VRFlex: Towards the Design of a Virtual Reality Hyflex Class Model

Social distancing requirements urged by the COVID-19 pandemic along with high transportation cost reduced inperson meetings significantly in recent times. In consequence, many people are seeking for virtual reality (VR) to feel a similar experiences of visiting and enjoying places that are unaccessible. VR has immense success in domains, such as automotive industry, healthcare, tourism, entertainment, sports etc. It is observed that traditional online synchronous and asynchronous class structure is not quite effective in engaging students in class participation and discussion. Therefore, we introduce a novel VRbased class structure that will simulate the classroom environment for students participating a class virtually. We equipped the classroom with several internet of things (IoT) devices that collects information from the classroom, analyze those information, and determine some interesting information to display for the students participating the class virtually. We design a classroom prototype and validate the prototype with simulation. The result of the simulation shows that such a VR-based classroom model is feasible and can introduce in classrooms.