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Journal of Visual Languages and Computing

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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvlc

Distance learning immersive environments: Sense ofpresence exploration

Max M. NorthVisualization & Simulation Research Center, Engineering Technology and Management, Southern Polytechnic State University, GA, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 22 September 2014Accepted 24 September 2014

Keywords:Distance Learning-VR- Sense of Presence

x.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvlc.2014.09.0066X/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

ail address: max@spsu.edu

e cite this article as: M.M. North, Disual Languages and Computing (20

a b s t r a c t

Distance learning technologies are becoming more important for the delivery of contentas distance education seems rapidly growing adoption worldwide. These technologiesallow collaboration between students and teachers in globally disparate environments.Immersive environments are one recent innovation with significant promise, offering asense of presence—the sense of “being there”—which can strengthen and reinforcedistance learning. The primary purpose of this study is to research the sense of presenceusing an immersive environment. While this is a work-in-progress, the authors providepreliminary results and conclusions.

& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

There are different aspects that make immersive envir-onments (also known as virtual reality) feel as real aspossible. One well-known aspect of an immersive envir-onment is “the sense of presence” in the environment. It isoften thought of as the feeling in a subject of truly “beingthere.” In the 1990s, a few theoretical research articleswere published in the Journal of Presence, Teleoperators andVirtual Environments, published by the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. In the 2000s, researchers increas-ingly have been exploring this topic, using the knowledgegained from various immersive environments studies tofurther their applications.

In-depth studies into the sense of presence are cur-rently being investigated, but because of the complexnature of this subject, requiring interdisciplinary colla-boration and a significant technological investment, theyhave been very focused and limited to specific studies. Thisstudy expands on some unanswered questions in the

stance learning immer14), http://dx.doi.org/1

literature: What is presence, exactly? Does presence gobeyond the physical attributes and into the cognitivemind? What is an immersive environment, and how doesa person's sense of presence change in that environment?What factors contribute to the sense of presence in anenvironment, whether virtual (immersive) or real? Whatare the best methods and devices used for measuringpresence?

2. Sense of presence

How is sense of presence defined? In this researchpaper, we define presence as the awareness or state ofmind of being in an environment, whether real or virtual[1,2]. Experiencing a sense of presence can happen when-ever a person mentally feels that he or she is present in asituation. For example, when reading a book, some peoplemay feel what the characters are feeling and becomewrapped up in the book—they may feel as though theyare watching a movie, or have an even deeper connectionwith the text, “watching” events as they unfold.

In 1980, Marvin Minsky coined the term “telepresence”[3]. Minsky described telepresence as “when the virtual

sive environments: Sense of presence exploration, Journal0.1016/j.jvlc.2014.09.006i

Fig. 1. This figure depicts several subjects engaged in an ImmersiveVisualization Environment (Distance Learning).

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Fig. 2. Rating of the sense of presence in the virtual world during theexperiment in the immersive environment.

M.M. North / Journal of Visual Languages and Computing ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]]2

experience dominates the real world experience. Thisdescribes the feeling of actually being in the environmentgenerated by technology instead of being in an actualphysical environment” [4]. Over time, the study of “tele-presence” yielded to the general study of “presence,” sincetelepresence is more commonly used with teleoperations[3]. Through research, many articles and journals definedpresence differently, but all had general meaning similar tothe one elaborated here.

3. Immersive environment experiment

3.1. Participants

Thirty-five volunteers participated in this part ofthe study.

3.2. Apparatus

The device used for this part of the experiment was theImmersive Visualization Environment, also known as adome-shaped system (Fig. 1). This state-of-the-art equip-ment enhances the 3-D virtual environment imaging withfour digital projectors and an 80 �100 cylindrical screen.

3.3. Procedure

Each participant was seated in a chair placed at aspecific distance away from the screen, providing theindividual with a fully-immersed environment and cancel-ing out any outer disturbances as much as possible.Though the environment was controlled, the participanthad the ability to freely move his or her body without therestrictions of a helmet or hand-held device. A survey wasadministered to each participant to measure their sub-jective sense of presence (the sense of being there in thespecified environment), with 10 indicating the highestpresence and 0 indicating the lowest. Among the questionsasked was, “Rate your sense of presence in the virtual

Please cite this article as: M.M. North, Distance learning immerof Visual Languages and Computing (2014), http://dx.doi.org/1

world during the experiment.” A graph of the results forthis question is shown in Fig. 2.

4. Preliminary results and conclusions

A majority of participants experienced a strong sense ofpresence of the virtual world in the immersive environ-ment: 86% of the participants—30 individuals—respondedwith a rating between 7 and 9, indicating that theparticipants felt a high sense presence in the immersiveenvironment. Perhaps an interesting part of this study isfound in the total sense of presence scores. While reasonwould indicate that a subject0s total degree of immersionin concurrent environments should be 100% (or ten on therating scale in this study), from a subjective point of viewthe total degree of immersion may be considerably higherthan 100%. The average total sense of presence felt wasgreater than 100% in both cases (12.54 and 12.69). Theseresults could have many implications, all of which wouldneed to be independently studied in the future.

Acknowledgments

This effort was supported by an equipment grant fromthe Army Research Office (ARO). The content of this workdoes not reflect the position or policy of the ARO and noofficial endorsement should be inferred.

References

[1] Usoh, M., Arthur, K., Whitton, M., Bastos, R., Steed, A., Slater, M.,Brooks, F. (1999) Walking4Walking-in-Place4Flying, in VirtualEnvironments. In: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference onComputer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, pp. 359–364.

[2] Nunez, D., Blake, E. (2001) Cognitive presence as a unified concept ofvirtual reality effectiveness. In: Proceedings of the 1st InternationalConference on Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality and Visualization,South Africa, pp. 115–118.

[3] Coelho, C., Tichon, J., Hine, T., Wallis, G., Riva, G. (2006). Mediapresence and inner presence: the sense of presence in virtualtechnologies. From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotionsand Culture toward the Ultimate Communicative Experience, pp. 2–5.

[4] J.S. Steuer, Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepre-sence, J. Commun. 4 (1992) 73–93.

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