Doctoral Colloquium—VeRdict: Imbuing VR Language Learning Applications with Dictionary Functionality

Abstract

As Virtual Reality (VR) hardware becomes increasingly accessible, interest has grown among researchers regarding its use in education. Immersion, however, comes at the expense of multitasking and use of supplementary learning resources like dictionaries. This is a major issue for language learners who have to remove their goggles or switch applications to consult a dictionary. In order to make dictionary use more immersive and convenient for learners, we present in this doctoral colloquium paper, VeRdict, a dictionary extension for VR learning applications that enables dictionary searches from within an application using motion controls. Its client-server architecture allows for the delivery of lexicographic content augmented with 3D object data that can be dynamically added to the virtual world. The dictionary supports manual vocabulary searches using a virtual keyboard, and querying through labels applied to elements within the scene. Additionally, 3D objects loaded from the dictionary can be used as virtual ‘props’—unlocking new gesture-based collaborative learning.