Scenario authoring model for Virtual Reality Training Systems with variability: A pedagogy-oriented approach

Virtual Reality (VR) learning environments offer numerous educational advantages. By immersing learners in a virtual environment, they can benefit from an experiential approach to learning material that might be dangerous or inaccessible in real life. However, their creation requires VR expertise, making it rare for teachers, or domain experts, to have control over the authoring of learning scenarios. Virtual Reality Training Systems have been proposed to adapt the learning experience based on the modeling of pedagogical primitives. While these models are powerful for scenario authoring, they still face limitations in authoring pedagogical strategies, authoring over time, and accessibility for domain experts. In this context, this thesis explores authoring strategies and models for VR to enable domain experts to directly author scenarios of Virtual Reality Training Systems, considering pedagogical requirements and variability Specifically, we explore executable scenario representations: based on domain experts’ specifications, that foster pedagogical variability, and support an authoring process that can happen over time. Then, we evaluate the first two points through two user studies with undergraduate students.