Effects of Virtual World Environments in Student Satisfaction: An Examination of the Role of Architecture in 3D Education

Universities and educational institutions are currently becoming more dependent on delivering courses within online virtual worlds, such as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLES). There is insufficient research on how environmental and architectural design elements of 3D virtual educational spaces and buildings inside these virtual worlds can affect the e-learning process of the students and their satisfaction and contentment. This study investigates students’ satisfaction from different architectural features used in 3D educational facilities by recording, from surveys, students’ degree of agreeability toward varied design characteristics in different learning spaces within 3D VLES. Defining best perceived design traits can improve 3D educational space design to augment a student’s overall e-learning experience, and lead to general design guidelines for future creation of 3D virtual educational facilities.