Tank Road 1929: Design and Evaluation of Immersive Social Environments for Context-Based Learning

This paper examines the potential of immersive social environments conducted through Virtual Reality (VR). This enhances audience engagement in order to deepen contextual understanding of unfamiliar learning content. This is done through introducing and evaluating propositions for designing meaningful interactions in VR grounded in site exploration, affordances to inform participation, and collaborative information exchange. An experiment, Tank Road 1929, was developed based off these propositions and implemented to assess the impact on social learning. Set in 1920s Singapore, participants explored a virtual recreation of the former Tank Road railway station and its vicinity in solo or collaborative sessions. Quantitative and qualitative analyses evaluated four learning outcomes regarding the site’s geographical, social, lifestyle, and economic elements. Results demonstrated substantive learning across all participants, but collaboration showed clearer, more accurate comprehension of intricate details like goods, businesses, transportation, architecture, and inhabitant roles. They also displayed greater engagement through shared discoveries, focused discussions, and reinforced understanding. Moreover, collaboration precisely distinguished observations, unlike solo participants who sometimes conflated details. Hence, interactivity within Tank Road 1929 aided concentration on relevant specifics and the broader historical context. In summary, social interaction meaningfully improved recollection and grasping of factual elements, underscoring its effectiveness over individual exploration for context-based learning. The study hence provides a framework for designing immersive social environments that leverage interactions to increase understanding.