Learning in immersed collaborative virtual environments: design and implementation

Immersive virtual environments hold unexplored potential to scaffold and stimulate learning in multiple ways for the purpose of increasing potential learning gains. Yet, the number of implementations in educational settings remains very limited. One reason for limited implementation of immersive virtual environment applications may be a lack of recommendations for their effective design. Building on an extensive theoretical framework, this paper provides such recommendations, specific to immersive educational settings. The recommendations are divided into strategies to optimize cognitive load, foster collaborative learning, leverage platform-specific affordances, mitigate platform-specific limitations and to obtain additional benefits. We illustrate the implementation of these recommendations using a novel collaborative virtual reality environment shown to yield learning gains in two prior studies. Moreover, we detail how a non-invasive and cost-effective feature of automated performance analysis can monitor learning gains in collaborative virtual reality environments. The recommendations based on the example of a collaborative virtual reality environment pave the way for more such implementations to maximize benefits for learners and educators alike.