Keywords

Introduction

This chapter discusses a project that used arts-informed methodologies with students who learnt two immersive virtual reality (iVR) technologies. Media arts conventions and practices were used in conjunction with aesthetic and affective frameworks that relied on students’ skills and imagination to build iVR tours of their school (Franks et al., 2014; Greene, 1995). Students, teachers, researchers, and the Aboriginal Education Worker (AEW) worked together as a community of learners to co-design an iVR artefact that was culturally, linguistically, and socially contextualised.

The study took place in a remote Anangu school community located in Central Australia, and the primary languages of Anangu are Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara. These students and their teachers had limited or no experience of using iVR. A significant number of students were reported by school staff to be mostly disengaged from schooling. In order to overturn common perceptions regarding student engagement and learning outcomes through a deficit lens, we highlight how using iVR as a part of a designed learning environment in combination with arts-informed practices increased student engagement.

The research project was designed and developed in collaboration with students, teachers, and AEWs. We explored how students and teaching staff responded to iVR as a learning technology in combination with ‘art[s]-teaching strategies’ that utilised the aesthetic qualities available for this New Media project (Freire & McCarthy, 2014, p. 28). This chapter reports on two scenarios that demonstrate how an applied use of iVR in learning design invites students, teachers, and support staff to participate in shared performance and storytelling within open, interactive, and culturally safe spaces for teaching and learning (Corder & U-Mackey, 2018; Fernando & Bennett, 2019; Lloyd & Duggie Pwerl, 2020; Martin, 2006; Smith, 1999).

The learning design approach included Creative Body-based Learning (CBL) that involved ‘dialogic meaning making’ in Pitjantjatjara and English, ‘co-construction’ with AEWs, teachers, researchers and students, and ‘role-play’ using a virtual reality (VR) game, which all contributed to the affective engagement of all participants (Dawson & Kiger Lee, 2018; Garrett & MacGill, 2021). This research project extended CBL to include ‘the wide range of sensory experiences … mediated by virtual technologies’ (Chung, 2010, p. 63) to inform a cyberaesthetic. ‘The digital aesthetics of networked communications, interactivity, and virtual reality are some of the defining qualities of new media’ (Freire & McCarthy, 2014, p. 28).

Arguably, arts-based methodologies which include New Media encourage students to co-create and co-design in ways that inform a pluralist world view that is anchored in the local and specific contexts of their worlds (Kraehe & Brown, 2011). Language and local knowledge played a key role in building a culturally responsive approach whilst developing skills in iVR as a New Media. Mary, the AEW, translated between Pitjantjatjara and English, engaged with the technology, and supported the learning throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production phases. Throughout the learning journey, adaptations were made in the production phase whilst generating the iVR scenarios as well in the reflective processes that was built through dialogue during the post-production editing phase. This enabled the diverse voices to be represented into a coherent narrative within the iVR tours.

Background

Since colonisation, First Nations peoples across Australia have endured violence, significant change, disruption, and denial of recognition of 80,000-year-old education systems (Chandler & Reid, 2019; Rigney, 2020). These multifarious First Nations education systems are rich in assets, strong in kinship, deep in knowledge, and informed by Country (Lowe et al., 2021). At their core, these are education systems that were, and continue to be, contextually and culturally responsive, producing confident and capable learners (Morrison et al., 2019; Rigney, 2020). First Nations peoples have long endured the legacy of colonial systems of schooling (Chandler & Reid, 2019; Rowse, 2010) that have generally ignored local funds of knowledge in favour of western knowledge systems (MacGill, 2008).

First Nations students who attend remote schools experience an education that is predominantly modelled around the mainstream Australian Curriculum (Osborne & Guenther, 2013; Unsworth, 2013; Oliver & Exell, 2020) that privileges Eurocentric knowledge systems, beliefs, and values (Morrison et al., 2019; Rizvi & Lingard, 2011). In the current education policy settings, Governments and/or School Boards place significant expectations and accountabilities on improvement in English literacy and numeracy standards (Unsworth, 2013). However, despite years of investment, results from national literacy and numeracy tests (NAPLAN), on aggregate, reveal no real statistical improvement over the last decade across remote Aboriginal schools (Unsworth et al., 2018).

When schooling focuses exclusively on improving national literacy and numeracy test results educational researchers report that teaching and learning approaches that solely focus on teaching to the test have produced adverse impacts on Aboriginal student learning and engagement (Guenther et al., 2014; Macqueen et al., 2019; Oliver & Exell, 2020; Unsworth, 2013). Moreover, researchers also report that test-focused schooling creates conditions for lower student engagement, increased anxiety, lower morale and greater disconnection in schooling and that these consequences are experienced by teachers, Aboriginal students, AEWs, and the school community (Guenther et al., 2014; Macqueen et al., 2019; Oliver & Exell, 2020; Unsworth, 2013).

Research Design

The research design was informed by Indigenous research methodologies (Berryman et al., 2013; Lowe et al., 2021; Morrison et al., 2019; O’Brien & Rigney, 2006; Osborne & Guenther, 2013; Walter & Moreton-Robinson, 2010). This approach was layered with culturally responsive pedagogies (CRPs) and CBL and involves what Donna Haraway (2016) calls working theories into layers by making ‘additions’ rather than ‘subtractions’. The purpose of this research was to give back to the wider school community, respond to the needs of the school community, and consider ways the research could be used by and for the community in a sustainable way. Key needs included culturally relevant and meaningful learning experiences, student engagement, and developing skills for future employment.

The principles of mutual respect, reciprocity, and reflexivity were central to the research design (Minutjukur & Osborne, 2014; Morrison et al., 2019; Smith, 1999; Walter & Moreton-Robinson, 2010), enabling students to become knowledge producers that reflected their lived realities in remote community contexts. This is a political and social act through New Media (Chung, 2010 p. 68) where participants could share their ‘artistic creations for cross-cultural exchange and political discourse’ (Chung, 2010, p. 69). The research was conducted on Anangu Country; therefore, we recognised that Anangu pedagogy and practices already exist and are embodied by the students and Mary, the AEW with whom we worked. Anangu students enter schooling with funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 2013), and political and social world views that were embedded into the storyboard.

Co-constructing through teaching iVR and drawing out students’ stories was critical to the teaching/learning cycle that occurred throughout the project. Co-construction included both Anangu and Piranpa (non-Aboriginal people) as learners and teachers within a ‘community of practice’ model (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Co-construction during the teaching/learning cycle enabled multiple voices to be heard whereby students’ voices directed the creative works that were produced. All participants played an active role in the teaching/learning cycle, including modelling the iVR technology, meaning-making through embodied strategies, and collaborating on storyboards drawn from the students’ collective cultural and intellectual knowledge. Co-construction and collaboration are key pedagogical strategies used in New Media and students, teachers, and the AEW became adept at cybermedia literacy.

Our research was informed by Anangu pedagogy that was directed by Mary who facilitated a culturally responsive approach to be enacted within our community of practice model whilst students developed digital and media literacies (Belshaw, 2016). This culturally responsive approach is a pedagogy that has proven to be successful in addressing issues of inequity and learners’ disengagement across a range of settler-colonial education contexts (Bishop et al., 2007; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Morrison et al., 2019). In the context of Australia, literature reviews produced by Krakouer (2015) and Perso (2012) have centred on developing cultural competence as key, while in remote school community contexts, Guenther (2013) focuses on promoting culturally and contextually responsive schooling. More recently, Lowe et al. (2021) progressed the idea of moving towards an Australian model of culturally nourishing schooling. However, to date, little research has explored the need for culturally and contextually produced New Media and digital and media literacies for students living remotely.

The Project

This research took place on Anangu Country. Participants include eleven Anangu students and one Piranpa student (aged between 11 and 15 years), their Piranpa teacher, one AEW, and one Piranpa Aboriginal Education Teacher (AET). Extensive communication and consultation had been in play with the school and broader community for 12 months leading up to the on-site visit to progress mutually agreed understandings of the nature, purpose, and intended benefits of the research. On-site visits were impacted twice by border restrictions due to COVID-19 breakouts prompting the need for remote communications through Zoom and email prior to the field trip.

Relationships had been built with the teacher and principal, but until the field trip we were not able to make connections with the broader community. Instead, we worked with the AEW, Mary, who acted as a broker between the researchers and community. Whilst on-site and working within this culturally mediated space of engagement (Carey & Prince, 2015; Flores & Springer, 2021), we introduced ourselves as ‘guides’ to assist teachers, students, and support staff in learning how to use the iVR technologies. In doing so, we were mindful not to influence or exert control over teaching and learning. Working in tandem, one researcher was mostly positioned in the background attending to research and data collection, while the other took a role in modelling the use of the iVR technology and supporting participants.

Video recording was used as a key data collection method agreed for use in this study. Two video cameras were set up at the rear of the teaching space using a ‘broad pan setting’ to record participant’s engagement. Video data captures moments that are not only highly reliable but also consistently replayable to explore and re-analyse information. In this case, video data was replayed, time stamped and used for ethnographic analysis (Brophy, 2004; Santagata, 2014). These video data informed real-time engagement regarding the context of learning and engagement (Balzaretti et al., 2018). Field notes were taken as well as anecdotal notes. Our observations were further explored through reflective discussions conducted with teaching and support staff.

Our on-site work provided two immersive scenarios for investigation. The first was an embodied iVR experience using an interactive game. The second featured an authoring tool created by Ben Stubbs from the University of South Australia called IMMERSE. Students, teachers, and support staff were part of the learning community who interacted with the students when they were immersed via VR headsets and/or the authoring tool (Shulman & Sherin, 2004).

Scenario 1: Fruit Ninja iVR—Exploration of Responses and Affective Moments

Scenario 1 took place in the seniors’ classroom. The teaching space we co-organised with staff accommodated a large flat screen monitor positioned at the front of the classroom. The monitor was set up to cast a screen image of the 3D immersive iVR environment patched from the user’s headset. In this arrangement of space and objects, the user experienced the immersive 3D virtual environment via the headset, while onlookers—as third-party agents—viewed the 2D panoramic version on the main monitor. The user’s movements and choices were cast simultaneously to the third-party viewers. The user was afforded an open space in safe proximity from the monitor in which to interact physically, while others were seated around the classroom’s perimeter. Researcher A’s role involved demonstrating the use of the VR equipment and modelling how to navigate whilst in the immersive environment. Researcher B’s role involved observing and video recording.

The iVR technology we selected for this scenario was a gaming technology called Fruit Ninja. The game requires the user to slice and dice objects of fruit that cascade from above within a 3D virtual environment. As individual and grouped formations of fruit are sliced and diced using the hand controllers (as sabres), points are progressively accrued. Bombs are also thrown in the mix of cascading fruit which, if diced, virtually explode. Slicing bombs detracts points.

Becoming adept requires the user to become aware of the types of fruit formations that accrue the most points. It also requires participants to learn the stages at which these formations appear. The game presents a series of layers, stages, and formations couched within a finite timeline where a final score is indicative of the player’s performance. Learning to become ‘ninja-like’ within a 3D environment is complex and challenging.

Our choice of iVR game for this research was deliberate. Fruit Ninja VR offers a constellation of highly engaging interactive spatial and sensory feeds that provide the user with responsive feedback on each action performed. Video data, field notes, and after-action review confirm that students were highly attracted to the game’s simple but powerful format and quickly overcame their shyness within a space of public performance. We used Fruit Ninja to capture moments of engagement and sense making co-generated between the interactions of ‘self as user’ and ‘others as observers’. Through analysis of field notes and video playback, it was evident there was a learning dynamic that was created between the user and other students. The user’s self-reflection on their individual performance signified engagement and focus. Social interaction developed a community of learners through the focus on the game and the gamers’ performances. In this scenario we noted that players achieved a high level of mastery after three rounds of the game. The performance-based iVR game and its subsequent deployment as a learning technology clearly engaged students, teaching staff, researchers, and the AEW, who were all invested in the game.

Additionally, we affirmed students’ performances to build their confidence and capability which was achieved through understanding the objectives of the game and opportunities to repeat the game to improve on scores. We also used media arts pedagogy that included demonstration of the equipment such as the headset and controllers, how to activate the game, how to navigate, and how to play the game. In this case, Researcher A demonstrated what happens when the headset is activated, how the headset view casts simultaneously to the monitor, and how the monitor view changes when slowly moving around the virtual environment. Researcher A then demonstrated how to select a game, and then how to use the controllers (which appear as sabres) and how to slice objects. Minimal verbal cues were used such as ‘look—what happens when I do this…’ and ‘look—what happens now?’ The teacher and AEW restated these prompts, using English and First Language respectively. Video playback confirmed that, through this phase, students appeared highly engaged, evident through eye tracking, forward-leaning body gestures and pointing, as well as through rich conversation and expression. Justification for using this pedagogical strategy aligns with Mayer et al.’s (1999) work on temporal contiguity, where both visual and spoken assets are intentionally synchronised to enhance the learning effect. The positioning of simple prompts alongside repeated actions and imagery intentionally directs participants to notice causal relationships.

Our second strategy aimed to progressively develop user’s confidence and capability. This involved each student taking turns over three rounds to develop mastery of Fruit Ninja.

Students’ first-round scores ranged between 300 and 500, while third-round scores ranged between 1000 and 1500. We clearly observed increasing mastery displayed as confidence and capability developed through moments of immersion and self-reflection, and through moments of viewing and responding. Importantly, the AEW and teacher took key roles in encouraging, prompting, and affirming students’ performances to build their confidence and capability.

When students played the game there were affective responses by all participants in the classroom that were activated by the colours, sounds, languages, contexts, movements, expressions, and emotive effects. Cumulatively, immersion and performance of the self (playing the game) and interaction by others (viewing the performance) activated responsive processes of sense making that elicited correspondence, comparison, and synthesis which in turn lead to mastery of the game. Embodied learning helped produce sense making that produced learning outcomes (Caillois, 2001; Dewey, 1997; Schön, 1995). We recognised the full potential of game-based learning as a way to activate curiosity, co-creation, and collaboration. This preliminary game gave students an understanding of working in a 3D environment to prepare them for the following scenario.

Scenario 2: Using the iVR Authoring Tool—IMMERSE

We further developed an existing VR Creator Tool called IMMERSE created by Ben Stubbs from the University of South Australia. IMMERSE allows the import of 360 video and images to create stand-alone scenes that can become connected as a virtual tour using the software’s editor. A novel feature of IMMERSE is that the scene is displayed as a timeline, similar to those commonly found in video editing software. This affords the import of 360 video footage in scene creation. The editor also provides options for inserting multimedia content into each scene such as static images, banners, text, video, and audio. We refined IMMERSE so that users in schools could more easily create an interactive iVR story. As a ‘plug and play’ type of software, IMMERSE was loaded onto USBs.

Scenario 2 involved the same cohort of students learning how to use IMMERSE to create interactive virtual tours of their school. Working as a group, the class had previously undertaken a series of learning experiences to identify specific places of interest to them within the school that would feature as their storyboard. The storyboard mapped out a sequence of scenes comprising school sites and extra content that was built into an ‘iVR story’ of the school. The storyboard was clearly organised and displayed as a sequential mapping of scenes, for example, Scene 1—Welcome to our School (Front Office and Entry); Scene 2—The Canteen and Cafeteria; Scene 3—the Art Room; Scene 4—the Basketball Court; Scene 5—Our Gardens. The class had also produced written and photographic content depicting what activities were relevant to each scene.

Our aim was to capture data on how the participants translated their storyboard into an iVR tour of the school. The teacher and AEW initiated the session by reviewing the storyboarding work. Researcher B activated a 360 camera and used his smartphone to control the view mode which was patched to the main monitor using mirror software to illustrate orbital, dual, and panoramic 360 views. Researcher B navigated the room, showing the camera view from his smartphone’s screen to each participant and pointing also to the duplicate image cast to the main monitor. Repeatedly taking images and noting the outputs allowed the participants to make the connection that a 360 image orientates height and depth, as well as length and width. Attention was also directed to the dual lens of the 360 camera to show what happens when one lens is obscured or over-exposed to bright light.

The class did their filming in two groups. Each researcher accompanied a group with a 360 camera loaded to a tripod and synched to a smartphone. Students were able to take control of the equipment and take direction over which scenes they shot. We then downloaded the images into separate folders and loaded them onto three PCs located at the rear of the room. The researchers demonstrated the use of IMMERSE as a content creator and editor. Using the same iterative pedagogical strategy, we repeatedly showed each step (cast to the main monitor) and invited students to come forward and try. This learning encounter took shape across three main moves. Move one introduced students to a pre-made iVR tour and demonstrated how the content was imported into IMMERSE to create each scene. Move two specifically unpacked how to create a scene. Move three demonstrated how to use the editor to add content such as HOTSPOTS, static images, text, and more.

The students worked in small groups at four PC stations—three located at the rear of the classroom and one at the front utilising the main monitor. Teaching staff, the AEW, and researchers assisted students to replicate the three moves. We observed that the intuitive design of IMMERSE’s dashboard enabled each group to quickly navigate and make sense of its functions. Students imported 360 video or 360 image content, created successive scenes, linked successive scenes, and added content caches to each scene. Once confident and capable, each group then engaged with their storyboard to create their own versions of an interactive iVR school.

Mary, the AEW, achieved mastery of IMMERSE and, in conference with the class teacher, they noted the potential of this tool for teaching and inquiry-based learning. They said, ‘The kids were so engaged and rose to the occasion … we learned that what is helpful is when there is an event on, such as sports day, and if you are filming, that you can create content to make it relevant in the moment with purpose and this is how they will use it in the future … they can experience it immersively and add to the story at a later point to continue creation of the tour, so it’s an ongoing project’ (Personal communication; Piranpa home group teacher).

Through the engagement of the participants (teacher, students, and AEW) with storyboarding and 360 filming we noticed how everyone ‘leant in’ and collectively used their funds of knowledge. ‘This is the most engaged I have seen these students, some who rarely come to school. To maintain focus and concentration and engage in all the immersive activities over 3 x 2 hours sessions was incredible to watch and be part of’ (Personal communication; Piranpa home group teacher). Participants’ co-design and co-construction strategies were evident during the capture of 360 images and video (on site) and through the augmentation of images and content assembled using the iVR editor. The community of practice model was deepened during the storyboarding when decisions were made about the story line and throughout the process of editing.

Students resisted ‘fake’ stories that did not reflect their lived realities. Instead, they focused on school life and areas within the confines of the school. Whilst this was partly restrictive as we had hoped to work outside of the school, the embodied experience of moving from classrooms to the oval to the tuckshop meant students considered how they live, breath, and engage with the schooling space in relation to each other and the space they occupy (Efland, 2007; Wang, 2001). Using their cultural resources and local funds of knowledge, students attached authentic meaning to their school story. Teaching staff clearly communicated substantially higher levels of engagement by students through immersion in Fruit Ninja and in the creation of interactive virtual tours.

Discussion

The learning design approach (Elliott et al., 2009) included embodied strategies that engaged both students and teaching staff. The project used a constellation of theoretical frames to create an arts-informed culturally responsive learning design. Centring the students’ lived realities within the storyboards supported the flow of learning as they felt confident and capable to share and build on their narratives collaboratively.

In the first scenario, Anangu students, teachers, and the AEW engaged in a highly interactive, collaborative, and body-based iVR learning experience (Lee et al., 2020; Lindgren & Moshell, 2011). The students progressively made sense of the immersive experience through conversation, laughter, play, and interaction with the technology (Elliott et al., 2009; Lee & Choi, 2017).

The second scenario describes how participants created an iVR tour of their school. This involved students, the teacher, and AEW engaging in a sequence of meaning-making and affective processes, including storyboarding, capturing relevant 2D and 3D images and video, importing files, and creating content. This work collectively emerged as an immersive product through IMMERSE. Students wrote storyboards from their perspective, developed skills in iVR, collaborated with other students on developing the narrative, and worked with the AEW and teachers collectively.

Mobilising a community of practice model in this educational setting provided moments for learning where the learner (both instructor and student) participated through their acquired knowledge and skills within the ‘socio-cultural’ practices of the local community. The affordances of the technology were learnt from a procedural point of view. Students showed mastery of what they were going to film and how to work in a visual environment in terms of spatial ordering. The opportunity for agency through decision making whilst creating an iVR tour was evident. The inquiry process and the technology married well together in this context because students developed New Media skills in storying, working in iVR, digital literacies, as well as multi-literacies that included banners in English and in Pitjantjatjara.

Conclusion

This research used a culturally responsive learning design where students, teachers, and AEW worked as a community of learners to capture their lived experiences through iVR. The students, teachers, and AEW were involved in the creation of the interactive virtual tours from storyboards that drew richly from local cultural knowledge and First Language. Storyboarding was used and considerations were made regarding space, location, and narrative within a 360 perspective. The students and AEW used this opportunity to discuss the way they wanted to represent their stories and why certain areas of the school grounds were more relevant than others. These narratives reflected their world view through iVR representational fields (Osei-Kofi, 2013).

Application of iVR in culturally responsive learning design enabled participants to become more intuitive, more responsive, and better suited to the teaching and learning needs of the school context. Learners demonstrated how they were capable and confident in producing SMART-tech products reflective of the learner’s higher-order thinking that is rich in local cultural and western knowledge. The use of CBL created safe yet creative space for participants to grapple with emergent ideas and to represent their stories through iVR.

Further, by enabling movement and opportunity for considering their locations within school, they could use their imaginations, resist false narratives, and create various camera angles from a 360 perspective that unpacked the dimension of space and their location within it at school (Sefton-Green et al., 2011). More cases are needed to explore the potential of New Media, CBL, and CRP in schooling. This knowledge is critical to Aboriginal education, a field that has been described by many commentators as in crisis (Rigney et al., 2020). Leading commentators in the field of Aboriginal education argue the need for more culturally responsive approaches to re-imagine and re-construct what learning means (Buckskin et al., 2009; Unsworth et al., 2018). This research highlights the potential of learning digital and cyber literacies in Aboriginal education within a CRP and CBL framework where Anangu students represent their narratives in iVR.