Into the ViterbiVerse - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

In the mediate of a white, cleanable committee country floats a wide parachute with strings that holds a postulation of props: a broom, a tricycle, a drum and a portion of cocoa cake. A manus reaches retired to drawback the cocoa barroom portion the observers ask: what is this cocoa cake? Where is this room?

The answers are “anything” and “anywhere.”

In Elisabeth Arnold Weiss’s Improv for Engineers sessions, which are a portion of her precocious penning course, students usage virtual world to visualize and empower their imaginativeness successful improv exercises.

“[VR] is simply a facilitator. It’s an accelerator,” said Weiss, an subordinate prof of method connection signifier astatine the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “It’s thing that tin spell close to the bosom of the learning faster.”

Just a decennary ago, Weiss introduced improvisation to her precocious penning for engineers’ course, Writing 340, by partnering with Hollywood comedians and improv theatre module from the USC School of Dramatic Arts to present improv exercises wherever students larn however to go much effectual and assured communicators.

Now, she has added different twist to the improv sessions. Beginning successful autumn 2022, Arnold Weiss injected VR into them. She did truthful due to the fact that she believed “engagement and experimentation were the champion mode for engineers to learn,” adjacent erstwhile it comes to learning brushed skills.

“Teaching and learning successful the accepted schoolroom tin go procedural and transactional,” she said. “But erstwhile we get into this virtual space, there’s thing different.”

VR and improv

During Weiss’s improv sessions, 8 students don headsets and participate the VR, participating successful fast-paced activities that cultivate innovation, forward-thinking and adjacent connection situation management. Meanwhile, the remainder of the people watches the enactment connected a unrecorded broadcast, waiting for their crook with the headset.

“Even the instructors, we don’t person a pre-determined expectation. You cognize it’s designed to unfastened things up. Not unopen them down,” Weiss said.

Students emotion it.

Leyu Xu, a elder machine subject games student, said helium truly enjoyed pitching products to classmates and learning however to navigate done the unearthly physics of the VR environment.

“The instauration of VR truly expands the spatial bound of the people and releases the students from the confines of the classroom,” Xu said. “It helped maine ideate however to pass successful a nonrecreational mounting and boosted my courageousness to pass contempt my fearfulness of the audience.”

Why VR?

A self-described “tech evangelist,” Weiss believes successful the powerfulness of exertion successful “enabling quality potential.” As an engineering pedagogue for astir 3 decades, she work respective studies astir the benefits of VR earlier deciding to adhd it to her classes. During the pandemic, she came crossed a probe insubstantial describing however video-chatting communications enhanced productivity but diminished creativity. She decided to crook to VR to harness this integer productivity portion solving the limits connected creativity.

“VR is simply a tech mean yet it’s truthful live and intimate, which is counterintuitive to however we presumption exertion arsenic acold and inhuman,” Weiss said.

Weiss had been pursuing the improvement of VR since 2016. However, it wasn’t until she spoke with her then-mentee, Leon Huang, B.S. ’19, that she realized the imaginable of VR to alteration the acquisition space.

Huang was a visually impaired pupil studying machine subject games. The Singaporean subject seasoned brought a laptop to people equipped with antithetic accessibility tools to assistance capable successful accusation helium mightiness miss. Weiss realized it was a situation for him to maneuver betwixt desks, chairs, and students wrong the carnal classroom, which made it awkward for him to actively enactment successful the improv exercises. Weiss’s tendency to assistance her pupil amended enactment successful the improv exercises, coupled with a increasing curiosity successful the improvement of VR, led her to inquire Huang a azygous question: “What bash you deliberation of bringing VR into this classroom?”

His response: “Yes, please!” Not lone did Huang’s reply springiness dependable to the astir utmost tendency of students to find much engaging ways of learning, but it besides served arsenic impervious of conception for Weiss: VR successful the schoolroom could amended accessibility and participation.

Professor Weiss successful action

In 2021, Weiss decided to determination guardant with VR, adjacent though she had nary backing astatine the clip to bargain the equipment.

Through a assistance from the Engineering Information Foundation, a New York-based engineering acquisition betterment group, Weiss received $24,500 to physique a customized VR abstraction and acquisition a virtual headset.

She adjacent reached retired to INTERVRSE, a Silicon Beach-based startup that creates immersive metaverse experiences. It was important, Weiss said, to enactment with a institution that was not lone section and disposable but besides flexible, nimble and respectful of the acquisition goal. INTERVRSE designed 5 customized virtual settings: Campus Landing, Boardroom, Future Classroom, Theater, and Hotel Lobby. Each of these spaces had customizable features, which means students had entree to infinite environments and contexts.

Weiss piloted VR successful 3 improv sessions, taught by Debra De Liso and Paul Hungerford of the School of Dramatic Arts, successful her precocious penning classes successful autumn 2022. The results person exceeded her expectations. Students, Weiss said, are overmuch much engaged successful exercises and bold with their creativity. She attributes this to however VR lowers perceived barriers to communication.

“It’s astir similar radical permission their inhibitions astatine the doorway due to the fact that it’s virtual,” Weiss said. “You’re a small spot untethered from your ain identity, your ain self-consciousness, your ain fearfulness of judgment. It’s a freeing space. You person much of a escaped travel of ideas.”

Added Steve Bucher, manager of the Engineering successful Society Program: “Finding ways to innovate wrong a penning program tin beryllium challenging and utilizing theatre improvisation offers galore opportunities for creativity and exploration for engineering students. Elisabeth’s usage of VR arsenic a mode to enrich this acquisition is simply a large mode to grow its impact.”

Weiss hopes that USC Viterbi continues its exploration of VR to supply a ground of acquisition experiences for different institutions successful the future.

“This expands our existent boundaries of experiential learning,” she said. “It’s the spot which I consciousness is truly ripe for having precise intense, effectual learning experiences.”

Published connected November 22nd, 2022

Last updated connected November 22nd, 2022