XR Initiative

W430 Organizations and Organizational Design (Change)

The proposed project is a significant enhancement to a current class project that currently focuses on developing 2D prototypes.

In this organizational change project, in project teams, students will apply their design thinking learning using extended reality to visualize “What If” ideation and “What Wows” prototypes. Using extended reality, students will learn the ways to enhance prototypes by creating spatial interactions and potentially multi-sensory experiences.

This extended reality experience will enable students to effectively test and critique their prototypes for organizational process change. The project concludes with the teams sharing their extended reality creations enabling other students to provide feedback to further improve their change ideas.

D790, D791, and D890 Pediatric Dentistry Clinical Rotations

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) are some of the alternatives available today for dental education. These technologies allow the recreation of virtual scenarios, some of them in real-time, facilitating real clinical procedures. The benefits of this model for student training will be enormous. These new training options will allow students to repeat the training in a specific clinical approach until the competence needed to perform it in a patient is reached.

This project aims to enhance our ability as faculty to prepare students to fulfill the techniques in intraoral local anesthesia in children. Building a virtual reality or augmented reality tool allows us to practice landmarks and methods useful for pediatric dentistry anesthetic placement.

A150 Survey of the Culture of Black Americans

In a classroom of diverse students, addressing the manifestations of topics such as racism, micro/macroaggression, and colorblind racism, to name a few, that Black/African Americans experience presents some challenges at times. Currently, instructors use various teaching techniques like scaffolding, reflections/personal narratives, group learning, strategic course designs, and so on to counter these challenges.

This course proposes using the assignment, The Black Experience, to address the presented challenges by allowing students to virtually experience the manifestations of such topics. This assignment incorporates a VR experience that takes the player through a "long history of restriction of movement for Black Americans and the creation of safe spaces in our communities." This experience enhances the student's experience as they gain a more profound and relatable understanding of the manifestations of topics addressed in the course.

X405 Topical Explorations in Business

The purpose of the project is to develop a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) program to improve students’ ability to act in a supportive manner that recognizes the feelings of another group.  Students will understand Philippine history, values, communication styles, culture, beliefs and practices, and economic conditions by immersing themselves in a virtual reality environment where Filipino’s talk about their culture, communication style, environment, economy, values, beliefs, and practices.

I want the final product to be as realistic as possible, so students are engaged in the virtual reality environment and motivated to learn. The use of visual and auditory cues in a fully immersive environment can provide deeper engagement, learning, and retention of cross-cultural knowledge and behaviors than a bricks-and-mortar classroom.

Various Chemistry Courses

I have been using 3D printing to create interactive models for use in chemistry classes for several years now. 3D printing is excellent at making simple models of concepts but fails when the concepts get too complex. For example, I have been able to make models of atoms and crystal structures but have failed to model nuclear reactions or solubility. These latter concepts are simply too difficult to model with pieces of plastic.

My plan is to study the effectiveness of using augmented and virtual reality in teaching these complex topics. The topics I plan to start with are the solubility of ionic compounds, radioactive decay, and equilibrium. The goal is to make virtual overlays for 3D printed and entirely virtual models to express these concepts.

A301/H310 Classical Archaeology

Development of a project called "Ancient World 3D" (https://exhibits.ulib.iupui.edu/aw3d/about) that seeks to provide easy to use, open access 3D resources for everyone who loves the Classical World. The students who drive the project conduct research and annotate open access 3D models, that can then be downloaded for use in VR or 3D printing.

The models can be used in a classroom setting for my Classical Archaeology (CLAS A301/HER H310) class in Fall 2022. Students could then manipulate the models at home or in the classroom via Sketchfab or Mergecube, as well as VR. The same models and practices could then be leveraged up in other classes in Spring 2023, including Classical Mythology (CLAS C205), an important GEC course.