Presence, Piaget's stages of development and middle school children participation in an immersive virtual game environment

The concept of 'presence,' or telepresence has been the subject of research and discussion for over 30 years. In this paper we explore definitions of presence put forth over the last 20 years, and how these apply to middle school students. These students were engaged in using an immersive virtual environment (SAVE Science) designed to assess their knowledge and use of scientific inquiry through several modules planned around curriculum being taught in middle schools in Pennsylvania, U.SA. This paper presents early findings in looking at 154 middle school students', ages 11 - 13, perceived sense of presence in one of two virtual games developed through the SAVE Science research project in the United States as demonstrated through a post module survey and a post module discussion with their teacher. We use Piaget's theory of child development stages as a lens to understand whether these students achieved presence in the modules. In addition we use content analysis, as described by Slater and Usoh (1993), of post module discussion transcripts to identify levels of "presence" as indicated by student talk in the post module discussion. In the end, the seventh grade students demonstrated achieving some level of presence, while the sixth grade students did not.