Immersive Learning and Inclusivity: Raising Awareness, Identifying Opportunities and Challenges, and Adapting Practice

Immersive learning research and practice cannot hold their promises without setting inclusivity as a high priority. This workshop aims to raise awareness of inclusivity and accessibility in education; identify opportunities and challenges for inclusivity when creating and deploying immersive learning experiences; share good practice; and induce reflection on one’s own practice and research agenda. A 90-minute hybrid interactive event is proposed during which participants will work in small groups on several activities, and then discuss how these activities enabled them to reflect on their own practice. Participants will then be asked to discuss their reflections with the whole group, and facilitators will summarize with a call to action, which will be either a collaborative project or a white paper to capture the findings of the workshop.

Workshop Facilitator Bios: 
 

Marie-Luce Bourguet is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) in the UK. She teaches multimedia signal processing, interactive media design and 3D Graphics programming courses on the transnational program between EECS and the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in China. Since 2008, she has been based in Tokyo, Japan, where she has research collaborations with the University of Tokyo on the use of social robots in education. Her work is in the areas of immersive learning, inclusive curriculum, learning analytics, social robotics, and AI in education. She is an expert at the European Commission on Robotics & Artificial Intelligence and an Academic Adviser to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. At QMUL, she is director of the EECS Educational Scholarship Centre (ESC), which she established in 2022, and deputy director of the Centre for Academic Inclusion in Science and Engineering (CAISE).

Sarune Savickaite is a PhD candidate at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, currently finishing writing up her thesis. Sarune is also tutor at the School of Education and Lifelong Leardning, and is currently working on a project funded by Meta - SEER (Scoping Extended Educational Realities). Sarune was also Education Research Manager at Edify.ac through the industrial partnership studentship with ESRC/SGSSS. Sarune holds BA Hons Illustration & Graphic Design (First Class; University of Bedfordshire), HEDip Life Sciences (Birkbeck), BSc Hons Psychology with Commendation for Outstanding Contribution to Psychology (University of St Andrews) and MSc Hons in Psychological Research Methods (University of Glasgow). Sarune has experience in project management, experimental design and data management. With memberships at British Psychology Society (BPS) and American Psychology Association (APA) Sarune is an early career researcher in the field of cognitive psychology. Sarune also is an active member of strategy and organisational boards for the new Advanced Research Centre for Extended Reality at the University of Glasgow. https://www.sarune.info/