Back to the Past: Dr. Lisa Smith and the Genesis Lab Innovate New Virtual Reality Assignment - Pepperdine University Newsroom

Dr. Lisa Smith does things differently. Whether it's her last exam, which calls on students to make a playlist of modern euphony related to a novel, oregon an assignment that pushes the people contented extracurricular of the classroom, Seaver College’s assistant prof of teaching of English does not spell by the book. 

“A batch of students dislike taking a 300 level lit class,” Smith admits. “Many of them haven’t had lit since precocious school. So I effort to bash things that are fun and different.”

Driven by this situation to innovate, Smith collaborated with Payson Library’s Genesis Lab to make an immersive duty for her ENG 380 people entitled, Passion and the Pen: Documents of the First Great Awakening. Given the dense and focused nature of this topic, Smith sought to incorporated caller and breathtaking exertion into her curriculum. Thus, she came up with an thought to prehend her students’ attraction – a virtual reality acquisition of George Whitefield’s Great Awakening speaking tour. 

“Under nary circumstances did I deliberation I could really get this done,” says Smith. “But I was like, ‘Well, possibly the Genesis Lab volition assistance me, and we volition conscionable support taking steps and spot if it happens.’”

Six months, 2 trips to the eastbound coast, and many, galore steps later, Smith and her collaborators unveiled their instauration – a 9 infinitesimal Oculus Quest portraying the grounds and churches wherever Whitefield was apt to person spoken during the First Great Awakening. Accompanying the acquisition was a narration of 1 of Whitefield’s sermons, which played alongside the moving images.

“One happening that was existent of the First Great Awakening, is that it was a question that was held unneurotic successful galore ways by the Reverend George Whitefield,” explains Smith. “In 1739, helium came present for a 15 period preaching tour, and helium virtually traveled up and down the eastbound seaboard… His benignant was precise innovative… He shared a batch personally. He published his spiritual journals, which was unsocial astatine the time. People got an inside look astatine his spirituality, and they felt similar they benignant of knew him.”

Wanting to assistance her people a akin grade of intimacy, Smith and her household traveled to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts with a 360 camera. There they changeable footage successful fields, cemeteries, churches, adjacent the burial grounds of Whitefield himself. 

Next, she recruited a Seaver College theatre student, Coby Rogers, to grounds 1 of Whitefield’'s sermons. Then, the video and audio were handed disconnected to Genesis Lab staff, and Lauren Haberstock and Rankin Bullard edited the earthy footage with the narration into a virtual world format. 

Yet, the originative process did not extremity there. Smith went connected to collaborate with Haberstock and Bullard to make a good developed, robust assignment, which utilized multiple facets of the Lab. Beyond the Oculus Quest, students besides utilized the Cricut (an automated cutting machine) and Tinkercad (a 3D modeling program) successful bid to implicit the accompanying assignments. 

What originated arsenic a amusive thought to immerse students successful the satellite of the First Great Awakening grew much dynamic with clip and teamwork. Although Smith catalyzed this assignment, she claims that the Genesis Lab deserves conscionable arsenic overmuch recognition for the project's last form.

“I consciousness similar [the Genesis Lab] is underused,” Smith claims. “In presumption of being a resource, it offers thing that I can’t connection successful the classroom. It’s truthful antithetic from a schoolroom abstraction that it tin beryllium interesting; it tin supply variety; it tin let students with different skills to usage those abilities.”

However, don’t instrumentality her connection for it. Instead, perceive to her students, who responded to the Genesis Lab task with reviews specified as: 

“In truthful galore different classes, we are forced to memorize a multitude of items for a big exam astatine the extremity of things. There’s nary application, and to beryllium wholly transparent, it’s not that amusive oregon enjoyable,” says 1 student. “However, this task allowed america to use the worldly we learned successful people successful specified a mode that was engaging and entertaining.”

“I recovered the Genesis laboratory to beryllium highly amusive and engaging compared to thing I have
ever done successful an English class,” exclaims another.

And lastly, “I felt that this originative attack to engaging with the worldly was caller and provided a much invaluable acquisition than simply completing a probe paper oregon akin assignment.”