| NSF Org: |
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 13, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | October 14, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 2028478 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Elizabeth Rom
elrom@nsf.gov (703)292-7709 OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | August 15, 2020 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $300,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $300,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
21 N PARK ST STE 6301 MADISON WI US 53715-1218 (608)262-3822 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Madison WI US 53715-1218 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Polar Special Initiatives |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): | |
| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.078 |
ABSTRACT
This project will provide a new means for the broader public to better understand an important polar research topic, the Adelie penguins of Antarctica, through an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience. The foundation of this proposal is built upon a collaborative effort between the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Virtual Environments Group, the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), the Field Day Lab from the University of Wisconsin - Madison campus, and an Antarctic research scientist and educator, Jean Pennycook. The collaborative team will create a VR experience to tell the story of Adelie Penguins and how they impact the lives of all citizens. The project will enhance and improve the public?s understanding of the research on Adelie penguins that is currently underway in Antarctica and that is outlined in the book ?Becoming Joey? by Jean Pennycook with a narrative that includes an interdisciplinary scientific focus on fields such as atmospheric sciences, ecology and biology. The final VR product will be showcased in a public exhibition space, VR app stores, national and international science events, and publicly accessible websites. The experience will provide closed captioning and translations for Spanish and other relevant languages to enable a greater accessibility for the created products. The project will also serve as a training tool and resource for two local educators through a fellowship program.
The project will allow users to virtually experience the science behind Adelie Penguins in an engaging way through embodying the user as an Adelie Penguin to partake in a narrative-based VR application that shares the story of the lives of these unique animals. VR technology enables users to experience environments that are difficult or impossible to physically inhabit, such as the Earth?s polar regions. The embodied interaction will provide a wealth of information around a participant?s actions and perspectives. Previous work from the project team has shown that viewpoint analysis of a virtual experience can pinpoint salient features in a 3D environment that can be used to provide a summary of events. Recent work has shown that player actions inside of video games can be used to predict learning outcomes and early quitting, but little work has studied these effects in VR. Given the wealth of information about a user?s virtual actions, this proposal aims to explore how a participant?s views, actions, and decisions correlate to their learning outcomes and engagement.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project aimed to create a novel virtual reality experience, entitled Waddle, in which users embody an Adélie penguin. The developed experience allows users to progress through the key stages of a penguin’s life cycle as an intervention to increase empathy and learning. The experience was developed in consultation with a team of educational game designers, VR researchers, and research scientists. In order to better understand the impact of the experience on factors such as embodiment, empathy, scientific attitudes and informal learning, several research studies were undertaken.
The results demonstrate that direct embodiment of a penguin is possible, likely be due to the visuomotor synchrony and gesture congruency afforded by the penguin skeleton. As penguins stand upright and have their flippers to the sides, a mapping of the participants arm location to flippers is possible. Additionally, this research demonstrates that the developed virtual experience is able to provide a significant change in empathy and a positive impact on informal learning. As the work demonstrates a significant correlation between embodiment and empathy, virtual embodiment of non-human characters may provide a powerful tool for both education and appreciation of other creatures. Future work will aim to create more precise tools to measure informal learning while aiming to engage with a larger and more diverse population. Beyond this, future work will aim to better understand what aspects of this experience provide support for embodiment and empathy and how these constructs relate to and support informal learning.
The developed experience is freely available on app stores and is currently being played by individuals all over the world. Waddle is also part of a larger effort to promote education around polar research for under-represented audiences. Finally, the experience is incorporated into the Open Game Data project, enabling player data to be publicly available for secondary analysis.
Last Modified: 11/29/2023
Modified by: Kevin B Ponto
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