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Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications are very diffuse nowadays. Moreover, recent technology innovations led to the diffusion of commercial head-mounted displays for immersive VR: users can enjoy entertainment activities that fill their visual fields, experiencing the sensation of physical presence in these virtual immersive environments. Even if AR and VR are mostly used separately, they can be effectively combined to provide a multi-user shared environment (SE), where two or more users perform some specific tasks in a cooperative or competitive way, providing a wider set of interactions and use cases compared to immersive VR alone. However, due to the differences between the two technologies, it is difficult to develop SEs offering a similar experience for both AR and VR users. This paper presents Harmonize, a novel framework to deploy applications based on SEs with a comparable experience for both AR and VR users. Moreover, the framework is hardware-independent, and it has been designed to be as much extendable to novel hardware as possible. An immersive game has been designed to test and to evaluate the validity of the proposed framework. The assessment of the system through the System Usability Scale questionnaire and the Game Experience Questionnaire shows a positive evaluation.

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has heightened the need to flag coronavirus-related misinformation, and fact-checking groups have taken to verifying misinformation on the Internet. We explore stories reported by fact-checking groups PolitiFact, Poynter and Snopes from January to June 2020. We characterise these stories into six clusters, then analyse temporal trends of story validity and the level of agreement across sites. The sites present the same stories 78% of the time, with the highest agreement between Poynter and PolitiFact. We further break down the story clusters into more granular story types by proposing a unique automated method, which can be used to classify diverse story sources in both fact-checked stories and tweets. Our results show story type classification performs best when trained on the same medium, with contextualised BERT vector representations outperforming a Bag-Of-Words classifier.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments create a very strong sense of presence and immersion. Nowadays, especially when student isolation and online autonomous learning is required, such sensations can provide higher satisfaction and learning rates than conventional teaching. However, up until the present, learning outcomes with VR tools have yet to prove their advantageous aspects over conventional teaching. The project presents a VR serious game for teaching concepts associated with computer hardware assembly. These concepts are often included in any undergraduate’s introduction to Computer Science. The learning outcomes are evaluated using a pre-test of previous knowledge, a satisfaction/usability test, and a post-test on knowledge acquisition, structured with questions on different knowledge areas. The results of the VR serious game are compared with another two learning methodologies adapted to online learning: (1) an online conventional lecture; and (2) playing the same serious game on a desktop PC. An extensive sample of students (n = 77) was formed for this purpose. The results showed the strong potential of VR serious games to improve student well-being during spells of confinement, due to higher learning satisfaction. Besides, ease of usability and the use of in-game tutorials are directly related with game-user satisfaction and performance. The main novelty of this research is related to academic performance. Although a very limited effect was noted for learning theoretical knowledge with the VR application in comparison with the other methodologies, this effect was significantly improved through visual knowledge, understanding and making connections between different concepts. It can therefore be concluded that the proposed VR serious game has the potential to increase student learning and therefore student satisfaction, by imparting a deeper understanding of the subject matter to students., GruaRV project (Reference Number INVESTUN/18/BU/0002) of the Consejeria de Empleo of the Junta de Castilla y León (Spain), the Erasmus+ RISKREAL Project (Reference Number 2020-1-ES01-KA204-081847) of the European Commission and the SMART-EASY project (Reference Number IDI-20191008) funded by the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial (CDTI)., Publicación en abierto financiada por el Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Castilla y León (BUCLE), con cargo al Programa Operativo 2014ES16RFOP009 FEDER 2014-2020 DE CASTILLA Y LEÓN, Actuación:20007-CL - Apoyo Consorcio BUCLE

The present study uses the modified Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 to examine the effect of factors such as performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), and hedonic motivation (HM) that may motivate operators and employees to adopt IVR-based technology into their training. Results of a multi-group analysis based on nationality, prior IVR experience, and/or length of work experience, to analyse the potential similarities and/or differences in perception and acceptance towards using IVR-based technology are also presented. The quantitative research data were gathered using an online questionnaire from 438 chemical operators and/or employees who either speak German, French, or English. Partial least squares structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis based on SmartPLS™ version 3 were used to carry out the path and multi-group analyses. The results show that the behavioural intention (BI) towards adoption of IVR was influenced by PE, EE, and HM for all abovementioned subpopulation. However, the relationship of SI to BI was not supported for respondents with prior IVR experience and for respondents coming from Western region. Although Henseler's-based multi-group PLS analysis reveals that there was no significant difference between the group comparisons, it is still important to take into account these socio-demographic factors as there are definite group differences in terms of the ranking order of each construct for the IVR adoption intentions among each subpopulation. The implications and future directions were discussed. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10055-021-00586-3.