Towards Usable Collaborative Virtual Reality Environments for Promoting Listening Comprehension

This chapter investigates whether an educational virtual environment can be developed to practice listening comprehension skills that meets second language student needs, complies with usability criteria, and is motivating to use. The chapter also investigates whether the usability of virtual reality(VR) technology positively affects language learning listening comprehension. It provides background research and information in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), VR, and second language methodology. It then presents a technical and qualitative description of Realtown, a virtual environment designed to promote listening comprehension. This chapter also describes a usability study of Realtown. Student errors, motivation, and ease of use, among other features, were positively measured on listening comprehension activities in Realtown. Future work includes longitudinal studies on learning issues, first-person, and collaborative experiences in VR, including the impact of VR on learning and knowledge transfer when combined with traditional instruction. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-545-2.ch024