Marko Teräs

Immersive Interactive Technologies in Digital Humanities: A Review and Basic Concepts

Within the scope of this paper we discuss the possibilities of newly immersive interactive technologies in the field of Digital Humanities (DH). We define Digital Humanities, its basic concept, and various criteria as intersection between computation and humanities. We review immersive interactive technologies in the context of DH, and attempt to develop a framework how interactive immersive technologies can be utilized within the scope of this research field. We also discuss interactivity and human experience in relation to DH and interactive immersive environments. The paper rounds up with a few practical example cases, which shall illustrate the use of immersive interactive technologies in DH, and underlines the potentials.

Self-guided Exploration of Virtual Learning Spaces

Virtual learning spaces provide the opportunity to create authentic, immersive and high-fidelity experiences for learners; often enhanced with new technology to increase the interaction and perception with the learning space. Instead of creating mock-ups in classrooms, educators are able to recreate a controlled replica of the real world, i.e. scenarios and situations can be created that are difficult or impossible to achieve otherwise. However, an unrestricted and unsupervised exploration imposes challenges to monitor the learner, offer supportive guidance and provide formative feedback. Preliminary studies demonstrated that different approaches are able to engage the learner, create an intrinsic motivation and therefore provide curiosity to drive the self-paced learning; yet the use-case-based exploration is not transferred to a framework including a comprehensive tool for education. In this chapter, we demonstrate the prototype of the nDiVE framework, which combines authentic education, gamification, emerging technology and design principles used in the game industry to create an engaging learning space for students and workers.