Quantifying the Benefits of Immersion for Procedural Training
Abstract
Training is one of the most important and widely-used applications of immersive
Virtual Reality (VR). Research has shown that Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs)
are beneficial for training motor activities and spatial activities, but it is unclear whether
immersive VEs are beneficial for purely mental activities, such as memorizing a
procedure. In this thesis, we present two experiments to identify benefits of immersion
for a procedural training process. The first experiment is a between-subjects experiment
comparing two levels of immersion in a procedural training task. For the higher level of
immersion, we used a large L-shaped projection display. We used a typical laptop display
for the lower level of immersion. We asked participants to memorize two procedures: one
simple and the other complex. We found that the higher level of immersion resulted in
significantly faster task performance and reduced error for the complex procedure. As
result of the first experiment we performed a controlled second experiment. We
compared two within-subjects variables namely environment and location under various
treatments formed by combination of three between-subject variables namely Software
Field Of View (SFOV), Physical FOV, Field Of Regard (FOR). We found that SFOV is
the most essential component for learning a procedure efficiently using IVEs. We
hypothesize that the higher level of immersion helped users to memorize the complex
procedure by providing enhanced spatial cues, leading to the development of an accurate
mental map that could be used as a memory aid.
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- Masters Theses [19642]