Transformable Lighting Conditions in Learning VR Environments

Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VLE) are a promising approach for the 21st century classroom. Therefore, it is important to identify the best way that these learning environments will enhance students’ cognitive functions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of lighting conditions, within a VLE, on several cognitive functions while we introduce the novel idea of transformable luminance conditions. We have been inspired by evidence from cognitive and environmental studies, from real environments, that lighting conditions affect people’s memory, attention and executive functions. Our transformable luminance approach, when applied in a virtual university amphitheatre, is benchmarked against the conventional approach of a single luminance VLE (either high or low). The first main outcome of our study is that traditional single luminance lighting conditions exert the same effect in both real and virtual learning environments. That is, high luminance enhances sustained attention and short term memory, while low luminance enhances long term memory. The results also indicate that our novel transformable luminance approach enhances student performance in executive tasks, compared to any single luminance condition (i.e. low or high).