We cannot talk about immersion in online education without referring to Lombard, M. and Ditton, T. (1997): At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence.
In the article, Lombard, M. and Ditton define presence as “the perceptual illusion of nonmediation”, and they propose six conceptualizations of presence: As social richness, as realism, as transportation, as immersion, as a social actor within the medium, and as the medium as a social actor.
Even though categorizing presence in this way is useful in order to understand the concept in its different interpretations, I would argue that of these six conceptualizations, presence as immersion is capable of encompassing all other 5 conceptualization. Especially when taking into consideration how Lombard, M. and Ditton describe perceptual immersion:
The degree to which a virtual environment submerges the perceptual system of the user, can be objectively measured by counting the number of the users' senses that are provided with input and the degree to which inputs from the physical environment are "shut out"
Therefore if we accept that the feeling of being immersed can have many degrees to it that depend on the number of senses being submerged,this means that determining whether we can describe someone as being "immersed" in different situations and environments is a question that has a great deal of flexibility to it.
A socially rich presence which is perceived to be interactive, friendly and warm creates an environment where the learner is immersed to a certain extent depending on how rich the interaction is (text chat?, voice chat?, voice and video?, includes the use of Avatars?). Also the more realistic an environment is (Presence as social realism), naturally the more immersed in this environment learners are going to feel. Another way that we cab describe presence as immersion is: Presence as transportation, whether one or more people are transported to a certain location, or whether objects in the environment are transported to them. When a reader feels immersed in the text of a well written story we can also say that her mind has been transported to a location created by the talented writer. We can also say that a social actor within a medium or even the medium itself can be so compelling that we become immersed in it.
Category: E-Learning
