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Undergraduate
SIAT students use VR for social good
Students in SIAT's unique Semester in Alternate Realities course recently showcased their end-of-term virtual reality (VR) projects that focused on creating immersive experiences that have a positive social impact.
The course, led by SIAT professor Bernhard Riecke with teaching assistants Katerina Stepanova and Noah Miller, is a unique, project-based course designed to inspire interdisciplinary teams of students to solve a real-world problem using virtual reality.
Over the course of the 6-week intersession semester, teams of students developed four immersive experiences that exemplified the course theme of ‘creating for good.’
“The projects are amazing,” shared Riecke of the VR experiences created by the students. “The students really embraced the depth and the purpose of the projects, and used the medium wisely.”
Creating for good
Throughout the course, students reflected on future technologies and their potential impact on the world with the goal of creating meaningful experiences.
The class theme inspired student Hana Barazandeh and her teammates to explore immersive technologies’ potential to encourage behavioural changes in users.
With this theme in mind, they created an experience called EcoSpectra that integrated their interest in environmental preservation with immersive technology.
In EcoSpectra, users are transported to a dystopian museum where they begin to see ordinary artifacts that would not normally be included in a museum.
In a surprising twist, users eventually realize that they are actually a robot in a dystopian future where humans are extinct. The goal of the project was to provide users with a first-hand immersive experience of what could happen if we do not act on the current climate crisis, and thus, raise environmental awareness and to get the immersants to realize and act on the urgency and importance of environmental preservation.
“Our project aimed to create a transformative and emotionally impactful experience for users, evoking a deep connection with the environment and our shared human history,” shared Hana. “We hoped to inspire users to take action towards sustainable practices.”
Along with EcoSpectra, three other VR experiences created in the course were showcased on Wednesday, June 14th at SFU's Surrey campus.
The three other projects exhibited on June 14th invited users to reconnect with and restore nature in a forgotten world (In Bloom), experience Indigenous ways of knowing and being while re-igniting kinship with the land (Honourable Harvest), and navigate ancient ruins in a post-Earth future and explore futures shaped by the climate crisis (Last Call to Elysium).
Non-traditional teaching
For students to create truly meaningful experience, Riecke felt it was important for the students to tackle subjects that resonate with them.
“We did a visioning session in class to explore what they really care about and how we could use technology to tackle that,” explained Riecke. “For this to work, we needed to create an environment based on trust for one another.”
Riecke, Stepanova, and Miller encouraged a deep sense community among the student teams and fostered a learning environment based around coaching and supporting each other. Their goal was to create an environment where students felt comfortable exploring and taking risks.
"We did a lot of activities throughout the class, some of which came from improvisational theatre, some from team management, and some from coaching, and so on to really help the students come together and find a shared vision for their projects and be co-designers," shared Riecke.
This teaching method resonated with students and provided them with the opportunity to experiment, get feedback, and change creative directions when necessary.
“The non-traditional approach of the class, where the teaching staff acted as guides rather than traditional instructors, provided us with the freedom to explore and experiment, making the learning process more dynamic and engaging,” said Hana.
Riecke was impressed with the projects and especially how students embraced the collaborative nature of the course and supported each other.
“The most impressive thing is all the things they learned, not just about technology and VR, but how to operate in a team, how to use project management systems, how to self-organize, how to recover, how to pivot—realize something doesn’t work and try something else.”
“I'm really proud of the students.”
Learn more about Semester in Alternate Realities and this year's projects