Abstract:

Advances in various technologies have brought extended reality (XR) into focus and increased its interest in various specialist areas. Although this technology has been the subject of discussion for a number of years, it is undergoing continuous development and is becoming increasingly relevant in various spheres of society. One manifestation of this technology is virtual reality (VR), which uses head-mounted displays (HMDs) to transfer users into immersive virtual environments within seconds. These HMDs influence the user's field of vision and require them to navigate in a virtual sphere. They are normally provided with controllers to interact and navigate within this environment. The application of VR extends beyond entertainment purposes and is increasingly being used in areas such as education and healthcare. Through continuous research and development, this branch of technology promises to push the boundaries of reality experience and establish new paradigms in human-computer interaction. In order for this technology to be used efficiently, sound knowledge about its effective use and the decisive parameters is required. This empirical study examines digital competence in the context of recognizing functions and interacting with objects within virtual realities (VR). The participants were introduced to the VR application without prior knowledge and had to independently recognize the various functions. These included four of the most common functions that are also used in real life, as well as a special function that is more related to movement and positions. The interaction was divided into direct and far interaction. In order to gain detailed insights, a specialized virtual reality application including the necessary script codes was created for this research using the Unity development environment. This customized application made it possible to create various scenarios and tasks that were specifically tailored to the research objectives. The head-mounted display (HMD) allowed the field of view and audio data of the participants to be recorded and used for qualitative evaluations. The results show that digital competencies have a significant influence on interaction in VR. With a higher level of digital competencies, different types of close interaction increase significantly. At the same time, it can be seen that users face the same challenges when using VR regardless of their level of digital competencies. This is of particular interest for use in education, as VR can therefore also be used with heterogeneous learning groups and similar difficulties can be expected regardless of previous digital training. Further studies should examine the results obtained here with a larger sample and focus on the practical use in differently composed learning groups.

Keywords:

Education, Virtual Reality, Educational Technology, Immersion.