Smart Ambience for Affective Learning (SAMAL) : An Innovative Exploration for Integrating Immersive Virtual Reality in Education

In this study we propose a new concept in learning, SAMAL (Smart Ambience for Affective Learning), which offers a unique potential of stimulating the learner to engage in the educational virtual experience (immersive interaction and movement with the virtual characters and environment) thus learning in a unique way, not offered through traditional learning. Specifically, we explored students' interaction with SAMAL on two levels: players and watchers. The players actively engage (active immersion) with the interactive media experiencing the feelings associated with the challenges and successes of interacting with the virtual learning scenarios. The watchers actively observe (secondary / passive immersion). Through the design of virtual scenarios that targeted for the learning of lift science topics, our initial findings revealed that SAMAL allowed the students to experience the challenges of survival for birds from an affect sense thus increasing students' learning motivation. Our data also showed that there was a marked difference between those who played (active immersion experience) and those who watched (observing more passive experience), indicating that an active immersive experience results in higher motivation in the learning process.