Virtual Reality for Immersive Learning in Art History

Virtual reality (VR) applications using consumer grade headsets have now become popular for immersive learning. VR represents a key technology for showing to students various contents the way it would be presented in its real representation. In addition to the 3 dimensional effect, it includes an immersive dimension that can transport the user into an environment that is specific to the learning content. While teaching material using VR can be useful, such an offer must satisfy the learning objectives of the instructor and the specific needs of the course and the students. In this paper, we propose a VR museum for paintings designed for instructors in Art History. A key contribution is the definition of the painting characteristics and the questionnaires associated with the paintings in the JSON open-standard file format, facilitating the modification of the application without prior programming knowledge. Such a file can be easily edited and it contains only the key information needed by the Art History instructors. The system has been developed with Unity and tested with a Valve Index. The workload and system usability is assessed by 25 participants through a NASA-TLX and System Usability evaluation. The results support the conclusion that the system has a high usability, suggesting its potential deployment in classes of Art History to better engage students.