Save the Blue Frog: Utilizing Social Presence Theory to Enhance Experiential Games

Social Presence Theory, Experiential Learning, Virtual Worlds

Do you play games in virtual worlds? Do you utilize virtual reality environments to educate students?

According to Social Presence Theory (SPT), virtual platforms enhance learning outcomes by employing communication technologies to create a synthetic “sense” that students are interacting with other individuals (who may or may not actually exist) on a face-to-face basis.

During this session, we will review the history of SPT. We will then present and discuss a pair of experiential games with differing levels of social presence. Finally, we will explore emerging opportunities to extend the use of SPT into experiential learning games.

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