From Engagement to User Experience: A Theoretical Perspective Towards Immersive Learning
Danielle Oprean, Bimal Balakrishnan · 2020
As we see immersive technology becoming ever more prominent in education, from our mobile devices to highly immersive virtual reality headsets, there is a growing need to look beyond existing, pragmatic conceptualizations of the technology. We need to explore immersive technology from a theoretical perspective focused on the user and learner experience for it to make meaningful contributions to education. The way we experience technology often frames how we engage with it and determines whether we continue to use it. Immersive technology is often conceptualized based on the affordances provided to the user without any associations made back to theoretical underpinnings drawn from user experience and learning experience research. The authors take known conceptualizations of user experience and immersive technology and link them to the learning experience to form a working theoretical framework that can help develop an understanding of learner engagement with this emerging technology. We begin with concepts related to immersive technology, then build a theoretical framework and conclude with implications for learning approaches through examples from the spatial disciplines.