Immersive vs desktop virtual reality in game based learning

Virtual environments are recognized as more effective than other digital approaches for the acquisition of several abilities. This is because the brain recognizes the virtual world as real and this facilitates the transfer of the newly acquired skills to the real world. In this paper, we present a game that has been designed and developed with the aim of teaching spatial orientation abilities to teenagers with mild intellectual impairments. In particular, the game focuses on the training of two basic skills: Perspective taking and mental rotation. Perspective taking refers to the ability of imagining how the world looks like from another person's point of view, while mental rotation is the ability to mentally represent and manipulate physical objects in one's mind. The game, which takes place in a virtual environment, shows the player a scene with some objects on the table. The player has to choose among four provided alternatives, the one that shows how the scene would look like from a different side of the table. The game was first developed to be used with either a desktop pc monitor or an interactive touch table. In this case, a virtual world is represented, but the player is not completely immersed in it, he just looks at the scene from outside. A second version of the same game has then been developed using a Head Mounted Display (HMD), which makes the player feel immersed in the virtual environment, where he can freely move around just as if it was real. In this paper, we discuss both advantages and disadvantages of the immersive Virtual Reality (VR) compared to the desktop VR. In fact, on the one hand, having the possibility to "dive" into the virtual world allows the player to: Better build a mental model of the scene and the involved objects by freely moving around the table and examining the objects from all the possible perspectives; Manage by himself the amount of help needed: It is always possible, at any time of the game, to move to the other side of the table and see what the scene looks like. Increase his involvement in the game by exploring the virtual world as he pleases. Have a better learning transfer thanks to the similarities between the virtual and the real worlds. On the other hand, using a HMD can be tiring and cause sickness to some players. Furthermore, the presence of a complete environment in which to move and explore, can draw the attention away from the main task of the game and therefore influence learning negatively. Experiments are planned to verify the foreseen advantages and disadvantages involving young adults with mild intellective disabilities.