This is the last meeting for Cohort A! We celebrated and reflected this amazing one-year community of practice experience, and conducted a post-survey to solicit feedback from cohort faculty and their recommendations for future cohorts.
At this meeting, we announced the winner of additional funding support that the project team secured from Cal State Innovate. The project team also elaborated on the learning assessment and project reporting requirements for Cohort A members to graduate from the XR-FLC. Cohort A members were also encouraged to participate in Cohort B faculty onboarding event in August at the Summer Symposium hosted by SJSU.
At this meeting, the project team and Cohort A faculty met in an immersive collaborative meta space, Spatial.io. This experience provided Cohort A faculty firsthand experience of real-time 3D visualization in collaborative XR learning space, and fosters their understanding of how XR supports active learning and student engagement.
At this meeting, we reviewed the pre-implementation checklist the project team developed for XR-FLC Cohort A members before their redesigned XR-integrated course trials. The project team explained the assessment of XR-enhanced learning activities, and provided some sample instruments for assessment. The project team also explained the reporting requirements for the cohort faculty’s individual course trials.
At this meeting, we discussed the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and how our XR-enhanced active learning and course redesign effort should be informed by DEI principles so we not only enhance student learning outcomes but also close learning gaps among historically underrepresented and minority students. We also shared the CSU Student Success Dashboard to expose our cohort faculty to tools and statistics pertaining to learning gaps and student demographics at CSU.
At this meeting, the project team provided an example of the backward design informed course redesign with XR integration, with the focus on desired results, assessment evidence, and learning plan. The project team also shared some additional funding opportunities for the XR-FLC cohort faculty to support their research and development activities with XR.
At this meeting, we reviewed the results of a pre-survey on barriers and pathways identified by the cohort faculty. We then reviewed the course redesign progress of individual faculty members, and the timeline for implementation and assessment of their course pilot efforts.
At this meeting, we reviewed technology infrastructure at each participating campus, and the cohort faculty’s experience using various XR headsets. A detailed discussion was conducted on how we use the Backward Design model to integrate XR in the selected introductory STEM courses to support students’ active learning. A book, Understanding by Design, was purchased by the project team for each cohort member as a valuable reference book to their course redesign efforts.
At the first bi-weekly meeting for XR-FLC Cohort A, we introduced the faculty to popular off-the-shelf XR applications and techniques to search for low-cost and open-source XR contents. We also discussed the course redesign efforts they needed to go through to organically integrate XR in their current teaching, with carefully thought-through implementation plans, and technological infrastructure including available hardware and facility space on each project team member campus.
The onboarding workshop day 2 brought CSU leadership team and in-house experts including Kate Miffitt (Director for Innovation at Cal State Innovate) and Mihaela Popescu (Faculty Director for xREAL Lab at CSU San Bernardino) to showcase forefront research and development (R&D) highlights on XR at CSU. The research team also presented cutting-edge XR prototypes and research activities at Fresno State, Sonoma State, and San Jose State.
Kate Miffitt (Director for Innovation at Cal State Innovate), Mihaela Popescu (Faculty Director for xREAL Lab at CSU San Bernardino)
