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This preliminary study examined how users leveraged three different types of signaling elements in Scale Worlds, an immersive virtual reality (IVR) application designed to improve size and scale cognition. Signaling elements, which are instructional cues in the form of graphics, colors, sounds, or text in IVR, may improve learning outcomes by enhancing related cognitive processes. However, it is unclear the extent to which learners utilize these signaling elements in practice. A think-aloud protocol was used to examine how participants engaged with signaling elements, with thematic analysis suggesting that numerical measures were a particularly salient cue for conceptualizing the size and scale of entities in IVR. These findings can guide design decisions for future work on educational IVR in the context of size and scale cognition or STEM education, as implementing numerical measures to facilitate mathematical reasoning in IVR environments may bolster learning outcomes related to numeracy and conceptual understanding. 

Designers often address the continuity of user experiences across various media platforms. Features are the focus of media development. But the media-dependency of features means that truly preserving the essence of one feature across media platforms, in a process of cross-media translation, can result in superficially dissimilar features. We describe function mapping as an aid in this translation, in which design features are derived from theoretical assertions, and in turn an understanding of underlying functions permits the translation of features to other media platforms. We demonstrate this in a case study of translation from a VR installation, to portable VR, and then to a website. We also compare similar environments on the same media platform (i.e., two websites), one which was developed through function mapping, and the other which was not. This crystallizes the impact of function mapping, which achieves a theoretical form of equivalency across media platforms. 

Awe is a transformative emotion associated with positive educational and psychological outcomes, and is caused by experiences of vastness that induce accommodation. Vast VR scenes have been found to elicit awe. We examined self-reported causes of awe among grade 3–8 students — a previously unstudied age group regarding awe — in a virtual environment portraying entities over 20 orders of magnitude from atom to Sun. Most students reported feeling awe, around half specifically enough to be coded based on a priori categories drawn from the literature. Vastness of scale (including both large and small entities, and large differences in scale) was the most common cause of awe. Surprisingly, no student responses were related to accommodation. Vastness of evolution and degree of immersion were identified as novel causes of awe. Thus, even young children can experience awe in VR, opening possibilities for productive VR in education at the elementary school level. 

Feedback-based iterative refinement is important in the development of any human-computer interface. The present work aims to evaluate and iteratively refine an immersive learning environment called Scale Worlds (SW), delivered via a head-mounted display (HMD). SW is a virtual learning environment encompassing scientific entities of a wide range of sizes that enables students an embodied experience while learning size and scale. Five usability experts performed think aloud while carrying out four interactive tasks in SW and compared three different design options during A/B testing. Improvement features based on the feedback from an earlier SW usability evaluation as well as HMD-specific features were examined. Usability experts completed the post-study system usability questionnaire, the NASA task load index, and a bipolar laddering survey that collected subjective perception of specific SW features. Results show that the progress panel (an improvement feature) was informative while the instructions (another improvement feature) caused clutter. The experts indicated clear usability preferences during A/B testing, which helped resolve three sets of theory-usability conflicts. The overall assessment of SW paved a path for theory-usability balance and provided valuable insights for designing and evaluating usability in immersive virtual learning environments.