The Expanding Role of Immersive Media in Education

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the impact of immersive media, in particular augmented reality, within the education sector. A small experimental methodology was adopted alongside a current literature review. Three research questions were posited as follows: (1) What are the affordances of immersive media within education? (2) What are the barriers to immersive media in education? (3) How may immersive media be implemented? Affordances of immersive media include greater content customisation, increased creativity with less risk, promoting student interaction, enhanced motivation and engagement, and the chance for students to engage in extraordinary experiences. In 2020, many students around the world are staying home and studying in isolation, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this emergency context, mobile applications can offer interesting experiences that can make life and learning less difficult and more pleasant. The mobile web application Metaverse was used to exemplify in two different ways how immersive media can be appropriately used as a tool in a university level education setting. The first prototype was a short quiz on general knowledge about New Zealand, to help orient new international students. The second prototype was a quick poll to feel the pulse and understand the mood of students while at home and physically away from the campus and their lecturers. In summary, the authors present an updated review of this technology and present their own new examples of applications that serve additional purposes.

The Using of the Metaverse in the Field of Education and Training in Police Colleges

“…These factors can be instrumental in enhancing education and training in the sense that the various strengths of learners can be easily captured and promoted by this technological framework. Erturk and Reynolds (2020) reaffirm the observation that the institution of the metaverse in learning institutions allows learners to improve their engagement with one another as well as with the educator, leading to increased focus levels and the motivation to succeed. Besides, the flexibility of the technology makes it easy to use in a variety of educational settings.…”

“…Additionally, the metaverse framework provides the possibility of uninhibited customization of content. According to Erturk and Reynolds (2020), the metaverse allows for increased creativity with minimal risk, increased interaction, and extended content customization. These factors can be instrumental in enhancing education and training in the sense that the various strengths of learners can be easily captured and promoted by this technological framework.…”

“…Therefore, the introduction of the metaverse offers the possibility of overcoming this challenge and enabling police recruits to maximize their learning activities and experiences. As explained by Erturk and Reynolds (2020), this technological environment equips learners with skills on how to survive emergency occurrences and such eventualities as isolation. For police trainees, this would be a beneficial learning framework.…”

Development of a chatbot for school violence prevention among elementary school students in South Korea: a methodological study

“…In addition, with the recent changes in educational paradigms, various learning modalities have emerged. This has been further stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and teachers are considering alternatives to conventional learning environments [7]. Thus, they can be used to develop learning media as presenters of interactive and interesting educational areas by increasing user engagement [1,4,8].…”

“…However, it is unclear whether this approach is effective. Additionally, there are other limiting conditions, such as the number of students per teacher, lack of instructors' pedagogical knowledge of the question, and limited class time [7,11,13]. To overcome this barrier, a reliable and practical educational modality is required to assist teachers in facilitating students' effective and efficient participation in learning activity [14].…”