Sentiment Analysis of Student-Tutor Interactions in VR Design Crits

This research evaluates the effectiveness of using immersive VR media in tutor-student interactions in design studio crits as they progress by generating new concepts. Crit interactions, a core educational component in design education, encourage learner-centredness in concept generation. However, the interaction is often tutor-centric, resulting in sentiments that may hinder participation. Immersive VR media offer a new opportunity for design crits to interact at a tangible real-scale display of the design, potentially altering participants' sentiments. Research lacks evidence on the cognitive effect of this high-end technology on design learning. This gap produces limitations: assessing the effectiveness of immersive media to improve concept generation and understanding the role of sentiments in this process. We conducted a natural experiment comparing crits given to ten students in immersive and non-immersive media. We then employed natural language processing techniques to measure the distribution and temporal distribution of new concepts generated within either positive or negative sentiment for each medium. Findings exhibit significant differences in concept generation per sentiment within the medium used, with a higher rate of concepts in immersive VR. These demonstrate its role in enhancing stimuli to support learner ideation and advance design studio education.