STEMXR: Research Project for the SPIRE-EIT REU
National Science Foundation Award #2244586
This project is a current work in progress, and is being made with using a combination of Unity, Blender, and OpenXR.
I worked on this project as a Graduate Mentor at Iowa State University, in collaboration with four of my teammates on the EAGER project . We worked with three REU students in collaboration with the students and teachers of Storm Lake, Iowa, to build an XR Game to engage students with Circuitry concepts.
Storm Lake is a rural meatpacking community in Iowa, where the majority of residents are families of immigrants. The culture in this small town is very tight-knit, with some students expressing reservations regarding leaving the town to pursue career opportunities or attend secondary education. Most students prefer to live close by to their families, with many students pursuing careers in education or nursing through the nearby community college.
Throughout our time working with the students, we played a role in teaching the studets programming skills in Unity, using OpenXR, Blender and Meta Quest tools (I was an instructor for the Blender and OpenXR classes that were part of the REU program) and teaching the students how to conduct qualitative research, analyze data, write an academic paper, present findings to faculty and design a poster. We are continuing work on this project during this year (2024 - 2025) and I will be using this project for my Creative Component project.
My primary role was in supporting the students as a developer for the XR environment they planned to develop. We focused on adding elements that we found would engage students in basic circuitry, based on co-design sessions the students had conducted previously.
I helped teach a Blender class and a VR class for the students' final projects. I worked with my colleagues Mustafa Kilinc and Jorge Yass to assist the students with the programming in the environment. I played a role in helping the students set up and develop the VR environment, and then I played a role in ensuring that the students had all the functionality they needed. I also assisted other groups as well, to ensure that their code was functional. The students also went on field trips to understand their stakeholders (rural students), one of which was a class that I set up curriculum for.
For more information about the REU, our students, and to read about our students experiences, please visit the official REU webpage.
National Science Foundation Award #2244586