An Exploratory Study of Social Presence in a Collaborative Desktop Virtual Reality (VR) Land Surveying Task

This work-in-progress research paper investigates the role of virtual reality (VR) in engineering education lab courses. While there are ongoing debates about the feasibility and practicality of deploying VR on a large scale for engineering instruction, there has been growing evidence in support of the efficacy of VR to promote certain types of engineering instruction[1]. Most importantly, it is essential that we understand students’ social interactions in VR-based learning environments. This work-in-progress explores patterns of social presence indicators during a collaborative desktop virtual reality (VR) Land surveying task. Participants were asked to think-aloud and video record their interactions and conversations while completing learning tasks using a desktop VR environment. The desktop program was a computer program that simulates land surveying. The qualitative data analysis was based on the framework of social presence by Rourke et al. [2]. The study reported on indicators, frequencies and patterns or themes of social presence observed during student’s interactions with one another in the learning environment. This study also highlighted potential implications of this observation for future research on students’ social experiences in VR-based engineering education.