Presence and Absence in Education VR: The Role of Perceptual Seduction in Conceptual Learning

Recently developed information technology, such as interactive multimedia and virtual reality, has a profound impact the way people deal with information. Often, they engender a strong feeling of presence, of being an active part of the reality that is portrayed. It is this feeling of presence that differentiates the new learning technologies from the old; and it is this same feeling of presence which is both their greatest strength and their most severe weakness. In this paper, we discuss the respective roles of presence and also of absence in relation to virtual worlds designed for learning, and to existing theories of learning. We characterise absence as a psychological focus on conceptual processing, and presence as a psychological focus on direct perceptual processing (of things which are present in the current environment). We suggest that virtual worlds tend to elicit a sense of presence because they present information as directly perceptible objects and spaces, rather than as linguistic specifications requiring conceptual processing if they are to be understood. To investigate this idea, a series of experiments was conducted in which the degree to which information was specified as objects or text was varied. An account of our findings is followed by a description of our model of the role of presence and absence in virtual environments designed to encourage conceptual learning. We conclude by suggesting that effective conceptual learning in virtual worlds depends on designs that support both perceptual and conceptual processing – worlds that provide both the necessary perceptual cues to elicit a sense of presence, and that contain a sufficient element of surprise to break the spell periodically and so foster conceptual learning. The resulting changes in how students deal with relevant knowledge promise to make classroom learning less exclusively conceptual, but also less fragile, and more like learning in the world outside.