Blog: Accessibility Showcase: Lessons Learned on Making Teaching Programming and Accessible Multi-User Virtual Reality More Inclusive

Published on April 29, 2024

By Anthony Scavarelli, scavara@algonquincollege.com

Dr. Anthony Scavarelli holds a Ph.D. In Information Technology and a MASc in Human-Computer Interaction from Carleton University, exploring the development of an inclusive virtual reality framework for learning and social, collaborative human-computer interactions using reality-based interfaces. He is also a full-time professor at Algonquin College, teaching 3D animation, sensor-based interaction, and virtual reality design studios in a joint college-university interactive multimedia and design degree program between Carleton University and Algonquin College.

As a social technology artist and socio-experiential UX researcher, he explores how to make virtual reality more inclusive and transformative in learning. His research methods include theorizing how technology use should consider the socio-cultural context, exploring the usability and performance of inclusive virtual reality tools and methods, and observing how people create and use virtual reality tools within social learning spaces such as classrooms and museums. Dr. Scavarelli’s interactive work, research, and publications can be found at https://www.anthony-scavarelli.com.

In the last few years, we have seen changes in how we teach and engage with learners, primarily seeded by a sudden shift to online learning and teaching, resulting in many challenging adaptations necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, an essential discussion area around learner engagement includes better connecting with and welcoming traditionally excluded communities in fields such as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), where we still struggle to close significant diversity gaps. Tools such as virtual reality (VR) appear as potential candidates for increasing learner engagement, as many studies suggest that increased engagement is one of its strongest learning affordances [1]. Unfortunately, immersive head-mounted display (HMD) VR can also be non-inclusive, introducing accessibility challenges such as cybersickness, a motion-sickness-related nausea that many experience when using immersive technologies such as VR [2, 3], gender bias, the inability to use physical controls or space, and social anxiety [1, 4].

In this article, as an overview and extension of a recent Carleton University Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) presentation, I will describe my observations and lessons learned teaching a third-year design studio for the Bachelor of Information Technology: Interactive Multimedia and Design (BIT-IMD) program. BIT-IMD is a joint program between Carleton University and Algonquin College, where we teach design, user experience, and programming. It is a generalist technology degree where many graduates are hired across various fields, showcasing the adaptability of our students across several industries. For example, we have graduates working in special effects teams or as animators, web developers and designers in the government, researchers and teachers, video game developers, or even successful freelancers, startups, and artists. Fortunately, the program welcomes a diverse student body, but keeping all students engaged with traditionally less inclusive STEM material can be challenging.

About the Class

Teaching students in the BIT-IMD program can be rewarding as we train to be “transdisciplinary” technologists, and many appreciate the broad overview of how everything works. They graduate from the program with many skill sets relevant to understanding and creating technology, allowing them to work more fluidly within interdisciplinary teams. Students are taught everything from C++ and web design to 3D modelling, illustration, UX and game development. However, teaching in the BIT-IMD program can also be challenging as many students are less engaged with our more technical courses. Classes involving programming can be problematic as we often attract students who are more interested in the design aspects of the program.

IMD3901 is a third-year design studio taught at Algonquin College to introduce students to multi-user and multi-device interaction design, but we also talk about how technology intrinsically shapes society and culture as “we become what we behold. We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us” [5]. The tool of choice in this class is currently A-Frame, a javascript and HTML library for creating multi-platform web-based XR for practical assignments and a large group term project. Using a tool like A-Frame allows us to experiment with immersive media in a more accessible, experimental, and creative way. A-Frame is not unlike Processing and Scratch, which helps make teaching programming to students and designers more accessible and creative. IMD3901 also challenges the students to work with emerging technology (e.g., VR) and, hopefully, inspires learners to continue to shape what it becomes after the class.

In this class, I wrestle constantly with the following question from an engagement and inclusion perspective:

How do I engage students both creatively and technically?

Engagement and Inclusion in Teaching

Below, I will go over five principles I have found helpful to consider when building a classroom strategy that is more engaging and inclusive where we accept the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) definition of inclusion as “using proactive measures to create an environment where people feel welcomed, respected and valued, and to foster a sense of belonging and engagement” [6]. Note that inclusion and engagement are interconnected. Fellow BIT-IMD professors and collaborators Dr. Ali Arya and Dr. Rob Teather and I have been working towards a more formal framework for tying together engagement and inclusion when using immersive tools such as VR in Social Learning Spaces. Social Learning Spaces are where users learn together and alone across continually shifting physical and virtual realities, using physical and digital tools/artefacts to re-create more authentic, engaging, and transformational learning experiences [1] (see Figure 1). With the consideration of ambiguous boundaries between physical and virtual learning spaces in mind, I have worked to summarize my approach to more inclusive and engaging teaching in IMD3901 below.

Figure 1. A diagram showing the overlap between physical and virtual spaces, using mixed realities tools such as VR and AR, within social learning spaces. In our contemporary classes, we must consider both the physical and virtual spaces students inhabit.

Convince: As a teacher, I constantly try to convince students that what we learn is essential, e.g., I need to be a cheerleader for challenging material.
- Examples:
  - Frame what we are learning within a contemporary professional context that has relevant connections to their past and future courses in the semester’s first class.
  - Work to be passionate and to make what we learn interesting and exciting for new learners.
  - Use diverse professional work and research examples to try to reach all students.
  - Challenge students to be the change they want to see in technology and culture.
Community: I work towards being less of an instructor and more of a director. I work to build a learning community, physically in class and virtually online, in which they all help support themselves and each other towards their academic and professional goals.
- Examples:
  - Set expectations at the beginning of the class about class difficulty and show examples of past student work.
  - Create a forum using tools they are familiar with and use (e.g., Discord).
  - Encourage students to teach the class something they have uniquely learned to promote learner empowerment and knowledge-sharing.
  - Create group projects and group discussions.
Collaboration: We encourage group projects, project management, and client partners to emulate professional activity.
- Examples:
  - Collaborate with industry clients to provide real-world feedback and use cases.
  - Support each other in group projects and with anonymous positive and constructive peer feedback.
Communication: We encourage varied forms of communication as the key to success.
- Examples:
  - Use Brightspace and Discord.
  - Have weekly in-person meetings to check the progress of group projects and check in with students’ current engagement.
  - Use various tools to engage with students, e.g., slides, lectures, class discussions, team-building activities, Kahoots, Videos, etc.
Flexibility: In this class, we allow some flexibility in assessing deliverables and deadlines with timely and professional communication.
- Examples:
  - Creativity is a significant dimension of any assessment rubric, as this allows our students to find and impose the value of the assignment themselves.
  - As we have a large term project, this allows students flexibility on what skill to focus on (how to build their portfolios for work after graduation!).
  - Flexibility on deadlines, within reason, if they can communicate challenges ahead of time (as they would professionally).
  - Students can use 1 “forgiveness clause” for up to 5 days for late submission without explanation or penalty (Thanks to Dr. Chris Joslin for the idea :).

Throughout this class, we use the above principles as guides for creating a more engaging and inclusive classroom where students feel respected and connected. However, as our primary instruction tool in the last few years has been VR, we must also consider how to make using and creating with VR more engaging and inclusive.

Engagement and Inclusion in Using Virtual Reality

Within social learning spaces, such as post-secondary education (PSE) classrooms and museums, where we learn together and alone across physical and virtual dimensions, the social aspect of education is vital, requiring communication and collaboration over diversified groups. Unfortunately, physical learning spaces can be impractical (e.g., costly field trips) or impossible (e.g., visiting the storms of Jupiter). However, researchers note VR facilitates experiential learning, promoting active participation, problem-solving, and critical thinking [1]. Additionally, studies into using VR to enhance perspective-taking, whereby individuals learn to better empathize with others [7], suggest the VR medium is a good candidate for transformative learning [8].

Contemporary VR education often focuses on highly immersive head-mounted displays (HMD). Yet, HMD-based VR suffers from various limitations preventing effective use in social learning spaces, such as cybersickness, infrastructure and training constraints, social anxiety, and various ability and gender biases [1, 4]. A VR framework that provides reasonably similar experiences across multiple platforms (HMD, desktop, and mobile) could significantly increase the inclusion and efficacy of VR in social learning spaces.

IM3901 uses a VR framework I have been developing throughout my recently completed Ph.D. research. This open-source theoretical and practical framework is called Circles. We built Circles to address inclusion and engagement from a socio-cultural perspective that considers the individual and the social contexts in which we use emerging immersive technologies. It is an experimental foundation unto which we can continue building more accessible and inclusive features while running user studies to capture their effectiveness [4, 9].

Figure 2. An example of how learners within the same circle can see each other and share artefacts from different worlds (note the homework artefact from the world on the right is also present in the campfire world on the left while being held).

Platform Scalability: Supporting multiple VR platforms (desktop, mobile, and HMD).
- Examples:
  - By default, Circles supports multiple VR platforms (Desktop, Mobile, and HMD).
  - See Figure 3.
Social Scalability: Supporting a variable number of users together and alone, encouraging multi-user interactions.
- Features:
  - Learners can see each other as avatars within Circles’ worlds/VLEs, even if they are not currently in the same VLE. They can even pass artefacts found in one world to another learner in another world (Figure 2).
  - Circles’ includes a system to make networked objects, interactions, and messages within Circles’ worlds.
  - Several roles within Circles, e.g., student, teacher, researcher, and participant, allow certain users different abilities or permissions.
Reality Scalability: Encouraging the design process to consider physical and virtual realities and their interconnectivity.
- Features:
  - By supporting selection-based interactions, we can limit the physical space required to interact and move within virtual learning environments.
Interaction Scalability: Interactions are low physical effort selection-focused scaling to advanced controls for experienced VR users.
- Features:
  - Circles default interactions follow a low physical effort model whereby selections symmetrical in use across all VR platforms are used for object interaction and travel.
  - We also support more advanced interaction techniques for advanced VR users.
Informational Scalability: Encouraging the use of multiple sensory modalities and considering how we communicate information to others.
- Features:
  - Knowledge transfer focuses on virtual learning artefacts that are manipulated to access textual, audio, and visual information about the learning subject.
  - We encourage redundant multi-sensory design patterns where information is available as both text and audio.

Figure 3. From left to right, symmetric single-selection interactions are showcased on desktop (mouse click), mobile (finger-tap), and HMD (controller trigger-click on ray cast selection).

Summary

Teaching programming can be complex, even more so if the students are not coming to your class with a singular focus on programming (e.g., as would be expected in a strict computer science degree) or feel the content excludes them. To increase engagement and inclusion in IMD3901, we work to convince students that what we are teaching is relevant to their other courses and professional aspirations, build a community of learning where we can all support each other through collaboration with their peers and industry, being in constant communication with each other about challenges and process, and remaining flexible around assessment deliverables and assessments.

We must also consider how to increase engagement and inclusion with the tools we use for learning. In IMD3901, we use a framework called Circles to make creating and using VR more inclusive and engaging through multi-platform support, supporting social and collaborative interactions across a varying number of users, designing to consider both physical and virtual reality, focusing on simple low-effort interaction, and creating virtual learning artefacts that disseminate information across multiple senses.

Though we note that not all courses and learning methods and materials may be able to follow a design studio model, as IMD3901 does, we hope that the guiding principles and observations noted in this article around how to create more inclusive and engaging classrooms and virtual reality may provoke some thought and discussion around how these principles may relate to other types classrooms. Please feel free to share your thoughts and discuss!