We’ve heard the terms before. I’m referring to the times when you’re in the groove, the zone, the flow, whatever you want to call it. It’s the time when your focus is fixated on one task and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to exist and time just seems to fly by without your awareness (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).
This is, as Csikszentmihalyi (1975) coined, the flow state where your senses are focused on one specific task. Flow happens when we are immersed, we feel this happen when we engage in a book and then realize we’ve gone 10 hours without food, drink, or a bathroom break. Or when you’ve started writing a project and realized you’re in trouble because you’ve missed every message and phone call while writing. These are extreme examples of immersion but I might guess that those of you reading this may have experienced something along these lines at least once. The great thing about immersion and flow state is that it can be used to foster learning (Georgiou & Kyza, 2017). Here’s the question, how do you consistently immerse learners to the point of flow and engagement for learning? Being a tech geek myself, I immediately look to the most immersive tech I can think of, virtual reality (VR).
VR uses visual and auditoria learning modality that provides a 360 degree perspective of a scene in 3D (Zec, 2013). I can tell you from experience that the experience feels real. The ups and downs in a digital rollercoaster or the tightening in your chest as a virtual shark swims past feel all too real during the scene. Because of the heightened immersion using VR, many educational scholars thought as I do, how do we harness this immersive experience to teach? The keyword being experience, as in experiential learning theory (ELT).
ELT is based on constructivist learning theory where new learnings are based on previous experiences which paint our perspective and how we view each new event (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). Using ELT and VR we might be able to truly engage learners and use immersion and flow to do it. However… one thing we will need to look out for is what impacts immersion and flow in VR? Herrington, Reeves, & Oliver (2007) try to determine that it’s “cognitive realism” (p. 84) that influences immersion, but it seems like it could be more task based (p. 96).
One thing is for sure, we don’t want to pull another Second Life education, where students sit at desks and experience the same classroom setting, just with avatars as opposed to in real life (IRL).
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. Personnel Psychology (Vol. 29). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=6259266&site=ehost-live
Georgiou, Y., & Kyza, E. A. (2017). A design-based approach to augmented reality location-based activities: Investigating immersion in relation to student learning. Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning – MLearn 2017, (November), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3136907.3136926
Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C., & Oliver, R. (2007). Immersive learning technologies: Realism and online authentic learning. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 19(1), 80–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03033421
Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning Styles and Learning Spaces: Enhancing Experiential Learning in Higher Education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(2), 193–212. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/rdq97
Zec, D. (2013). Overview of Virtual Reality Technologies. East Central Europe, 42(1), 48–69. https://doi.org/10.1163/18763308-04201003
Hi Alistair
You most definitely win for the best title ever. I really appreciate what VR can offer to ELT. I agree with your point that there is a danger in the second life problems but with good design (and learning from past mistakes) I think that these problems are not insurmountable.
One question that keeps lingering with me as I read about VR and AR and their use in education is that of accessibility. In your research so far have you seen how others are addressing these issues? For instance, how might someone who is visually impaired be able to take part in some form of immersive educational?
Thanks for the comment Chad! Funny thing is that movie was on last night and I thought… what serendipity! I had thought about that for a little while now. Yes, this technology is great but it really doesn’t help those who are visually impaired or even visually compromised. Is the magic of 3D still magical when a learner doesn’t have depth perception? In these circumstances, I have to wonder what learning styles work best for them? What if someone was a visual learner before becoming visually impaired? Does their brain reconnect the neuropathways to enhance auditorial learning? This is something that I really need to study more on.
Agree – great title! And also agree – educators’ use of Second Life in general was all-too-often more focused on replicating existing learning environments than using the fuller potential of avatars and built environments. Chad’s question raises a good point about accessibility, which applies even more broadly to visual learning resources and environments in general. One side note to this is that immersion and flow can occur in many environments without high resolution video, audio, etc. For instance you can become very immersed in a simple board game if it has the right elements to capture your full attention. Early MOOs and MUDs
Another side note: Kolb’s work on learning styles has not fared well in the academic world, with many challenges to its foundations and assumptions. Worth checking out.
I just realized part of my earlier comment was truncated. I meant to say that early MOOs and MUDs (early text-based VR games and environments) had no visuals other than chat interfaces, were command driven and extremely plain. Yet they could be very immersive and engaging. The imagination has a very large part to play in all of this.
Hi Alastair, I really enjoyed reading your post on Virtual Reality (VR) and flow. I certainly can relate to the flow state you described as “[when] we engage in a book and then realize we’ve gone 10 hours without food, drink” (para. 2), this happens to me when I engage in art. I have always related this experience with being in a bubble, which indicates to me that I feel a separation between my flow state and the world around me. I have often wondered if the elimination of many disturbances from the world around me has allowed this state of flow to happen. You ask “ how do you consistently immerse learners to the point of flow and engagement for learning?” (para. 2) and “how do we harness this immersive experience to teach?” (para. 3). This had me go back to an article I came across a while ago. Strickland, McAllister, Coles and Osborne (2007) examine how VR was used to teach children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder safety skills in a virtual environment, which most children were able to transfer over into real-world actions. Both groups of children have cognitive processing difficulties, which make safety training very difficult. Strickland et al. (2007) found that the “control of input stimuli and complexity to help with appropriate task focus” (p. 228) was instrumental in making the VR environment an effective teaching vehicle. The use of experiential learning theory (ELT) within a VR environment was proven highly successful by Strickland et al. (2007) and supports your statement that by “[u]sing [experiential learning theory] and VR we might be able to truly engage learners and use immersion and flow to do it”. I was excited when reading the article by Strickland et al. (2007), as I have been working in the past with children with these cognitive disorders and one of the greatest challenges was for the children to be able to recall what they had learned or to understand cause and effect. If VR was useful in helping these groups of children to learn important life skills, then maybe we have successfully uncovered new uses for VR in learning.
References
Strickland, D., C., McAllister, D., Coles, C., D., & Osborne, S. (2007).
An Evolution of Virtual Reality Training Designs for Children With Autism and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. Retrieved from https://www.do2learn.com/aboutus/final%20language%20disorders%20paper.pdf
Interesting post Alastair,
Your caption “highway to the learning zone” lured me to read what it was all about. As you mentioned in your post about being able to combine ELT and VR in teaching “to truly engage learners” (Linds, 2019), I cant help but think of how impactful VR can be when learners are fully immersed into their learning experience. I think being able to leverage the use of VR for learning would be truly beneficial. Although, studies have highlighted the impacts of VR, my concern is that of differentiating real life experiences from VR when young learners are fully immersed and in a state of flow. My question to you would be, should there be parameters around the amount of time spent using VR tools for young users (students)? If so, how can one determine the stipulated time when incorporating VR into classroom use?