Designing Effective Playful Collaborative Science Learning in VR.

How do we design effective immersive VR experiences? Looking Inside Cells is a set of collaborative immersive virtual reality science learning simulations that were designed by applying best practices for learning experience design, taking advantage of the unique affordances of VR for learning. In this paper we describe design features of immersive learning we implemented, including features related to interaction, collaboration, playfulness, and emotional design. We then describe the front-end, client-server communication, and network framework that facilitated these features. We argue that the design of effective VR learning experience requires establishing a link from learning objectives to affordances of VR and, eventually, to design features that serve specific functions in facilitating learning.