Effects of Immersion and Presence on Learning Outcomes in Immersive Educational Virtual Environments for Computer Science Education
Abstract concepts and ideas from Computer Science Education can benefit from immersive visualizations that can be provided in virtual environments. This thesis explores the effects of the key characteristics of virtual environments, immersion and presence, on learning outcomes in Educational Virtual Environments for learning Computer Science. Immersion is a quantifiable description of the technology to immerse the user into the virtual environment; presence describes the subjective feeling of 'being there'. While technological immersion can be seen as a strong predictor for presence, motivational traits, cognition, and the emotional state of the user also influence presence. A possible localization of these technological and person-specific variables in Helmke's pedagogical supply-use framework is introduced as the Educational Framework for Immersive Learning (EFiL). Presence is emphasized as a central criterion influencing immersive learning processes. The EFiL provides an educational understanding of immersive learning as learning activities initiated by a mediated or medially enriched environment that evokes a sense of presence. The idea of Computer Science Unplugged is pursued by using Virtual Reality technology in order to provide interactive virtual learning experiences that can be accurately displayed, schematizing, substantiating, or metaphorical. For exploring the effects of virtual environment characteristics on learning, the idea of Computer Science Replugged focuses 'hands-on' activities and combines them with immersive technology. By providing a perception of non-mediation, Computer Science Replugged might enable experiences that can contribute additional possibilities to the real activity or enable new activities for teaching Computer Science. Three game-based Educational Virtual Environments were developed as treatments: 'Bill's Computer Workshop' introduces the components of a computer; 'Fluxi's Cryptic Potions' uses a metaphor to teach asymmetric encryption; 'Pengu's Treasure Hunt' is an immersive visualization of finite state machines. A first study with 23 middle school students was conducted to test the instruments in terms of selectivity, the devices' induced levels of presence, and adequacy of the selected learning objectives. The second study with 78 middle school students playing the environments on different devices (laptop, Mobile Virtual Reality, or head-mounted-display) assessed motivational, cognitive, and emotional factors, as well as presence and learning outcomes. An overall analysis showed that pre-test performance, presence, and the previous scholastic performance in Maths and German predict the learning outcomes in the virtual environments. Presence could be predicted by the student's positive emotions and by the technological immersion. The level of immersion had no significant effect on learning outcomes. While a good-fitting path analysis model indicated that the assumed relations deriving from the EFiL are largely correct for 'Bill's Computer Workshop' and 'Fluxi's Cryptic Potions', not all results of the overall path analysis were significant for the analyses of the particular environments. Presence seems to have a small effect on learning outcomes while being influenced by technological and emotional factors. Even though the level of immersion can be used to predict the level of presence, it is not an appropriate predictor for learning outcomes. For future studies, the questionnaires have to be revised as some of them suffered from poor scale reliabilities. While the second study could provide indications that the localization of presence and immersion in an existing educational supply-use framework seems to be appropriate, many factors had to be blanked out. The thesis contributes to existing research as it adds factors that are crucial for learning processes to the discussion on immersive learning from an educational perspective and assesses these factors in hands-on activities in Educational Virtual Environments for Computer Science Education.
Virtual Reality, Supply-Use-Model, Immersion, Presence, Computer Science Education
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