THE EMERGENCE OF THE SENSE OF PRESENCE AND ENJOYMENT IN AN E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: THEIR BENEFITS ON PERCEIVED LEARNING AMONG STUDENTS
S. Agut, R. Peris, A. GrandÃo
Universitat Jaume I (SPAIN)
Interaction-based environments (with the computer-Internet and individuals) favour the emergence of particular positive psychosocial processes, such as the sense of presence. Except for the cinema, this experience is not that common in traditional media. In contrast, interactive media seem to be a reliable source of it. This is a subjective experience of being in a virtual environment (VE) which is like “being there”. Students who use a virtual learning environment in their classes could feel this kind of experiences, which could even facilitate and improve their perception of learning in comparison with the traditional mode. Moreover, the perceived learning among students could even increase whether they actually enjoy while doing the activity in the VE. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to analyse the sense of presence in a university student sample and its relationship with their perceived learning and 2) to examine if this relationship is moderated by the students’ enjoyment, so enhancing their learning perception. The sample was composed of university students from Castellón (Spain). They were using the Virtual Interactive Learning Environment and specifically the so-called application Human Site (http://humansite.net), in one subject during the past academic year (2007-2008). Students completed a questionnaire about their experiences while using Human Site prior to their exam covering the subject. Confidentiality of their responses was completely guaranteed. In particular, we used the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) (Schubert, Friedmann, & Regenbrecht, 2001) that measured the sense of presence experienced in a VE, and which encompasses three subscales: spatial presence (i.e., the sense of being physically present in the VE), involvement (i.e., the attention devoted to the VE and the involvement experienced), and experienced realism (i.e., the subjective experience of realism in the VE). We measured enjoyment through a subscale from the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) (e.g., Plant & Ryan, 1985; Ryan, 1982). We also assessed the learning perceived by these students in the analysed subject. The preliminary results show an emergence of the sense of presence among students while they used Human Site in their subject and its relationship with perceived learning, which also depended on their degree of the enjoyment while working in the VE. The implications of the findings for university teaching-learning processes using information and communication technologies, future research guidelines, and also the limitations of the study are also discussed.