Exploring Virtual Reality for Developing Soft-Skills in STEM Education

The 21st century workplace is an increasingly intercultural and collaborative environment. As a result, soft skills are being recognized as deficient in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates, as documented in a survey commissioned by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The social sciences and humanities lag significantly behind science and medicine in the utilization of the new immersive technologies such as virtual reality. Our program seeks to improve essential workplace skills for STEM students through experiential case studies, experienced in immersive virtual reality simulation modules that immerse students in intercultural leadership scenarios. Experiencing something from a distance is a new type of collaborative technology known as telehora. The simulations will be recorded in two genres: via 360-degree cameras utilizing real actors and with computer generated imagery characters. The two recording genres will be compared to determine if they have differential impacts on student presence, engagement, and education outcomes. The modules will be playable on traditional computers as well as virtual reality hardware. We will also compare high-cost virtual reality hardware to low-cost virtual reality and traditional computers, examining how student engagement and outcomes are affected by the different delivery mediums. The research methods to examine the differential impact of simulation genre and delivery medium will include student self-report, facial emotion detection, and a combination of galvanic skin response and electromyography/electrocardiography. The combination of methods will give insights into the effectiveness of the interventions on traditional outcomes as well as giving researchers a better understanding of emotion's role in intercultural leadership behaviors. Students will be active participants in the virtual environment, capable of both responding to and looking around in the virtual environment. Students will experience firsthand how the choices they make within the modules change the outcomes of the case. The modules present potential to be deployed in traditional classrooms, online classrooms, and as self-study. Once created, the modules can easily be scaled to provide a safe and replicable experience for large student cohorts with the potential to expand to multiple universities and be used in industry. Students are unable to gain these experiences through formal education by other means, making the experiences good candidates for virtual reality application. A variety of outcomes will be examined, including development in the Intercultural Development Inventory, leadership competencies, and collaborative problem solving skills. The program will provide an immersive and safe learning environment for students to experience and participate in intercultural leadership scenarios that cannot be replicated in traditional classrooms.