# Impact of VR Application in an Academic Context
###### Abstract  
Traditional learning has faced major changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the necessity for innovative education methods. Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to change teaching and learning paradigms by providing a gamified, immersive, and engaging education. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of virtual reality in academic context by using a VR software instrument (called EduAssistant). The system's features such as virtual amphitheater, search by voice recognition, whiteboard, and a video conference system have fostered a sense of connection and community interaction. The study involved 117 students for VR experience, out of which 97 watched a pre-recorded video and 20 students used the VR headset, and an additional 20 students for traditional learning. The students who used the VR headset achieved a significantly higher mean quiz score of 8.31 compared to 7.55 for the traditional learning group with a two-tailed \(p\)-value of 0.0468. Over 80% of the total number of participants were satisfied (4 or 5 out of 5) with the experience and the confidence level when searching through voice recognition was over 90%. The study demonstrates that virtual reality is an excellent approach for changing conventional education. The research results, based on samples, simulations, and surveys, revealed a positive impact of VR and its gamification methods on the students' cognitive performance, engagement, and learning experience. Immersion provided by a virtual assistant tool helped to promote active and deep learning. Experiments based on EduAssistant features suggest that virtual reality is also an effective strategy for future research related to students with disabilities. virtual reality; video conference system; speech recognition; immersive experience; learning paradigms; university education +
Footnote †: journal: Medical  
may be in text, audio-visual, graphic, or other formats. Virtual reality (VR) \"generally represents the computer-generated simulation of a 3D environment that appears very real to the person experiencing it, using special electronic equipment\" [6] (p. 10). For students, this creates a continuum of virtuality (Figure 1) that connects the physical and digital reality. The mixed reality spectrum known as the virtuality continuum is the range wherein the actual world and the virtual world coexist [7; 8]. To stimulate physical perception in a virtual environment we used 3D immersion. 3D immersion is created by exposing a user to images, sound or other stimuli that result in an immersive environment through a system consisting of headsets and 3D controllers [9; 10; 11]. Three-dimensional space (3D) represents a geometric space with three dimensions that implies the existence of three coordinates to determine the position of a point in space [11; 12]. To enhance students' learning experience it was necessary to integrate the VR application with Agora.io. Agora.io is a real-time communications platform that provides WebRTC technology [13; 14; 15]. Agora Video API enables real-time and mobile-to-mobile communication over an Agora Global virtual network. This PaaS (platform as a service) provider offers an API for integration with the video conference system. A 3D virtual teaching assistant application has the potential to search by voice recognition due to the Unity KeywordRecognizer library, a pretrained hidden Markov model based on speech recognition patterns. KeywordRecognizer \"listens to voice input and attempts to match uttered phrases to a list of registered keywords\" [16]. In implementing voice recognition, there are several challenges that should be considered, such as responsiveness, high accuracy, and the ability to model speech patterns in different noise conditions. The most used model for acoustic modeling is the hidden Markov model (HMM).