Almost Like Being There: Embodiment, Social Presence, and Engagement Using Telepresence Robots in Blended Courses

As students’ online learning opportunities continue to increase in higher education, students are choosing not to come back to campus in-person for a variety of personal, health, safety, and financial reasons. The growing use of video conferencing technology during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed classes to continue, but students reported a sense of disconnectedness and lack of engagement with their classes. Telepresence robots may be an alternative to video conferencing that can provide learning experiences closer to the in-person experience, which also provides a stronger sense of embodiment, social presence, and engagement in the classroom. This study explored the use of telepresence robots in four undergraduate, humanities, blended learning courses. Sixty-nine students, 43 in-person and 26 remote students, were surveyed using the Telepresence and Engagement Measurement Scale (TEMS) and provided written feedback about their experience. The TEMS measured embodiment, social presence, psychological involvement, and three indicators of engagement: behavioral, affective, and cognitive. Embodiment and social presence were positively correlated as were embodiment and behavioral engagement. There was no significant difference between the two groups’ perceptions of social presence but there was a significant difference between groups’ perceptions of engagement. Qualitative data and effect sizes greater than 0.80 supported the reliability and validity of the TEMS instrument as a measurement instrument for future study of blended learning environments using remote tools such as telepresence robots. Provided that technological issues such as connectivity and audio and video quality are addressed, telepresence robots can be a useful tool to help students feel more embodied and socially present in today’s blended learning classrooms

A Questionnaire for Assessing Immersive Websites

Web-immersion – i.e., a deep sense of cognitive and perceptual absorption engendered by the content and interactive features of a website - plays an important role in our modern, digital world. Yet, this topic has received little attention from design and HCI scholars. The lack of tools to assess and measure immersion in the Web may severely limit our ability to understand the nature of such experience, thereby constraining future research in the area. To address this issue, we designed a questionnaire for assessing immersive websites and conducted a preliminary evaluation on it. In this article, we outline the questionnaire design and report on findings from a preliminary study conducted to analyse its reliability and validity. Moreover, we present results from Factor Analysis performed to investigate the dimensionality of the instrument. Finally, we conclude by discussing the implications of our findings, along with limitations of the study and future work

The Plausibility of a String Quartet Performance in Virtual Reality

We describe an experiment that explores the contribution of auditory and other features to the illusion of plausibility in a virtual environment that depicts the performance of a string quartet. ‘Plausibility’ refers to the component of presence that is the illusion that the perceived events in the virtual environment are really happening. The features studied were: Gaze (the musicians ignored the participant, the musicians sometimes looked towards and followed the participant’s movements), Sound Spatialization (Mono, Stereo, Spatial), Auralization (no sound reflections, reflections corresponding to a room larger than the one perceived, reflections that exactly matched the virtual room), and Environment (no sound from outside of the room, birdsong and wind corresponding to the outside scene). We adopted the methodology based on color matching theory, where 20 participants were first able to assess their feeling of plausibility in the environment with each of the four features at their highest setting. Then five times participants started from a low setting on all features and were able to make transitions from one system configuration to another until they matched their original feeling of plausibility. From these transitions a Markov transition matrix was constructed, and also probabilities of a match conditional on feature configuration. The results show that Environment and Gaze were individually the most important factors influencing the level of plausibility. The highest probability transitions were to improve Environment and Gaze, and then Auralization and Spatialization. We present this work as both a contribution to the methodology of assessing presence without questionnaires, and showing how various aspects of a musical performance can influence plausibility

Preparing athletes and teams for the Olympic Games: experiences and lessons learned from the world's best sport psychologists

As part of an increased effort to understand the most effective ways to psychologically prepare athletes and teams for Olympic competition, a number of sport psychology consultants have offered best-practice insights into working in this context. These individual reports have typically comprised anecdotal reflections of working with particular sports or countries; therefore, a more holistic approach is needed so that developing practitioners can have access to - and utilise - a comprehensive evidence-base. The purpose of this paper is to provide a panel-type article, which offers lessons and advice for the next generation of aspiring practitioners on preparing athletes and teams for the Olympic Games from some of the world’s most recognised and experienced sport psychologists. The sample comprised 15 sport psychology practitioners who, collectively, have accumulated over 200 years of first-hand experience preparing athletes and/or teams from a range of nations for six summer and five winter Olympic Games. Interviews with the participants revealed 28 main themes and 5 categories: Olympic stressors, success and failure lessons, top tips for neophyte practitioners, differences within one’s own consulting work, and multidisciplinary consulting. It is hoped that the findings of this study can help the next generation of sport psychologists better face the realities of Olympic consultancy and plan their own professional development so that, ultimately, their aspirations to be the world’s best can become a reality

Exploring the Phenomenon of Presence in an Online Educational Environment Through the Lived Experiences of Graduate Nursing Faculty

In this dissertation, the phenomenon of presence in an online educational environment is explored through the lived experiences of graduate nursing faculty who teach online. Greater understanding of the phenomenon of presence in online educational environments may lead to better learner-instructor relationships, higher levels of inquiry and critical thinking on the part of faculty and students, and ultimately better student outcomes. Utilizing principles of Hermeneutic Phenomenology and deductive inquiry, and based on the learner-centric Being There for the Online Learner Model, the author conducted in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 13 graduate nursing faculty members who teach online at a major university in the northeast United States. The author also reviewed supporting documents pertaining to institutional structure, faculty development, the institution\u27s learning management system, and online faculty job descriptions. Interview data were analyzed thematically, using the mixed-methods software Dedoose. Results of the study revealed four ways in which graduate nursing faculty experience the sense of presence (i.e., The Modes of Presence derived from the Being There for the Online Learner Model): Realism, Involvement, Immersion, and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Two broad themes, Being there and Being Together were also identified. Being There is the sensation that occurs when graduate nursing faculty feel or perceive they are physically in another location when teaching online. Being Together is the sensation that graduate nursing faculty are physically in the same space with others (i.e., their students), when they are actually separated by distance. In both cases, this is for varying lengths of time, and with varying frequency. The study identified three main conclusions: not all participants experience the sense of presence in the same way; Being There may also include the sensation of Coming Here ; and, The Illusion of Nonmediation, as described in the Model, should be considered as a fifth Mode of Presence. Based upon these conclusions, I present implications for nursing education science and provide recommendations for creating the sense of presence in online educational environments

Taylor University Echo: April 15, 1914

Editorial — Easter Hymn — Silver Wedding — Taylor Echoes — Good Friday — The Women Triumph — Resurrected Life — Wooden Wedding — Dr. Hurty Speaks — Peace Contest — Quartet Pleases — Eureka — Thalonian — Prohibition League — The Spice of Lifehttps://pillars.taylor.edu/echo-1913-1914/1013/thumbnail.jp

Stone Soup: Thoughts on Balancing a Deanship and Family Life After Twelve Years as Dean

JUNE 30, 2007 marked the conclusion of my twelve-year service as Dean of the University of Akron School of Law. During that time the University of Toledo Law Review initiated its very successful “Leadership in Legal Education Symposium” and I benefited from reading articles in the prior symposia. It was inspiring to read about the efforts, thoughts, concerns, and accomplishments of fellow deans. Sometimes those essays gave me reassurance, raised my curiosity, provided new ideas, gave me an opportunity to think about old matters from a different perspective, and even prompted healthy disagreement. Having benefited from the contributions of other deans for so many years, this year I felt obligated to try to make some small contribution to the joint enterprise. My goal in writing this essay is to expand on an area of common interest to many deans: how to strike a balance with family life and work

Using Behavioral Realism to Estimate Presence: A Study of the Utility of Postural Responses to Motion Stimuli

We recently reported that direct subjective ratings of the sense of presence are potentially unstable and can be biased by previous judgments of the same stimuli (Freeman et al., 1999). Objective measures of the behavioral realism elicited by a display offer an alternative to subjective ratings. Behavioral measures and presence are linked by the premise that, when observers experience a mediated environment (VE or broadcast) that makes them feel present, they will respond to stimuli within the environment as they would to stimuli in the real world. The experiment presented here measured postural responses to a video sequence filmed from the hood of a car traversing a rally track, using stereoscopic and monoscopic presentation. Results demonstrated a positive effect of stereoscopic presentation on the magnitude of postural responses elicited. Posttest subjective ratings of presence, vection, and involvement were also higher for stereoscopically presented stimuli. The postural and subjective measures were not significantly correlated, indicating that nonproprioceptive postural responses are unlikely to provide accurate estimates of presence. Such postural responses may prove useful for the evaluation of displays for specific applications and in the corroboration of group subjective ratings of presence, but cannot be taken in place of subjective ratings

The letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

Charlotte Yonge is one of the most influential and important of Victorian women writers; but study of her work has been handicapped by a tendency to patronise both her and her writing, by the vast number of her publications and by a shortage of information about her professional career. Scholars have had to depend mainly on the work of her first biographer, a loyal disciple, a situation which has long been felt to be unsatisfactory. We hope that this edition of her correspondence will provide for the first time a substantial foundation of facts for the study of her fiction, her historical and educational writing and her journalism, and help to illuminate her biography and also her significance in the cultural and religious history of the Victorian age

“I’ve Been Given the Wrong Mother:” Reconsidering Absent Mothers in Postmodern British Literature

Nineteenth-century British authors, in particular, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Jane Austen, often turned to orphaned children as a means to drive the plot of their novels. While struggles such as displacement were often accurately depicted, the abovementioned authors and their contemporaries often glossed over or completely disregarded the trauma and psychological implications felt by these orphans. As psychology gained prominence as a discipline through the works of Sigmund Freud and others, modern British literature saw a shift in its consideration of orphans and, additionally, emotionally absent mothers. This thesis will examine three modern British novels; Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and Graham Swift’s Waterland with respect to their exploration of the psychological and possible traumatic impact of their protagonists lives in a variety of disrupted family dynamics