Educational Innovation through Extended Reality Initiative (XRI)
The Extended Reality Initiative (XRI) began in fall 2021 with funding provided by the IUPUI “(Re)Building Community Through Engagement” grant that provided funds to proposals offering up ways of “(re)building our campus community through intentional engagement strategies.” From this grant funding, the XR Initiative launched with a half-day event that highlighted extended reality technologies such as the Oculus Quest VR headsets, the MERGE Cube, Google Cardboard VR Glasses, and more.
The XR Initiative is a collaboration among multiple units that will be developing future programming highlighting innovative technologies available for use in teaching and learning. This initiative hopes to inspire faculty to develop and implement course activities using these types of activities as well as informing students about how they can use these emerging technologies to enhance their studies at IU and inspire their future careers.
The XRI has expanded to now offer XRI Faculty Fellow grants to introduce extended reality technologies to faculty and inspire the development and implementation of these innovative technologies into their courses.
Check this website regularly for updated workshops and webinars that will be offered during the 2021-2022 academic year.
2023 XRI Faculty Fellow Grant Recipients & Project Descriptions
MATH 13200 Mathematics for Elementary Teachers
I propose to develop an exploration of 3D shapes using XR technology. The course targeted is MATH 13200, the third of a 3-course sequence of Mathematics for Elementary Teachers. The focus of this course is geometry. There are 2 sections of this course taught each semester, and the content is included in the second half of MATH 13600, of which there is 1 section taught each semester.
An objective in elementary school mathematics is that students are able to visualize a 3D shape from a 2D shape on paper. The future elementary teachers in this course struggle with the visualization. There are computer models of this, but I would like the teachers to be able to enter and explore shapes to recognize their properties. One specific example is pyramids and cones. These objects have two "heights" - an altitude and a slant height. My students struggle to see them and to relate them using a right triangle cross-section. I would like them to experience the difference and create the right triangle while inside the shape. I have a 3D model for this purpose, but students still cannot "see" the heights and triangle in the model.
As the coordinator of these courses, I would create at least two lesson plans using this technology and ask instructors to implement them in their sections. I would plan to use headsets available at the University Library. I anticipate students will understand construction and dimension of solids and will be able to visualize 3D shapes from 2D representations more fluently. In addition, an (un-assessed but important) objective of these courses is that students will experience a variety of pedagogical methods that they can apply in their classrooms. Experiencing XR technology will, I believe, create a desire in many of them to integrate similar technology into their own pedagogy in the future
INFO B626 Human Factors Engineering for Health Informatics
I am teaching INFO-B626, Human Factors Engineering for Health Informatics, which focuses on how human factors affect the design, implementation, use of health informatics systems. In the course, I would like to offer an activity/assignment focusing on human factors when using VR solutions in rehabilitation therapy settings. Research and clinical communities actively investigate and adopt VR solutions to provide rich stimuli to create immersive, engaging virtual environment during intensive, longitudinal rehabilitation therapies for individuals with chronic conditions (e.g., individuals with acquired brain injury, developmental disorders, etc.). Moreover, the performance of individuals with chronic conditions in diverse VR contents can be used to estimate the clinically validated assessment scores of the individuals.
An activity/assignment will be developed to give hands-on experience of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the VR-based data to students. More specifically, the activity/assignment will be composed of two different parts. First, during an in-class activity, students will be given opportunities to experience diverse VR contents and collect their own performance data (e.g., the number of successful executions of desired tasks) as well as assess their corresponding assessment scores using clinically validated batteries. Second, students will use their own data (and of their classmates) collected during the class to visualize the data (e.g., plotting a bar chart), develop machine learning-based estimation models to translate the VR-based performance data to clinically validated assessment scores, and interpret the results. While students' own data will not perfectly resemble the actual data of individuals with chronic conditions, the newly developed activity/assignment will give a clearer idea about how to collect, analyze, and interpret the VR-based data.
Various Undergrad Courses
Extended reality (XR) presents a new opportunity for engaging students in learning additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing (3DP) knowledge. However, it is not clear how to design suitable XR experiences that have comparable results as real-world laboratory experiences. The objective of this Extended Reality Initiative (XRI) Faculty Fellows grant project is to develop the best practices for integrating XR into AM education and to support adoption of those practices in classrooms. Built on PI's previous virtual reality experiences, this XRI project includes: (1) development of a series XR activity library for AM process and materials testing; (2) comparison the effectiveness of students' XR experiences versus conventional hands-on laboratory experiences; and (3) mini-workshop to engage the materials and manufacturing, computer science, and informatics community in determining and disseminating best practices for XR use in additive manufacturing education.
PSY B203 Ethics and Diversity in Psychology
I teach an online gen ed/required undergraduate psychology course titled Ethics and Diversity in Psychology (Psy-B203), with an enrollment of ~180 students per term. One of the learning outcomes for that course is to apply, analyze, and evaluate psychological research and practice to discern bias and challenge claims that arise from myths, stereotypes, or untested assumptions. One of the modules in the course addressing this objective concerns prejudice reduction principles, which includes the concept of empathy and perspective taking. Currently, I have student watch a 10-minute video of a sexual harassment victim talking about her harassment experience and how it affected her as a way to help students gain empathy and perspective taking on the issue of sexual harassment. They then engage in an online-small group discussion about the video with guided discussion questions designed to elicit empathy and perspective taking and to share those feelings and perceptions with other classmates.
I am applying for an XRI grant to start to develop this activity into a VR or other XR platform because of the potential for extended reality technology to substantially enhance empathy, which in turn, may lead to pro-social behaviors such as willingness to be an active, effective bystander if they should witness similar situations as well as reduce their intentions to engage in sexual harassment or related conduct. Although my long-term goal would be create a fully animated, interactive VR environment where students could either experience (mild) harassment or witness it and make various decisions and see how those might play out, as well as to see how various courses of action might affect their empathy and perspective taking, currently I would like to take my existing videos (2) and turn them into 3-D videos to get an initial assessment of how it affects students empathy, perspective taking, and other outcomes such as attitudes toward victims of sexual harassment, and their intentions to engage in sexual harassment. Should this initial step into XR technology show encouraging signs for these outcomes, I would seek funding to develop more immersive XR experience for my students.
R110 Fundamentals of Speech Communication
The proposal that we have developed for XR technology includes the following elements: 1.) We want to include XR technology use within our R110 Fundamentals of Speech Communication Course. 2.) This would be implemented as an assignment for all general course sections in FA2024 with a pilot period in SP2023. 3.) We are also developing a plan to use XR technology in our online course sections for FA2024. Our projected pilot period would be during SP23 and SU23. Since our course is standardized, we could create XR technology exposure to as many as 3000 students per academic year when fully implemented into the course. Additionally, we intend to provide/install XR technologies into the IUPUI Speaker's Lab which supports our R110 course and other University students. This would provide another Campus Source for this technology exposure. The Speaker's Lab currently exceeds 1000 unique visits per semester. When this is a required visit from an R110 assignment. This number of visits would increase dramatically. Having just completed the Digital Gardener Fellowship, we will that this would complement the assignments we are developing to enhance our university outcomes and objectives for our course. And at the same time bring more current technology learning to our course and campus.
Virtual World Design & Development Course
In the fall, I teach a virtual world design and development class that touches upon virtual reality exercises near the end of the semester. I would like to build this into a more robust offering with some extra focus on augmented reality, but currently it is hard to do so as my device capabilities are limited to the four VR devices we have in the emerging technology lab. To be able to teach more XR in that classroom, I would need several more devices capable of supporting XR development. For this particular project, I would implement an XR-focused section in my fall virtual worlds games course to train students how to make multiplayer experiences in XR games, with a final project focused on building a proof of concept in this space (2 players in a virtual XR space, playing a game such as table tennis). Students would learn: 1. How to make XR experiences (both in virtual reality, and augmented reality) 2. How to design for common XR interaction modes (gaze, controller tracking) 3. How to represent players in a multi-user XR space 4. How to create shared XR interactions so that two or more users can manipulate objects in a shared XR space 5. An understanding of the possibilities of the design space and where multi-user XR is particularly effective In addition to the above, they would leave with one complete project that demonstrates capability in the above learning outcomes and have a foundation to build upon for future classes. To get to these outcomes, students would be assigned an XR project that requires making a multiplayer experience, and then provided a set of tutorials that trains on the use of the technology in building the fundamentals through YouTube videos and hands-on laboratory assignments. During the project, weekly meetings and feedback from the instructor will keep the projects on-track and developing.
2022 XRI Faculty Fellow Grant Recipients & Project Descriptions
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.
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