Empathy via VR

Empathy is best taught by putting someone in another person’s shoes, as the saying goes.  From an outside perspective, we can still see an unfortunate circumstance and feel for it and the people involved; however, truly experiencing an event and living through it first hand is something else entirely. Virtual Reality has the unique ability to replicate this. 

Education is my primary goal for this endeavor. This will most likely be used in classrooms in an effort to teach empathy and expand perspective. Speaking of which, in class the other day, we were among refugees struggling to survive. We also experienced what it was like to lose our vision, our sense of sight. This was far more powerful than watching the news, or reading the story of a blind man. I want to do something similar with The Creature from Frankenstein.

I want to share the experience of what it would be like to go through life with impairments, as well as a unique appearance. I want to understand what “a day in the life” is like for someone bound to a wheelchair. I want to see what struggles they face and how they are treated by common people.

This was inspired by, of course, Frankenstein, as well as the accessibility assessment from earlier in the semester. I believe that experiencing this life first hand will allow the average, able-bodied person to have a greater respect towards and empathize with someone who gets around in a wheelchair. VR is an excellent medium for this venture. Some details I’ve thought of: VR user should be seated, as if they were bound to a wheelchair; character/model should be fully clothed in unisex attire, if possible, for maximum immersion for the user; as an “on rails” VR experience, there should be less motion sickness in inexperienced VR users, or those who simply struggle with virtual reality.

 

A Day in the Life of a Superhero

A Day in the Life of a Superhero is an educational VR experience meant for children ages 4-10. The goal of the VR game is to teach kids the meaning of empathy at a younger age through the eyes of a superhero, hopefully carrying the message into their daily lives.

To begin this project, I thought about when I was a child and had fictional superhero characters that I looked up to. This got me thinking about heroes that are well recognized but are also outcasted by their citizens, such as Batman, the Hulk or the Incredibles. Batman is a wanted fugitive by the police yet he never kills anyone and only beats-up bad guys. The Hulk is a big, green monster that uncontrollably destroys everything in his wake, and nobody wants him around for it. The Incredibles, at one time, were outlawed if they revealed they had super powers.

After discovering this common theme of the hated superhero, I researched two studies conducted by psychologist Rachel White and other researchers from Stanford University. Their studies were conducted on numerous children roughly between ages 4-10. They had some of the kids dress-up as a superhero while others did not dress-up at all. All of the kids were asked to do long, basic tasks on a computer, allowing them to take as many breaks as they wanted. The studies found that after completing the tasks, the kids who dressed-up were more empathetic towards the researchers than the kids who did not dress-up. Furthermore, the kids in costume completed the computer tasks at a faster rate than the other kids not in costume.

A Day in the Life of a Superhero will attempt to reach young children and bring out more empathy. The players will step into the VR world, modern-day NYC, and will come across a robbery taking place in a tech-store. The players will have to stop the thief. After defeating the thief, the tech-store owner is ungrateful for your help as the player has just destroyed an android prototype that the store was testing as a security system.

Kids are more inclined to empathize with the superhero more-so than the citizens, yet after destroying the tech-store’s property they might feel sorry for what they did. The message A Day in the Life of a Superhero is trying to get across to these kids is if you want to be a superhero and help others, you have to understand how others feel first.

 

Jarrett, Christian. “Pretending to Be Batman.” The Psychologist, Dec. 2017, web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=e1f67a23-0b18-4775-8b2f-163db16f8b8a%40sdc-v-sessmgr04&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=126448371&db=a9h.

Tucker, Patrick. “Virtual Empathy.” Futurist, June 2013, web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=e1f67a23-0b18-4775-8b2f-163db16f8b8a%40sdc-v-sessmgr04&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=86889461&anchor=toc.

“In His Undead Shoes” pitch

“In his undead shoes” will be a Virtual Reality cinematic experience that makes the viewer see the world as the creature from the novel “Frankenstein” and go through some key moments of his life.

 

I would want to use this app to engage people aren’t really into Frankenstein or weren’t really captured by Frankenstein upon the first read. I would like to capture that audience to get them to reevaluate the novel and reframe their view of the novel into the perspective of the creature. Since this will be told through a different medium than the novel, it will hopefully appeal to a different audience than the book while still getting some of the themes across.

 

This app will use a first person perspective and place the viewer in the shoes of the creature created by Frankenstein. It will include key moments like his birth and rejection from his creator, his learning and observation of society and his exile. We will frame and shoot this in a way where it’s not explicitly known that you are Frankenstein’s monster or that this is the Frankenstein story until the end. When you are exiled, you will find your creator again and he’ll mention that you are an undead abomination he created, wholey unnatural. Then the title will appear “In his undead shoes”.

 

The whole point of this is to show someone what happens when society rejects you for something you can’t control and how that lack of empathy can shape you. This relies on how Mary Shelley breaks down the fact that “sympathy” is deeply rooted in seeing and visual appeal, and that when a harsh “ugliness” is introduced, society will no longer sympathize (Sympathy, Seeing and Affective Labor, Kyung Sook). Once they experience all the things that the creature experienced, that should hopefully give the audience a more clear link to the creature. We can then open a discussion about the experience, ask how it left people feeling and then reflect on some of the actions of the creature. Open ended questions can be asked like “Why did the creature constantly ask Frankenstein for a wife” and “Why did the creature kill Elizabeth?”. After reflecting on these questions, we can open a discussion about how to prevent something like this or how things like this happen in reality on a smaller, more grounded scale.

Kyung Sook, Shin. Sympathy, Seeing, and Affective Labor: Mary Shelley’s (Re-)Reading of Adam Smith in Frankenstein. 2012, http://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/landing/article.kci?arti_id=ART001680132.

The Amazing Odyssey

I believe in the power of empathy to positively transform the teacher and student experience in the classroom. If you’ve been in a school for any length of time, you know that whether you’ve asked for it or not, you’re bound to encounter anything. For example, everyday teachers and students are facing difficult/ complex situations in school – questions about belonging and forgiving, advantage and ability, and conflict and acceptance. These are all themes we can find in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. According to Baker et al., “some elementary school children face constant threats to their academic, social, and emotional growth and development. Equally, in meeting the goal of educating and nourishing the whole child. many schools face threats from unacceptably high rates of school violence, bullying, school dropout, youth suicide and other negative behaviors and psychological health” (209).

The purpose of my game is to teach students the story and themes of the novel, Frankenstein. After the students finish playing “The Amazing Odyssey”, they will gain an understanding of the story and themes of Frankenstein, they will learn more about empathy, and in the end, students will learn why the creature was such an empathetic character. The tagline for this game is #buildempathy. “The Amazing Odyssey” is supposed to be a 10 – week designed journey using the Oculus Rift. Win Smith claims that  “Integrating the VR experiences with lesson plans could have huge benefits for kids who might not typically retain information from a textbook” (Babcock, Stephen. “This edtech startup is bringing virtual reality to the classroom.”  https://technical.ly/baltimore/2015/05/29/alchemy-learning-virtual-reality-classroom-oculus/) 

Using the concept of The Amazing Race TV show, the students will have a chance to become the creature and will be given clues that will lead to a scene or narrative passage in the novel, Frankenstein. Where the player has to complete a task with a character from the book that explores, promotes, or endorses empathy among themselves and the other characters in Frankenstein. According to Cheok et al., “Storytelling is an effective and important educational mean for children. With the augmented reality (AR) technology, storytelling becomes more and more interactive and intuitive in the sense of human computer interactions” (22). One particular theme I found that students can learn from “The Amazing Odyssey” is the unlikely friendships in Frankenstein. For example, in the 1931 Frankenstein film, where the creature meets a young girl. Although a little afraid, she accepts him and plays games with him. After they throw all the petals from a flower into the lake, he looks around for something else to throw. He picks her up and throws her in. In my VR game, this scene can be recreated with the creature and the little girl also having an unlikely friendship, but with him learning how to be a gentle friend.

One cool thing about this game is that ”the creature” will be able to collect books each time the player and character accomplishes a task. The more books the creature collects, the more he learns about his human nature. So, in the end, the students should have an empathic creature. Also, the more books you earn, the more levels up you go which creates a cool gaming aspect for the students. I have not found a virtual reality game like this. This game is for fifth grade – twelfth grade. Principals will definitely purchase this game for his/her teachers.

Baker, Jason, et al. “Teaching Social Skills in a Virtual Environment: An Exploratory Study.” THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK, Vol. 34, No. 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 209-226 https://ezproxy.stevenson.edu:2101/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=6dcb2500-927a-4261-9933-59ce08a3b58d%40sessionmgr104

Cheok, David Adrian, et al. “Virtual reality and mixed reality for virtual learning environments.” Computers & Graphics 30 (2006) pp. 20-28 https://ezproxy.stevenson.edu:2106/S0097849305002025/1-s2.0-S0097849305002025-main.pdf?_tid=e1b51003-a517-48ce-911a-6b8a7ef8c5ef&acdnat=1542724968_d5eea48f1db6bb365e924cb5a4500301

Stephen Babcock. “This edtech startup is bringing virtual reality to the classroom.” Technical.ly. May 29, 2015. https://technical.ly/baltimore/2015/05/29/alchemy-learning-virtual-reality-classroom-oculus/

 

Final Project

For your final project you will use all of the readings and discussions we have had throughout this semester to inspire your own creation: a virtual reality (VR) experience that evokes empathy inspired by Frankenstein. The goal is to teach your audience about the novel, and particularly to explain why the creature is an empathetic character. You should draw on your own personal experience, criticism of the novel, and other reliable, scholarly sources to write a pitch – and ultimately a formal proposal – for this short VR application.  Again, your VR experience must be both educational and intended to induce empathy in your audience. You will design this simulation as an entry to the competition being held by Mosaic Learning:

http://www.mosaiclearning.com/

To accomplish this task, the project will be broken down into steps:

  1. Individual pitches: each student will conceptualize and present their idea for a project in 3 minutes. The class will vote on the top 4 projects. You should use multimedia and evidence of research in this pitch.
  2. Group contracts: in small groups of 3-4, students will outline their plan for this project and assign roles and responsibilities for each student to accomplish. A timeline and due dates will be established. This will be submitted via Google Doc to Dr. L.
  3. Formal proposals: each group will compose a 3-5 page proposal for their project meeting the criteria of the competition. The proposal will include outside research, citations, and a bibliography.
  4. Prototype: each group will create a demo of the simulation by making script and either storyboard or short video using our Richo Theta cameras or StoryBoardTHAT.
  5. Final presentation: this is your presentation to Mosaic Learning. You will present all of your research and your prototype in a formal presentation including all of your group members. You have 15 minutes plus 3 minutes for questions. The final presentations are during the final exam period.

Each proposal should include the following elements:

  • Intro/Purpose – a thorough description of your application, your inspiration, and your intended audience. In this section describe how this application will evoke empathy, and why you think it will aide in the audience understanding the themes in the novel Frankenstein. 
  • Learning Outcomes – what will your audience learn and how can this learning be assessed?
  • User Experience/ User Interface – how will your audience use this application? Explain what device (Google Cardboard, HTC Vive, Oculus Go) you intend this to be for and why, describe the interactive elements of the application, and demonstrate the visual appeal of this experience. This is where your storyboard and script should appear in your final proposal.  
  • Implementation Strategy – who will you market this toward and how will you reach them? Consider what your logo, motto, and or/tagline might be. How will this be implemented by teachers into classrooms? How will educators measure the impact of this experience?
  • Long-term Vision – how can this be expanded into a series of applications? Can their be more chapters? New editions? New features? Can you expand this to new (secondary) audiences? How can you reach new markets with this application?

You will post your final proposals to our course blog using the category and tag “Final” the day before our final exam period.

Have fun! Be creative! Be inspired!