CYENS Centre of Excellence
Published December 31, 2018 | Version Accepted pre-print
Conference paper Open

Studying Levels of Presence in a Virtual Environment Simulating Drug Use in Schools: Effect on Different Character Perspectives

Creators

  • 1. Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
  • 2. University of Geneva, Switzerland
  • 3. Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus and Research Centre on Interactive Media Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies, Cyprus

Description

This paper studies the aspect of presence in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment that can be used for training purposes in the education sector and more specifically for teacher training and professional development. During the VR experience trainees
had the chance to view the world from different perspectives through the eyes of different characters appearing in the scene.
The experimental evaluation conducted aims to examine the effect of viewing the experience from different perspectives and
viewpoints in relation to the overall user experience and the level of presence achieved. To accomplish these objectives an
experiment was performed investigating presence and the correlation between presence and different viewpoints/perspectives.
To measure presence a combination of methods were used including two different questionnaires, the use of an eeg device,
EMOTIV EPOC+ and the analysis of heart rates. The results indicate that high levels of presence were recorded and that
increased levels of presence are associated with viewing the VE from a student rather than a teacher perspective.

Notes

This work has been partly supported by the project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 739578 (RISE – Call: H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2) and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Directorate General for European Programmes, Coordination and Development. DOI 10.2312/egve.20181329, Studying Levels of Presence in a Virtual Environment Simulating Drug Use in Schools: Effect on Different Character Perspectives, Christofi, M., Baka, E., Stavroulia, K.E., Michael-Grigoriou, D., Lanitis, A. & Magnenat-Thalmann, ICAT-EGVE 2018 - International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, Bruder, Gerd and Yoshimoto, Shunsuke and Cobb, Sue, 2018, pages 163-170, Copyright ©2018 The Eurographics Association, The Eurographics Association.

Files

2018_ICATEGVE_DrugsSchoolsLevelsOfPresense_asSubmitted.pdf

Files (4.3 MB)

Additional details

Funding

NOTRE – Network for sOcial compuTing REsearch (NOTRE) 692058
European Commission
RISE – Research Center on Interactive Media, Smart System and Emerging Technologies 739578
European Commission

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