Hi everyone!
My name is Tracy, and I’m thrilled to begin documenting my journey with the University’s Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) scheme. I am currently a second-year student, and I have been part of the ‘Creating immersive training experiences in Virtual Reality (VR)’ VIP since the start of the academic year. My second year has been very eventful so far, and I have my new commitments to thank for that. Since I devoted the majority of my first year to finding my feet, familiarising myself with all the new changes in life and building a new social support network, I decided that I wanted to explore other opportunities that the University provided for its students this year. Namely, I wanted to find opportunities that could broaden my knowledge and skillset -- and could especially benefit my growing interest in conducting research. Hence, joining a VIP seemed perfect.
I recall applying for a few different VIPs during the application process, but it had always been this one that piqued my interest the most due to its novelty. Essentially, the aim of the VIP is to leverage VR technology in order to effectively provide training against sexual harassment during an artificial scenario. Gender equality is a fundamental human right, and yet it fails across almost all facets of our everyday lives. In accordance with SDG 5, which aims to end all forms of discrimination against women and girls, I do believe that effective training is critical for promoting prosocial bystander intervention. People deserve to feel safe and comfortable, no matter where they are and who they’re with. So, here I am!
The initial VIP induction was a little intimidating, but only because it was an unfamiliar situation for me. Honestly, everybody had been so warm and welcoming, so any anxieties were quickly relieved, especially after knowing that other new additions to the team felt very similarly. In short, meeting the team, as well as our VIP supervisor Ken Cameron, was a lovely ease into the VIP. Although all VIPs are multidisciplinary, this project is quite unique in the sense that we actually have three different teams operating together: the VR team, the AI team, and the Academic Research team. I felt like my interests were most aligned with the Research team, and thus it was that one I joined.
From there, we began to schedule regular meetings every week, and all the new members of the team were quickly caught up. The project is currently at a stage where we are starting to plan for a pilot study, in hopes that meaningful data can soon be collected for analysis. Therefore, the majority of our tasks so far have been focused on ensuring this could successfully play out. I quickly began to start familiarising myself with the scripts for the experiment procedure, as we began to work on creating marketing strategies to advertise our study and reviewing relevant literature to support our research. Alongside another teammate, I took on the challenge of creating new promotional materials that could hopefully enhance participant recruitment, which I found incredibly fun.
If I had to be succinct about my VIP experience, I’d say that I’ve found that working within a team for such an engaging project is very enjoyable. Although we encountered many challenges, such as having to modify our ethics proposal, submitting a second funding application and potentially having to consider utilising a mixed-methods approach, being part of this project has been so enlightening. It definitely makes the highlights of the semester more rewarding! Naturally, this ‘highlight’ goes towards the team’s first opportunity to try on the VR headset and experience the VR application. The detail of the environment, as well as the avatars was incredible to see. Hopefully, we’ll be able to conduct our experiment and start collecting data soon!
Towards the end of the semester, we were able to present our study to the general public at the Percy Centre in the city, and as well as at the end of semester Poster Presentation with the VIP department on campus. In collaboration with another student (whose blog you may have already read!), we created a poster that effectively summarised our efforts this semester while outlining our future directions for the project. Public speaking has never been my strong suit, but that is exactly why I wanted to be part of an experience that could help me hone my existing skills. It felt like the perfect end to my first semester working on this VIP.
Please take a moment to look at our poster below and scan the QR code if you’re interested in participating! I’d like to thank everyone who has read my first post.
Blog written by Tracy Yao: 2nd Year, BSc(Hons) Psychology
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