Multiplayer collaboration in educational virtual reality games

Recent innovations in Virtual Reality technology has made it more affordable and accessible to consumers and classrooms. This research works toward investigating the impact of VR in a collaborative learning environment as part of a larger cross- platform system. We have explored three primary research objectives: 1) how do we engage players in a cross platform education game 2) is it possible for VR to be one of these platforms effectively and 3) how do we design the game so that the players have to collaborate? For all of these tasks, I helped develop the collaborative aspect of a project called CLEVR, which is a multiplayer game that places one user inside of a biological cell through a VR headset while connecting another on a touch screen tablet. After discussing the progress made on the project and the contribu- tions I made, we discuss the results of various play test opportunities through our design-based iterative research and the conclusions drawn from them. Our results show promise for the impact of VR on education and the effect it could have on the engagement of students as part of a multiplayer cross-platform system.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Vargas, David Anthony

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Eric Klopfer.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/119701

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/119701