Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) education remains largely limited to awareness-based interventions, particularly in stigmatized socio-cultural contexts. Researchers are extensively focusing on pedagogical theories, reshaping teaching and learning practices to enhance educational outcomes. This paper investigates the application of Bloom’s taxonomy as a design framework for scaffolding SRH learning from foundational knowledge to higher-order cognitive engagement. We conducted a mixed-methods study with 45 participants who engaged in learning activities across different cognitive levels, followed by semi-structured interviews. Our analysis shows that integrating higher-order learning objectives—such as application, analysis, and reflection—supports deeper engagement and understanding of SRH topics beyond surface-level awareness. We also highlight how technologies such as VR and LLMs enable flexible, exploratory learning and create safe, judgment-free spaces for engaging with sensitive topics, supporting users’ comfort. Based on these findings, we derive design implications for developing structured, inclusive, and stigma-sensitive SRH education technologies. This work contributes to HCI by empirically demonstrating how established learning theories can advance learning in sensitive educational domains.

Virtual Reality (VR) is reshaping multimedia learning enabling immersive and experiential learning environments. While VR inherits the two core components of traditional 2D multimedia learning - verbal and visual content, research suggests that the principles governing these components in 2D multimedia environments cannot be directly applied to Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLEs) owing to the additional affordances offered by the medium. In this work, we examine the applicability of two key principles which address the representation of verbal content in 2D learning environments, the Modality Principle and the Redundancy Principle, within the context of VRLEs. We conducted a study with forty participants in which instructional material—covering factual, conceptual, and procedural content—was delivered across four modality conditions: text-only, audio-only, text + audio with full redundancy, and text + audio with partial (concise) redundancy. The results indicate a clear preference for redundant text-plus-audio presentations, particularly for procedural tasks, with no evidence that redundancy increases cognitive load—contrary to traditional findings from comparable 2-D contexts. Audio‑only, by contrast, imposed the highest load in procedural learning. These outcomes underscore content type as a critical moderator and point to the limits of directly importing 2‑D design rules into VR. Our findings further highlight the role that VR-specific evaluation frameworks and learner familiarization play in VR instructional design.

A recent surge in the application of Virtual Reality in education has made VR Learning Environments (VRLEs) prevalent in fields ranging from aviation, medicine, and skill training to teaching factual and conceptual content. In spite of multiple 3D affordances provided by VR, learning content placement in VRLEs has been mostly limited to a static placement in the environment. We conduct two studies to investigate the effect of different spatial representations of learning content in virtual environments on learning outcomes and user experience. In the first study, we studied the effects of placing content at four different places - world-anchored (TV screen placed in the environment), user-anchored (panel anchored to the wrist or head-mounted display of the user) and object-anchored (panel anchored to the object associated with current content) - in the VR environment with forty-two participants in the context of learning how to operate a laser cutting machine through an immersive tutorial. In the follow-up study, twenty-two participants from this study were given the option to choose from these four placements to understand their preferences. The effects of placements were examined on learning outcome measures - knowledge gain, knowledge transfer, cognitive load, user experience, and user preferences. We found that participants preferred user-anchored (controller condition) and object-anchored placement. While knowledge gain, knowledge transfer, and cognitive load were not found to be significantly different between the four conditions, the object-anchored placement scored significantly better than the TV screen and head-mounted display conditions on the user experience scales of attractiveness, stimulation, and novelty.

ESL (English as a second language) speakers tend to follow the tone structure of their first language, making their speech difficult to understand for native speakers, thereby limiting their opportunities for education and employment. To address this problem, we build an interactive smartphone-based educational mobile application using the user-centered design process. This application teaches English intonations based on globally consistent pitch patterns through conversations with a trained chat assistant, which inculcates expert linguists’ teaching principles. After co-designing the application’s parameters with primary stakeholders and expert visual designers, we assess its effectiveness by measuring the pre and post-performance of the users after the system usage, using various quantitative measures, like intonation scores, SEQ, and SUS. Feedback from users suggests that ESL speakers find significant improvement in the perception of their vocal expressions, thereby highlighting the necessity of such a system in improving the quality of conversations that people have in general.