Students’ Immersive Experience in Initial Teacher Training in a Virtual World to Promote Sustainable Education: Interactivity, Presence, and Flow

María Graciela Badilla-Quintana and Francisco Javier Sandoval-Henríquez
Additional contact information
María Graciela Badilla-Quintana: Centro de Investigación en Educación y Desarrollo CIEDE-UCSC, Departamento de Currículum y Evaluación, Facultad de Educación, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Concepción 4090541, Chile
Francisco Javier Sandoval-Henríquez: Unidad de Autoevaluación, Dirección de Gestión Estratégica, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Concepción 4090541, Chile

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-15

Abstract: The Virtual World is a technology that has created countless opportunities for teaching and learning, innovating traditional and online education, and promoting a more sustainable and accessible education. Through their avatars and digital representations, students can navigate, observe, and manipulate virtual objects, while interacting with their classmates inside the simulated 3D environment. This study examined how preservice teachers experience and participate in a VW that simulates a university campus, considering three main components: interactivity, sense of presence, and state of flow. A total of 103 pedagogy students, enrolled in an educational technology course, participated in the study. A postintervention survey was implemented, as well as a self-report about the immersive experience. The results show a high level of agreement with the survey’s affirmations, which allows for the determination of the favorable levels of interactivity, presence, and flow, as well as the meaningful and positive associations among these technological properties. Guidelines are argued to deepen the Virtual World’s potential and are given for the design of pedagogical activities in those environments.

Keywords: experiential learning; virtual world; higher education; preservice teachers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12780/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12780/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12780-:d:682683

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().