Making Others' Efforts Tangible - - How Other Learners Affect Climate Fostering Long-Term Self-paced Learning in Virtual Environment

For most learners, appropriate learning climates within spaces selected for self-study (e.g., libraries) are helpful in sustaining self-paced learning. To provide learners with appropriate self-study spaces, we have examined a virtual environment (VE) for self-paced English learning. To assess the influence of learning experience among other peer learners in a silent space, in this paper, we designed a VE in which others’ efforts were made tangible by exaggerating their learning activities rather than the co-present peers themselves. The designed VE had no auditory communication capability. Over a seven-days-long experiment in a wild setting, we compared the designed VE and a VE with only a solo learner as a control condition. Participants in the co-present learning environment showed longer learning durations and higher learning gains than those in the solitary learning environment.