Social event to take place from 12:30pm-12:45pm in the breezeway.
Abstract:
Equitable access to instructor's time and attention in chemistry classes and laboratories can be a barrier experienced by students from historically excluded groups. An instructor's own biases will determine the nature of their interaction with students, and even well-meaning instructors can interact with students in differential ways, which might prevent certain students from having access to the material in the class. This issue conflates both actual and perceived biases, introducing a complex dynamic between instructor and student. Extended reality (XR) provides an avenue to generate materials that can be used to enhance or replace classroom instruction with a great degree of realism. In this seminar we will discuss two different extended reality interventions (a Lewis structures simulator app (augmented reality) and a set of virtual reality organic chemistry labs (virtual reality) highlighting best practices for the engagement of students in introductory organic chemistry courses. We will show that these XR learning tools are by their very nature accessible and inclusive of a wide variety of students, and will provide supportive evidence from student reflections that shows that students from historically excluded groups find the XR content more personal than in-person activities covering the same material.