A Gamified Approach to Concrete Structure's Interpretation using Virtual Reality: A Study of Performance and Simulation Sickness

Innovation in the methods and strategies of teaching has become of high importance to educational institutions. Shifting teaching strategies from static to immersive, interactive, and engaging environments through gamification approaches is paving its way into education with substantial benefits. The integration of disruptive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) as a tool to gamify teaching has shown improved performance and motivation of students. Though, the use of such technologies appears to adversely affect the student's wellbeing resulting in simulation sickness. Civil engineering undergraduate students were divided into three groups and asked to interpret and identify structural mistakes in a concrete building using three different approaches: The static traditional 2-Dimensional Plans (2D), a gamified 3-Dimensional model (3D) and an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment. The students' performance and simulation sickness development were measured using three main simulation sickness categories. Results revealed that students using VR performed 35% and 4% better than 2D and 3D respectively. In addition, the data collected shows no correlation between traditional and gamified methods with regard to simulation sickness.