CareerQuestXR: Mapping Your Future in Extended Reality (XR) through virtual aptitude testing

Abstract

South African universities face persistently high first-year dropout rates (exceeding 40%) driven by inadequate career guidance, academic misalignment, and inefficient allocation of public funding. Current guidance tools rely predominantly on self-report inventories and narrow cognitive constructs that fail to capture the multidimensional behavioural and psychological factors influencing academic success. This proof-of-concept study investigated whether CareerQuestXR, a custom-built Extended Reality (XR) aptitude assessment system, could address this gap by generating differentiated multidimensional student profiles and evidence-based academic stream recommendations. CareerQuestXR evaluates students across four domains: Intellectual (verbal and numerical reasoning), Cognitive (working memory and spatial processing), Psychological (stress management and emotional regulation), and Behavioural (persistence and adaptability). Objective VR performance metrics are integrated with Holland’s RIASEC model and the Big Five personality framework to generate Academic Alignment Index (AAI) scores indicating student-programme fit across 21 University of the Western Cape (UWC) academic programmes. A pilot study (N = 15) was conducted using purposive sampling, with domain scores, behavioural indicators, psychometric profiles, and AAI recommendations analysed through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and strategic case sampling across three research questions (RQ). The study demonstrates: • (RQ1) Operational functionality, with full task completion and clear performance differentiation; • (RQ2) Multidimensional Profiling, with partial domain distinctness (mean |r| = 0.732): the Intellectual domain showed moderate independence from a highly coherent Cognitive-Psychological-Behavioural grouping, yielding two complementary constructs: Academic Capability and Self-Regulation Capacity (C-P-B); • (RQ3) Academic Stream Recommendations, with all participants receiving theoretically coherent programme recommendations reflected in graduated AAI scores. Behavioural-performance correlations (r = +0.927) exceeded those of the Intellectual domain (r = +0.782), providing preliminary evidence for VR’s ecological validity in capturing authentic persistence patterns. While predictive validity remains unestablished, the findings demonstrate that immersive VR assessment can produce theoretically coherent multidimensional profiles beyond traditional cognitive-only approaches. The study further proposes an institutional partnership model through which XR-based career guidance could inform funding decisions, improve academic alignment, and support student retention in South African higher education.