January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

Schifter, C. C., Ketelhut, D. J., & Nelson, B. C. (2012). Presence and Middle School Students' Participation in a Virtual Game
Environment to Assess Science Inquiry. Educational Technology & Society, 15 (1), 53–63.
Presence and Middle School Students’ Participation in a Virtual Game
Environment to Assess Science Inquiry
Catherine C. Schifter, Diane Jass Ketelhut and Brian C. Nelson 1
454 Ritter Hall, Temple University, 1301 Cecil B.Moore Ave., Philadelphia, PA. USA // 1 P.O. Box 878809, Arizona
State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-8809 USA // Catherine.Schifter@temple.edu //
Diane.Jass.Ketelhut@temple.edu // Brian.Nelson@asu.edu
ABSTRACT
Technology offers many opportunities for educators to support teaching, learning and assessment. This paper
introduces a project to design and implement a virtual environment (SAVE Science) intended to assess (not
teach) middle school students’ knowledge and use of scientific inquiry through two modules developed around
curriculum taught in middle schools in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. We explore how the concept of ‘presence’ supports
these efforts, as well as how Piaget’s theory of developmental stages can be used as a lens to understand whether
these students achieved presence in the modules. Findings are presented from a study looking at 154 middle
school students’ perceived sense of presence in a virtual world developed for the SAVE Science research project
as demonstrated through a post module survey and a post module discussion with their teacher. Age and gender
differences are explored. In addition we use content analysis, as described by Slater and Usoh (1993), of student
talk in the post module discussion transcripts to identify levels of “presence.” In the end, participating seventh
grade students demonstrated achieving some level of presence, while the sixth grade students did not.
Keywords
Presence, Middle school, Immersive virtual environments, Piaget
Introduction
As we move further into the twenty-first century, technology opportunities allow researchers to consider many ways
in which technology can be exploited to support teaching, learning, and assessment of learning. (Gee, 2003) Most
research on educational uses of technologies focuses on how they are used to teach, rather than on how they are used
to assess knowledge or application of knowledge. The Situated Assessment using Virtual Environments for Science
Inquiry and Content (SAVE Science) research project is one that is focused on assessment rather than learning. The
SAVE Science project is designing and implementing a series of virtual environment-based assessments of middle
school science content. Students engage individually with a contexualized problem and use knowledge learned in the
classroom to solve it. However, in order for students to fully engage in the tasks presented in the SAVE Science
modules, we hypothesize that the more they perceive themselves as part of the story, the more likely they will
actively engage in the activities. Thus, the students need to perceive they are “present” in the story/module.
The concept of ‘presence’ has been the subject of research and discussion for over 30 years. For many scholars,
presence has its roots in symbolic interactionism, or how we make meaning of new experiences based on prior
experiences with similar events/items/ideas (Mead & Morris, 1934, Blumer, 1969), and in social psychology theories
of interpersonal communication, as in Goffman’s concept of copresence, or how we acknowledge the presence of
others nearby (1959). But others credit the writings of J.J. Gibson (1979) on perceptual learning theory, which
suggests close connections between observation and action, and that information is what we sense and how it is
interpreted.
The definition of ‘presence’ ranges from a sense of participation and involvement (Sheridan, 1992, p. 121), to “the
sense of being in an environment” (Steuer, 1993, p. 75), to “the perceptual illusion of non-mediation” (Lombard &
Ditton, 1997, p. 4) to a subjective sense of being in a place (Slater, 2003/2004). It is unclear from the definitions
whether the technology being discussed is the same across references, or if the populations included in the samples
are comparable. Research on the concept of presence has included all types of media, including letters, television,
telephones, teleconferencing systems, immersive VE, and virtual games (Daft & Lengel, 1984, Lombard & Ditton,
1997). Steuer (1993) suggests the relationship between vividness and interactivity on a graph (interactivity on the xaxis
and vividness on the y-axis) with the book being low on both scales, Star Trek’s Holodeck as being high on both
scales, and a range of other technologies located in the scatter plot in between (p. 90). With the advent of commercial
Multi-User Virtual Environments such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, Delgarno and Lee (2010) suggest that
presence be defined as “being there together.” But what is ‘presence’?
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