Virtual Reality in Software Engineering Education: Educators' Experiences and Curriculum Use Cases

作     者：Sembey, Ruchi Martinez-Maldonado, Roberto Grundy, John 

作者机构：Department of Human Centred Computing Faculty of IT Monash University ClaytonVIC3800 Australia Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity Faculty of IT Monash University ClaytonVIC3800 Australia 

出 版 物：《SSRN》 

年 卷 期：2025年

核心收录：

主　　题：Students 

摘      要：Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a transformative technology that may improve the education delivery in higher education. In Software Engineering (SE) education, VR offers exciting opportunities to immerse students in realistic digital simulations allowing them to experience first-hand how the potential users of the systems they are designing may experience the world. These hands-on experiences offer the possibility to engage students with user-centred SE design concepts in a more tangible and practical way, including fostering empathy for user needs, understanding the impact of their design decisions, and enhancing problem-solving skills in real-world scenarios. Despite its potential, its integration in SE education to date is underexplored. The experiences of SE educators who may want to teach next-generation SE professionals with VR are not well understood, and there is limited guidance on how VR can be meaningfully integrated into SE curriculum focusing on user-centred approaches. The aim of the research is to present SE educators’ impressions of a VR simulation and curate SE curriculum use-cases that SE educators perceive would be beneficial with VR integration. The study involves 15 diverse SE educators immersing in a VR simulation using head-mounted displays followed by semi-structured interviews to share their impressions and ideate curriculum use-cases. The thematic analysis of educators impressions identified four key VR experiential aspects: a) emotion evocation, b) sense of immersion, c) health, comfort, and accessibility, and d) VR orientation. Educators reported a range of emotions, including empathy, wonder, sadness, and curiosity during VR simulations. This paper presents ten curriculum use cases curated by SE educators for VR integration, including empathy building, AI avatar interviews, and prototype evaluation in VR *** research advances our understanding of how VR simulations are experienced by SE educators and how they can leve