Virtual reality scenarios to reduce stress of assessment in university students: gender perspective guidelines

Virtual reality scenarios represent valuable digital tools that could help university students cope with stress in assessment situations. A gender gap limits women's access and motivation, as these scenarios do not consider their preferences, since their performance is high in some tasks. This study aims to provide empirically grounded guidelines for designing virtual reality educational scenarios to cope with stress in assessment situations based on university students' preferences according to gender. An online questionnaire was applied to 182 university students to obtain information about stress and other emotional states perceived in assessment modalities and the relaxing potential attributed to situations, stimuli, activities, environments, and students' preferred images for relaxing. Women generally reported higher stress levels and stronger negative emotions before being assessed at university. Men reported higher levels of resignation afterwards. For women, the most relaxing scenario was "being outdoors," whereas, for men, it was "being in small groups". Stimuli, mainly from cool temperatures, were significantly less relaxing for women, and passive activities were perceived to be more relaxing for women. Both genders preferred realistic environments, and women chose brighter images. Given this scenario, it is necessary to design differentiated illustrative and sound virtual reality scenarios considering gender preferences.