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Presence: a unique characteristic in educational virtual environments

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Abstract

This article investigates the effect of presence on learning outcomes in educational virtual environments (EVEs) in a sample of 60 pupils aged between 11 and 13 years. We study the effect of personal presence, social presence and participant’s involvement on certain learning outcomes. We also investigate if the combination of the participant’s representation model in the virtual environment (VE) with the way it is presented gives a higher sense of presence that contributes to learning outcomes. Our results show that the existence of an avatar as the pupils’ representation enhanced presence and helped them to successfully perform their learning tasks. The pupils had a high sense of presence for both cases of the EVE presentation, projection on a wall and through a head mounted display (HMD). Our socialized virtual environment seems to play an important role in learning outcomes. The pupils had a higher sense of presence and completed their learning tasks more easily and successfully in the case of their egocentric representation model using the HMD.

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Acknowledgment

We thank Dr. Vassilios Strouboulis for developing the virtual environment and his assistance in conducting statistical analyses.

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  1. The Educational Approaches to Virtual Reality Technologies Laboratory, Department of Primary Education, The University of Ioannina, Hellas, Greece

    Tassos A. Mikropoulos

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  1. Tassos A. Mikropoulos
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Correspondence to Tassos A. Mikropoulos.

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Mikropoulos, T.A. Presence: a unique characteristic in educational virtual environments. Virtual Reality 10, 197–206 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-006-0039-1

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