Designing a Virtual Reality Learning Management System
Designing a Virtual Reality Learning Management System

Summary/Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that has already applications in many areas like gaming, entertainment, training, health and education. Recent advancements allow average consumers to dive into highly immersive experiences using head-mounted displays (HMDs) for just around a couple of hundred dollars and even lower with headsets compatible with smartphones. Expecting more than 1 million HMD devices by the end of 2017, VR will have a great impact in the next few years, thus more and more teachers are interested to use VR experiences in class to increase motivation and help students to better understand theoretical concepts. If access to VR equipment and costs will eventually not be a problem soon, building collaborative and interactive applications for VR is still requiring graphics programming knowledge alongside networking and others. For this reason, many of today's applications are limited to 360 degree photos or videos, exploration applications with little to no interaction, with no collaborative or rich interactivity features. This paper describes the design of a VR learning management system (LMS) that will help teachers to easily build and publish VR applications for private or public multiuser classes with a rich library of educational resources like buildings, desks, interaction scripts and even entire laboratories as a starter content. The system is managed through a web-based interface with VR activities, assessments and live or offline events. An initial prototype that uses Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) as a level editor is also described, currently being tested with HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Gear VR HMDs and with some web-browsers.

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