Exploring the Inclusive Design and Use of Social Multi-platform Virtual Reality for a Post-secondary Gender Diversity Workshop

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities in creating and using social multi-platform virtual reality to increase engagement and inclusion in a transformative learning workshop for post-secondary faculty. We studied the creation and use of three virtual learning environments and nine virtual learning artefacts in a gender diversity workshop for trades faculty to understand how the inclusion, creator, and subject matter expert communities are involved in creating and using virtual reality learning content. We document our community-design process for creating a virtual reality learning activity and evaluate its use with observational note-taking and informal interviews to capture nine themes around using virtual reality for transformative learning within social learning spaces. Our results suggest that the virtual reality learning activity was engaging and inclusive, showing potential as a transformative learning tool. Based on our findings, we propose a preliminary model for creating and using inclusive virtual reality within social learning spaces to guide future studies.