[sudo-discuss] [sudo-info] Re: Join Our Research Project: Recruiting Facilitators for Embodied Virtual Reality Learning Experience (fwd)

Greetings, I hope this email finds you well. I am reaching out to you because of your organization's expertise and experience in facilitating hands-on making and tinkering experiences and your commitment to supporting underrepresented and marginalized communities. We are embarking on an exciting research project aimed at developing embodied pedagogical agents capable of facilitating maker tasks in three-dimensional virtual reality making spaces. Our goal is to create an immersive learning experience for students who may not have access to traditional educational resources. To achieve this goal, we are assembling a team of expert facilitators and youth participants to interact together in an embodied virtual reality (VR) platform that our team is building. This platform, equipped with VR headsets and motion capture technology, will record verbal and motion data of facilitators and young people as they work simulated electronic assembly tasks. We will recruit our youth participants (13- and 14-year-olds) from historically under-represented and marginalized racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups in the greater Sacramento area. Facilitator participation will involve 1 or 2 in-person visits to UC Davis, where you will don a motion capture suit and VR goggles, and then lead about five one-on-one sessions with a 13- or 14-year-old learner. Each session will last 15-20 minutes, and you would complete about five sessions in one visit day. We would also ask you to be available for one additional interview (via zoom) to collect feedback on your experience and our developing framework. Your expertise will be invaluable in helping us collect a rich and diverse dataset that will drive our research forward. The data we collect will be used to (a) understand how experienced facilitators guide learners through making experiences, which will aid us and others to better educators to facilitate maker experiences, and (b) help build a prototype virtual facilitator which will be controlled in "Wizard of Oz" fashion by a human facilitator “behind the curtain.” By participating in our project, you will have the opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research -- your insights and expertise will be instrumental in shaping the future of this exciting set of technologies and pedagogies. We are looking for participants for dates between March 11 and April 30 of this year. If you or anybody in your organization is interested in being part of this research project, please reply to this email with your availability for a brief introductory call. We would love to discuss the project in more detail and answer any questions you may have. Thank you for considering this opportunity to join our team. We look forward to potentially working together to advance the field of virtual reality-based education. Warm regards, José E. Oyola Cortés PhD Student & Graduate Student Researcher School of Education University of California, Davis joyola(a)ucdavis.edu Dr. Lee Martin Professor School of Education University of California, Davis leemartin(a)ucdavis.edu