Learning with simulated virtual classmates: Effects of social-related configurations on students' visual attention and learning experiences in an immersive virtual reality classroom

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) provides great potential to experimentally investigate effects of peers on student learning in class and to strategically deploy virtual peer learners to improve learning. The present study examined how three social-related classroom configurations (i.e., students' position in the classroom, visuali-zation style of virtual avatars, and virtual classmates' performance-related behavior) affect students' visual attention toward information presented in the IVR classroom using a large-scale eye-tracking data set of N = 274 sixth graders. ANOVA results showed that the IVR configurations were systematically associated with differences in learners' visual attention on classmates or the instructional content and their overall gaze distribution in the IVR classroom (Cohen's d ranging from 0.28 to 2.04 for different IVR configurations and gaze features). Gaze-based attention on classmates was negatively related to students' interest in the IVR lesson (d = 0.28); specif-ically, the more boys were among the observed peers, the lower students' situational self-concept (d = 0.24). In turn, gaze-based attention on the instructional content was positively related to students' performance after the IVR lesson (d = 0.26). Implications for the future use of IVR classrooms in educational research and practice are discussed.