Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai is distinguished by its commitment to field-based learning and research. It has been at the forefront of the development of the social sciences and social work education in India for seventy-five years. TISS has benefited from the continuity of leadership and widely shared core values. It has a longstanding commitment to partnering with communities throughout India, and its fieldwork projects develop realistic solution to seemingly intractable social problems.

This chapter explores the actual reading event. It considers what kinds of pleasure readers seek from book reading and rereading (in different settings and at different times), and the ways in which an e-book does or does not deliver such satisfactions. Examining aspects such as tactile dimensions of embodied reading, the role of the material object, convenience and access, optimisation and customisation, and narrative immersion, it contextualises original findings with recent empirical research on screen reading and offers insights on how, where, and when intimacy, sense of achievement, and the feeling of being ‘lost in a book’ can be found in e-reading. Pleasures such as immersion and sense of achievement appear to be impeded by digital for some readers but facilitated for others. The chapter further examines how an e-book can be framed as an incomplete book (frequently as ‘content’ or ‘story’ and hence the ‘most important part’) without losing its power to satisfy.

This chapter examines Lucian’s manipulation of images of geographical authority in his True Histories, with particular reference to his representation of human and other bodies immersed in their environments. It look first at the tension between detached geographical observation and images of bodily immersion or entanglement with particular landscapes both in imperial Greek literature more broadly, and also in Lucian’s work, where that theme has a particular prominence. That point is illustrated first through discussion of Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess, which returns repeatedly to images that challenge the idea of a clear dividing line between bodies and their environments, and also between observer and participant status. The second half of the chapter then traces the contrast between detached observation and corporeal immersion through the True Histories, especially in the scenes in the stomach of the whale, from 1.30–2.20, arguing that Lucian in this text undercuts notions of detached geographical authority in ways that are closely related to his comical undermining of various other kinds of intellectual and social pretension in his other works.

Videogames once seemed like they would have a part to play in the future of the book – the natural evolution of literary practice onto more expressly interactive digital platforms. Today, despite numerous compelling examples of videogames that support literary engagement, the comparison can seem strange, clichéd, banal, and beside the point. This chapter attempts to reset the comparison of videogames and literature for the present moment of digital culture. First, it presents a brief history of critical perspectives on videogames as literature. Second, it reflects on the contemporary status of and challenges to videogaming’s literary aspirations following recent shifts in the industry’s design priorities and monetization practices. This chapter does not present an argument regarding the status of games as literature. Rather, its goal is to describe the urgent work of literary studies in continuing to rethink digital gaming in the unfolding digital age.

Chapter 16 presents an overview of the most common language teaching approaches. Presented on a spectrum from grammar-based to naturalistic, these approaches are compared and contrasted based on learner, teacher, syllabus, and programmatic factors. Rationale and challenges of transitioning between teaching approaches are presented alongside suggested activities for professional development.

Chapter 2 focuses on how and why target language input is important for language learners. Authors discuss several different types of input and how it has been found to contribute to second language development. Research-backed approaches for integrating more target language into classrooms of all languages, levels, and ages are presented for teachers to implement in their lessons.

1 Introduction

2 Bibliometric Analysis of Immersive Technologies

3 Trends, Challenges and Affordances of Immersive Technologies

 3.1 The Use of Immersive Technologies

 3.2 The Main Challenges of Using Immersive Technologies

4 Future Directions

5 Conclusions

In this chapter, we reinforce the book’s aim to shed light on changes inflicted on language, cognition, and the brain rather than to focus on advantages and disadvantages of being bilingual. To obtain a more realistic picture of bilingualism, its assets (i.e., what is easier), and its difficulties (i.e., what is taxing and leads to high consumption of mental resources), we have drawn on research from various disciplines. We conclude the book by identifying complexity as the major issue for research on bilingualism. The complexity problem is fundamental to definitions of bilingualism and the characterization of bilingual participants in empirical studies, leading to discussions about its assessment as a dichotomous or continuous variable. Considering bilingualism as an experience and how such experience impacts overall language development, cognition, and the brain at different levels are related to usage-based approaches of examining bilingualism as well as a concern regarding confounding and moderating variables. The shift for designing research in the field of bilingualism seems to necessarily be more interdisciplinary in nature than in the past.

While there are a few older examples of fantasies that create secondary worlds imaginatively separate from the Earth we know, such building projects became increasingly prevalent during the twentieth century. World-building is seen as one of the quintessential activities of contemporary Fantasy. Consequently, this chapter considers what fantasies, their creators and their audiences gain from imagining new worlds. It begins by examining J. R. R. Tolkien’s arguments about the importance of consistency and immersion in sub-creation, while also considering alternative views articulated by writers including Michael Saler, André Breton and H. P. Lovecraft. After drawing out the wide applicability of the world-building metaphor in conversation with work by Farah Mendlesohn, the chapter explores the metaphor’s limitations by looking at examples drawn from Michael Moorcock and Fredric Jameson. The second part of the chapter explores a wide range of world-building techniques using case studies that include Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series, Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Fantasy television, Planescape: Torment and Elden Ring.

This chapter provides an overview of the variety of contemporary digital comics.

Digital comics encompass diverse objects, both online and offline, ranging from print comics that are digitized to webcomics that resist print publications and have greater affinities with video games or animation. The chapter regroups these different formats into three main categories; it reconstructs the history of digital comics, isolating four partially overlapping phases connected to the evolution of digital culture. It traces the similarities and divergences between digital and print comics, identifying their formal specificities and contextualizing them in the analog/digital debate; and discusses their different characteristics in terms of immersion and agency. Finally, it reflects on the relationship between digital media and participatory practices on the one hand, and comics preservation on the other, elaborating on the issue of copyright infringement.

In doing so, the chapter offers a multidisciplinary and comprehensive account of the heterogeneous nature and stratified history of digital comics.

Learner engagement is the foundation for effective training. This chapter describes two design principles for creating engaging augmented reality-based recognition skills training. The Immersion Principle describes ways in which training designers can create a sense of learner presence in the training through cognitive and physical engagement. The Hot Seat Principle describes a strategy to increase engagement by making the learner feel a sense of responsibility for training outcomes. This is particularly useful for team and small group training. The discussions of both principles include examples, theoretical links, and implications for people designing augmented reality training.

As a new immigrant to Canada, Marie-Paule Lory lived the popular “Canadian experience,” including learning and working with English-speaking researchers. Her vision of multilingualism in Ontario is to address the "threat" to the sustainability of the French language while taking the risk of changing teacher practices in multilingual classrooms.

Ever since their seventeenth-century origins, Baptists have represented an array of theological, racial, ethnic, ideological, and political backgrounds and have traversed a number of social, theological, and ecclesiastical roads. The first Baptists came out of the dissenting tradition in England; the persecution they experienced during their early history in America helps explain their enduring support for the separation of church and state. Baptists make the Bible central to their practice, an emphasis central to their disputes over slavery, gender, and sexuality. They value the theological notion of the “priesthood of the believer.” Baptists hold that only people who can publicly profess their Christian conversion can be candidates for baptism. They have varied on who can take the Lord’s Supper; many Baptist churches practice open communion, but some do not. A central tenet of Baptist governance is the autonomy of the local church.

The immersion principle in multimedia learning is that immersive virtual environments promote better learning when they incorporate multimedia design principles. In short, immersive media do not necessarily improve learning but effective instructional methods within immersive virtual environments do improve learning. The goal of effective instructional design in immersive virtual environments is to promote processes of selecting, organizing, and integrating information. Psychological presence – the subjective experience of “being there” – is an affective affordance of learning in immersive learning environments that can motivate learners to engage in deeper learning. The chapter also describes boundary conditions of immersive virtual environments, including the potential for instructional design to cause extraneous cognitive load and impose high metacognitive demands on learners. Multimedia learning principles developed based on research with less immersive media may generalize to learning in immersive environments.