Immersive Place-based Learning – An Extended Research Framework

Abstract

At Kelvar 2019, we introduced a research framework for immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs) as a key element of immersive place-based learning. Organizing our research in this framework has been highly successful. We will be documenting outcomes of our research guided by this approach here, both as a conceptual extension of the original framework and through discussing three new studies that complement our existing empirical studies aimed at providing an evidence-based basis for assessing immersive learning. We believe in and strongly argue for the necessity of such a framework as we witness for the first time in the history of immersive technologies opportunities for comprehensive studies of immersive place-based learning, given the accessibility of the technology and the growing need for an evidence-based foundation. In detail, to assess the value of immersive experiences for learning, we argue for the necessity to compare them to traditional media such as desktop environments; correspondingly, we extended the framework to include non-sensing media. We conducted several new studies (both submitted and still unpublished work) that fill in gaps such as comparing desktop versus immersive VFTs, comparing Oculus GO versus Quest, and we describe our first experiences with moving immersive learning into the category of advanced iVFTs using both simulations and gamification as potential advantages of immersive technologies. We critically reflect on the results and lay out an agenda for future research on immersive place-based learning.