Effects of virtual world environments in student satisfaction: an investigation of the role of architecture in 3D education

Universities and educational institutions worldwide are currently becoming more dependent on delivering assorted courses within online virtual worlds as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLES). Nonetheless there is insufficient study of how environmental and architectural design elements of 3D virtual educational spaces and buildings inside these virtual worlds can affect the e-learning process of the students and their satisfaction and contentment within them. Thus this study investigates students’ satisfaction from different architectural features used in 3D educational facilities by recording, from surveys, students’ degree of agreeability towards varied design characteristics in different learning spaces within 3D VLEs. Defining best perceived design traits can allow for improvement of 3D educational space design to augment a student’s overall e-learning experience, and allow for issuance of general design guidelines for future creation of 3D virtual educational facilities