One Day in a Roman Domus: Human Factors and Educational Properties Involved in a Virtual Heritage Application

As stated by Mosaker (2001), Virtual Reality (VR) environments that portray the past can be considered modern-day time machines. A substantial variety of Virtual Heritage (VH) applications have been developed recently, with the mission of using VR technologies for cultural preservation purposes. However, few of these projects focused on properly assessing these applications' educational value and goodness of interaction. In light of these considerations, a VR application reproducing an ancient Roman Domus has been developed to assess Human Factors variables and learning ratio of users. Therefore, 161 participants have been divided into three conditions in a between-subjects design: a Virtual Reality Experience (VRE), a First Person Experience (FPE), and a Multi-media Presentation Experience (MPE). Results showed an overall appreciation of the topic in all conditions, with comparable learning performances. However, we discovered a higher engagement and enjoyment of users with the VRE. Therefore, the Domus Romana application has been proven to be an effective complementary educational tool in explaining Roman houses.