A Hybrid Collaboration Design for a Large Scale Virtual Reality Training Environment to Fulfil the Belongingness Needs of Maslow’s Theory

This work is part of a line of research to systematically investigate, how virtual reality (VR) trainings can be designed to be pragmatically effective (e.g. scalable) while satisfying human needs. To this ends, the design is guided inter alia by human motivational theory and in particular Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (MHN). The study at hand focused on the third level of MHN, covering the need for belongingness. Considering a classroom-sized VR setup, it appears obvious, that multi-user implementations may be effective in creating a sense of belongingness. However, increasing sizes of training areas, sense of competition, distractions or mutual influence impose challenges that need to be overcome. The study evaluates a new concept for a diminished multi-user approach, where only selected elements, that are supportive for belongingness, are synchronized, while disturbing elements are filtered. Results show, that the design, which is applicable for large environments, indeed increased communication, collaboration and awareness, without affecting comfort or distraction compared to single-user simulations.