Collaborative VR environment for supporting food culture learning

In recent years, cultural learning has required the design of experiential and reflective environments that go beyond mere knowledge acquisition to support the understanding and internalization of cultural values. This study constructed a collaborative VR learning environment focused on food culture, enabling learners to actively interpret and engage in the meaning-making of cultural values in a virtual space. The system consists of scenarios based on three themes: ingredients, tableware, and cuisine. It offers experiences that engage learners with cultural elements through exploration, observation, and cooking. Through voice and non-verbal gestures via avatars, learners shared their insights and emotions, deepening their learning. A comparative experiment showed that participants in the collaborative learning condition significantly outperformed those in the individual learning condition in terms of recognition of cultural values, knowledge acquisition, learning motivation, and cultural awareness. Observations also revealed the natural formation of joint attention through gestures such as pointing and shared gaze, which facilitated reflective meaning-making. Based on these findings, four design recommendations were derived: (1) supporting meaning-making through experience and dialogue, (2) supporting collaboration through non-verbal interaction, (3) designing immersive experiences that enhance intrinsic motivation, and (4) creating scenarios and tasks that encourage reflection. • Collaborative VR promotes reflective understanding of cultural values. • Scenario-based tasks support meaning-making through shared experience. • Avatar gestures and gaze enable joint attention and intuitive communication. • Design principles proposed for VR-based experiential cultural education.