Educator Perceptions of XRAuthor: An Accessible Tool for Authoring Learning Content with Different Immersion Levels

The promise of Extended Reality (XR) in education is significant but one size does not fit all learning contexts and student preferences. Varied content with different immersion levels is hence beneficial, but creating XR content remains daunting for educators using conventional tools. This paper introduces XRAuthor, a web-based authoring tool designed to empower educators to create varying immersive learning content -ranging from conventional video to interactive animations and full-fledged VR -all from a single authoring experience with a webcam. Through online one-to-one workshops with 14 educators, we found strong endorsement for the new authoring workflow enabled by XRAuthor. Participants also found that the varied interactive exercises automatically generated by the tool aligned well with effective pedagogical practices. High ease of use and efficiency were identified as crucial attributes of XRAuthor. The design knowledge facilitated by XRAuthor underscores the potential of such tool designs to democratize XR content creation for learning.

• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); User interface design; Web-based interaction.