Immersive Learning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The text is well-written and nice to read. 

 

A small improvement is the need to avoid bias towards external motivation, i.e., only consider experiential/engagement/narrative from outside. There can be immersion from internal motivations, e.g., reading a text is not immersion just from the storyline or content, but from one's flowing of interest upon it; it is not necessarily passive, but could be an active engagement of reflecting, annotating, etc.

 

The main improvement is the need to reflect their basilar definition (Nilsson's Immersion) into their rhetorical approach and reflections.

 

For instance, the opening leads from experiential (system immersion, agency immersion) and into stories (narrative immersion). This is OK. But then it jumps to technocentric statements like "Learning occurs more naturally in context and within a three-dimensional physical [space] or through advanced technologies..." ... Socrates and Plato (referenced in the following paragraph) would beg to disagree! This is (as cited by [1]) on a perspective based solely on presence-style physical immersion.

 

Then "immersion" is then paired in the intro with presence and flow as if the latter two are not part of the larger phenomenon of Immersion. This too, needs clarification.

 

For instance, when reading section 2.2, on Presence, concepts from spatial immersion and from agency immersion are mixed, and the reader will have hard time grasping what is the difference between Presence and Immersion. Then in section 2.3 one addresses flow, which is one way to address the agency immersion dimension, but this begs the question: if presence supports spatial immersion and flow supports agency immersion, what supports narrative immersion?

 

Overall, since this journal entry is about immersive learning and not immersion, I'd cut down section 2 to just addressing immersion, not so many other concepts.

 

I'd recommend that the section on "Benefits" be renamed "Impacts and challenges", and thus the content does not assume that there are simply benefits as outcomes.

 

The rest of the paper is regular in content and approach, but I'd prefer if its contents relied more (and were structured around) on literature reviews of the field, particularly wider ones, not just ad hoc examplary papers. 

 

Right now, the referenced reviews are:

 

- one for STEM in Higher Ed, by the same lead author;

- one for Deep and Meaningful e-learning in VR, by the same lead author;

- one on learning with VR.

 

Here are some recent reviews, which I could readily find, that provide more structured and wider (or complementary) approaches, and enable authors to complement their own authorship:

 

Radianti, J., Majchrzak, T. A., Fromm, J., & Wohlgenannt, I. (2020). A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications for higher education: Design elements, lessons learned, and research agenda. Computers & Education, 147, 103778.

 

Beck, D., Morgado, L., & O'Shea, P. (2020). Finding the gaps about uses of immersive learning environments: a survey of surveys. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 26, 1043-1073.

 

Matinho, D., Pietrandrea, M., Echeverria, C., Helderman, R., Masters, M., Regan, D., ... & McHugh, D. (2022). A systematic review of integrated learning definitions, frameworks, and practices in recent health professions education literature. Education Sciences, 12(3), 165.

Author Response

A small improvement is the need to avoid bias towards external motivation, i.e., only consider experiential/engagement/narrative from outside. There can be immersion from internal motivations, e.g., reading a text is not immersion just from the storyline or content, but from one's flowing of interest upon it; it is not necessarily passive, but could be an active engagement of reflecting, annotating, etc.

We are thankful for this remark, we agree and have added new, relevant text on L58-60.

 

The main improvement is the need to reflect their basilar definition (Nilsson's Immersion) into their rhetorical approach and reflections.

We are very thankful for this comment, we have gladly added new text on L63-66. 

 

For instance, the opening leads from experiential (system immersion, agency immersion) and into stories (narrative immersion). This is OK. But then it jumps to technocentric statements like "Learning occurs more naturally in context and within a three-dimensional physical [space] or through advanced technologies..." ... Socrates and Plato (referenced in the following paragraph) would beg to disagree! This is (as cited by [1]) on a perspective based solely on presence-style physical immersion.

We agree with the reviewer and have rephrased the sentence on L34-8 to explicate the point and avoid a technodeterministic position or interpretation.

 

Then "immersion" is then paired in the intro with presence and flow as if the latter two are not part of the larger phenomenon of Immersion. This too, needs clarification. For instance, when reading section 2.2, on Presence, concepts from spatial immersion and from agency immersion are mixed, and the reader will have hard time grasping what is the difference between Presence and Immersion. Then in section 2.3 one addresses flow, which is one way to address the agency immersion dimension, but this begs the question: if presence supports spatial immersion and flow supports agency immersion, what supports narrative immersion?

We attempt to build additional links and bridges among all concepts. As we explain on L132-4, narrative immersion is linked with emotional engagement. 

 

Overall, since this journal entry is about immersive learning and not immersion, I'd cut down section 2 to just addressing immersion, not so many other concepts.

We are thankful for the suggestion. We have expanded on the definition of immersion as requested by the reviewer. Literature evidence suggests that presence and flow are also key concepts related to immersive learning. When designed effectively, immersive learning leads to presence and flow. Therefore, the inclusion of all concepts offers to readers a more spherical view of the field.

 

I'd recommend that the section on "Benefits" be renamed "Impacts and challenges", and thus the content does not assume that there are simply benefits as outcomes.

Done. This section was expanded with additional text including a new section (5.3) on challenges.

 

The rest of the paper is regular in content and approach, but I'd prefer if its contents relied more (and were structured around) on literature reviews of the field, particularly wider ones, not just ad hoc examplary papers. []

Here are some recent reviews, which I could readily find, that provide more structured and wider (or complementary) approaches, and enable authors to complement their own authorship:

Radianti, J., Majchrzak, T. A., Fromm, J., & Wohlgenannt, I. (2020). A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications for higher education: Design elements, lessons learned, and research agenda. Computers & Education, 147, 103778.

Beck, D., Morgado, L., & O'Shea, P. (2020). Finding the gaps about uses of immersive learning environments: a survey of surveys. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 26, 1043-1073.

Matinho, D., Pietrandrea, M., Echeverria, C., Helderman, R., Masters, M., Regan, D., ... & McHugh, D. (2022). A systematic review of integrated learning definitions, frameworks, and practices in recent health professions education literature. Education Sciences, 12(3), 165.

Thank you for the suggestion, these reviews as well as more publications were cited and integrated thoughtfully throughout the article. In total 12 new references were added.

Reviewer 2 Report

OVERALL OPINION: The article is a complex and precise approach to the definition and the most significant aspects of immersive learning, taking into account perspectives from different disciplines (i.a., engineering, social sciences, cognitive science, philosophy). The contribution is up to date and valuable for community.

CONTENT:

To balance the article, it would be expected to mention not only benefits, but also shortcomings of immersive learning. When mentioning the benefits, a short review of the quantitative assessment of them would nicely supplement this chapter. Another aspect that was missing is the scale of applying immersive learning in the state-of-the-art applications. Brief summary of its evolution would ale be welcome.

 

LANGUAGE AND STYLE: 

Adequate for the purpose, there are only several minor typos (space in line 26, inconsistency in 3d vs 3D).

 

Author Response

OVERALL OPINION: The article is a complex and precise approach to the definition and the most significant aspects of immersive learning, taking into account perspectives from different disciplines (i.a., engineering, social sciences, cognitive science, philosophy). The contribution is up to date and valuable for community.

Thank you for your kind comment.

 

CONTENT:

To balance the article, it would be expected to mention not only benefits, but also shortcomings of immersive learning.

Thank you for the suggestion. Section (5) was expanded with additional text including a new section (5.3) on challenges.

 

When mentioning the benefits, a short review of the quantitative assessment of them would nicely supplement this chapter.

Thanks to this comment, new text was added on lines 332-339.

 

Another aspect that was missing is the scale of applying immersive learning in the state-of-the-art applications. Brief summary of its evolution would ale be welcome.

Thanks to this comment, new text was added on lines 346-357.

 

LANGUAGE AND STYLE: 

Adequate for the purpose, there are only several minor typos (space in line 26, inconsistency in 3d vs 3D).

Thank you, these typos were corrected.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The text has been significantly improved.

There remain only some theorethical aspects to sort out in the introduction and background.

1. Regarding this original comment of mine:

    "The main improvement is the need to reflect their basilar definition (Nilsson's Immersion) into their rhetorical approach and reflections."

    The authors have implemented my first "For instance" example, but not the others. There is the critical need to reflect it in their definition statement, where they ignored my comment:

"Then "immersion" is then paired in the intro with presence and flow as if the latter two are not part of the larger phenomenon of Immersion. This too, needs clarification."

Here is where it occurs:

"...this condition can be approximated in artificial, virtual spaces that can emulate the authentic context and elicitting feelings of immersion, presence and flow [1]. This type of educational experience is called immersive learning."

This statement chose to separate "presence" and "flow" from immersion, and gives the idea that "immersive learning" is all about emulating the authentic context. This is not coherent with the definition of immersion or indeed with Nilsson et al.'s immersion. In it, presence arises from system immersion; flow is a factor (but not the only one) leading to challenge immersion. And narrative is entirely ignored the above statement.

I suggest:

"...this condition can be approximated in artificial, virtual spaces, which can emulate the authentic context and elicit immersion, by presence within the simulated system [1], by the diegetic concern with the contextual meaning and narrative [5], and by the psychological absorption with the challenges and tasks [5]. This type of educational experience is called immersive learning."

I would hazard that immersive learning occurs also in non-authentic contexts, as in fantasy videogames, etc. Perhaps a sentence about that would be adequate.

2. This comment was ignored, section 2.2 and 2.3 are unchanged:

For instance, when reading section 2.2, on Presence, concepts from spatial immersion and from agency immersion are mixed, and the reader will have hard time grasping what is the difference between Presence and Immersion. Then in section 2.3 one addresses flow, which is one way to address the agency immersion dimension, but this begs the question: if presence supports spatial immersion and flow supports agency immersion, what supports narrative immersion?

Overall, since this journal entry is about immersive learning and not immersion, I'd cut down section 2 to just addressing immersion, not so many other concepts.

3. A statement on affective engagement with the diegetic story elements was included in the Flow section.

   This is misplaced: narrative immersion (see the works of Ryan on this) arises from spatial narrative elements, temporal narrative elements, and emotional narrative elements, and linking this to "affective engagement" is incomplete an not something I think fits into the section 2.3 on Flow.

My recommendation is to move these aspects on narrative and challenge/engagement to the "Immersion" section, mention there Presence and Flow as associated concepts, but not as extended sections, i.e., delete 2.2. and 2.3 - or work on consistency of their theorethical grounding with immersion, which I think is beyond what is required for this paper, hence summarizing those concepts under the umbrella of immersion dimensions in 2.1 and then deleting 2.2 and 2.3 would be more adequate.

Author Response

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise the entry entitled “Immersive Learning”. We would like to inform you that the changes requested have been addressed to the best possible degree. More specifically:

1. Regarding the comment on immersion

The suggested sentences have been added on L35-42.

2. Regarding sections 2.2 and 2.3

As suggested, sections 2.2 and 2.3 have been removed.

3. A statement on affective engagement with the diegetic story elements was included in the Flow section.

As recommended by the reviewer, aspects of flow and presence have been summarized and moved to the Immersion section (L71-91).

 

We would like to express our gratitude to the Reviewer for the insightful suggestions and constructive comments that improved the validity of this manuscript. We remain at your disposal for any further modifications that may be required.

The authors

Reviewer 2 Report

All the suggestions were addressed in the revised version of the article. In my opinion it is ready to be published. 

Author Response

Thank you for your endorsement. We are grateful for your constructive comments.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper has significantly addressed my former concerns.

Minimal edits:

- Line 39: "and by" --> "and/or by"

- Lines 87/88: "functional fidelity is more important than visual quality of graphics towards spatial presence [8]." - please add something like (I'm probably being too long-winded): "This is consistent with the perspective on immersion as arising from presence within the system, narrative meaning, and challenges/tasks (i.e., agency). The argument for this consistency is that increases in visual quality will tend to bring diminishing changes to meaning (narrative) or presence (notion of being within the simulated system), whereas functional fidelity will tend to be expose novel areas of agency."

- Lines 273/274: "as the most applied learning method":
Please correct:
a) those are two things, so plural
b) in the referenced paper, the authors report that the most applied learning use of immersive environments was Augmented Context: simulations and Skill training trail it.
You can still make your argument, since augmented context does rely on the "original physical and social environment" as you mention.

Lines 275+: Sara de Freita's four-dimensional framework from 2010 is still valid, but by considering the more recent outcomes from 2016 you cite (the three conceptual dimensions of immersion) you should, for consistency, recommend that her items be reorganized. For instance, social interaction is linked to Challenge immersion, so should be combined with Actions. On the other hand, she includes "Challenging tasks" as "Narrative", and according to your basic theory on immersion, you should move those challenging tasks to Actions+Social interaction.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise the entry entitled “Immersive Learning”. We would like to inform you that the changes requested have been addressed to the best possible degree. More specifically:

 

1) Line 39: "and by" --> "and/or by"

Done.

 

2)  Lines 87/88: "functional fidelity is more important than visual quality of graphics towards spatial presence [8]." - please add something like (I'm probably being too long-winded) […]

The suggested sentence was added on L83-86.

 

3) Lines 273/274: "as the most applied learning method":
Please correct:
a) those are two things, so plural
b) in the referenced paper, the authors report that the most applied learning use of immersive environments was Augmented Context: simulations and Skill training trail it.
You can still make your argument, since augmented context does rely on the "original physical and social environment" as you mention.

The sentence was amended as suggested on L183-185.

 

4) Lines 275+: Sara de Freita's four-dimensional framework from 2010 is still valid, but by considering the more recent outcomes from 2016 you cite (the three conceptual dimensions of immersion) you should, for consistency, recommend that her items be reorganized.[…]

The suggested rearrangement has been added on L204-207.

 

We would like to express again our gratitude to the Reviewer for the insightful suggestions and constructive comments that improved this manuscript.

Round 4

Reviewer 1 Report

I am happy with the result of the reviewing and revision process. Well done.