Immersive Journalism in Media Education

What happens when you take the media student and throw them into a virtual world where their decision-making informs their learning experience? 360 Immersive Education is a project exploring the idea of adding gamification to a VR film in which the player works through an immersive news scenario and the decisions they make inform the news-gathering process. Our goal is to see whether, by combining lessons from games and gaming with the emerging technological opportunities offered by virtual reality, it is p]ossible to create an immersive educational experience for journalists and journalism students. Whilst gamification has been recognised as having value in training journalists about the issues to consider and steps to take in complex news situations, barriers to development include logistics and lack of game development skills (Aayeshah, 2012), and limited game-playing experience among teachers themselves (Watson, Yang, Ruggiero, 2013). This paper briefly explores the field of immersive journalism and the narratives that are produced. It then looks at what gamification and virtual reality can offer educators looking to use immersive techniques to further the skills of their students in professional journalism practice, including those in relation to materials collection, observation and live reporting.