Analogy between student perception of educational space dimensions and size perspective in 3D virtual worlds versus physical world

One of the prominent practices currently associated with 3D virtual worlds, such as Second Life, is their increased utilization as 3D virtual learning environments (3D VLEs). This study is part of a research in progress dedicated to evaluate different engineering design aspects of these emergent VLEs, and define the impact of their design features on delivering online education. The aim of this paper is to investigate and analogize between users’ perception of space in virtual worlds compared to its corresponding perception in the physical world in terms of area size, dimensions and overall 3D visual perspective. This is achieved by recording the visual estimations of different student categories, within diverse 3D virtual sites, in response to survey questions depicting space size and capacity for holding students and hosting e-learning sessions. Furthermore, the differences in student responses are analyzed and elucidated in order to formulate a hypothesis about how similar or dissimilar users perceive spaces in 3D virtual worlds in comparison with the physical world