access to the requisite infrastructure and readiness of teachers are basic conditions to be met. The lack thereof is the digital divide that can undermine the opportunity and ability to use AR educational applications (AREAs) for students and teachers. Such issues were identified in a survey with a sample of European teachers on their educational usage of AR. We aimed to study the digital divide more globally by running the same survey with teachers in South America. We collected 123 valid responses from ten South American countries. Comparing the results of the two datasets showed that the teachers sampled from both continents were facing the challenges of the digital divide to utilise AREAs. We discussed how these challenges could be addressed to allow both, teachers and students, to benefit from AR as educational tool