Exploring Presence in Virtual Environments: An Examination of Simulated Drug Use in Educational Settings

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. CCS Concepts • Computing methodologies → Virtual reality; • Software and its engineering → Virtual worlds training simulations;