Repository logo

Browsing by Author "Gaddy, Vidya, author"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Exploring the impact of belonging on computer science enrollment using virtual reality
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Gaddy, Vidya, author; Ortega, Francisco R., advisor; Beveridge, J. Ross, committee member; Sharp, Julia, committee member; Interrante, Victoria, committee member
    Student enrollment in STEM fields of study is critical for the future. Improving our understanding of what motivates young people to engage with material like computer programming is an essential aspect of increasing enrollment. Interest in a topic like Computer Science (CS) begins with a sense of belonging in the field. That essential sense of belonging tends to be quite evasive because it lacks a concrete definition. In this research, the goal was to dissect the main attributes associated with a sense of belonging and highlight the attributes that are key to a student's decision to enroll in CS. The attributes determined to be vital contributors to a sense of belonging were self-efficacy, family background, goal orientation, and demographic characteristics. In order to find which of these factors associated with belonging were most important, a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation and survey were designed. A simple simulated environment was used which had participants embody an avatar that was described as an undeclared first-year college student. While in the simulation, participants were prompted to listen to an audio message from the advising office which asked them if they would like to enroll in a CS course. In the pilot study (N=10), family background was the focus, randomizing avatar gender as well as the control condition and the family background condition between participants. The feedback received from participants informed all the improvements made to the main experiment. For the main experiment (N=24), there were four slightly different audio messages each highlighting one of the four factors associated with belonging in CS. Each participant listened to all four audio messages and answered survey questions about their response to the audio. A Likert Scaled survey was used to determine how likely the participants were to enroll in the CS course given each audio prompt. Results indicated that there was a strong positive reaction to the audio message highlighting goal orientation (p < 0.05) and a strong negative reaction to the audio highlighting demographic characteristics (p < 0.05). The responses toward family background and self-efficacy were more neutral. These results demonstrate that people are attracted to CS when they believe it will help them achieve their future goals in life. But perhaps more importantly, a person's demographic characteristics alone being highlighted will not be enough to increase enrollment in the field of CS.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The impact of nature realism on the restorative quality of virtual reality forest bathing
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024-11) Masters, Rachel, author; Nicoly, Jalynn, author; Gaddy, Vidya, author; Interrante, Victoria, author; Ortega, Francisco, author; ACM, publisher
    Virtual reality (VR) forest bathing for stress relief and mental health has recently become a popular research topic. As people spend more of their lives indoors and have less access to the restorative benefit of nature, having a VR nature supplement has the potential to improve quality of life. However, the optimal design of VR nature environments is an active area of investigation with many research questions to be explored. One major issue with VR is the difficulty of rendering high-fidelity assets in real time without causing cybersickness, or VR motion sickness, within the headset. Due to this limitation, we investigate if the realism of VR nature is critical for the restorative effects by comparing a low-realism nature environment to a high-realism nature environment. We only found a significant difference in the perceived restorativeness of the two environments, but after observing trends in our data toward the stress reduction potential of the high-realism environment, we suggest exploring more varieties of high and low-realism environments in future work to investigate the full potential of VR and how people respond.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    The restorative influence of virtual reality environment design
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024-08-30) Nicoly, Jalynn Blu, author; Masters, Rachel, author; Gaddy, Vidya, author; Interrante, Victoria, author; Ortega, Francisco, author; ACM, publisher
    Virtual reality (VR) could support the need for easily accessible therapeutic techniques, such as viewing art and immersing oneself in nature. Our study searches for the optimal virtual environment (VE) by exploring whether beauty in moving and still VEs contributes to stress reduction and perceived restorativeness. We hypothesized that the moving forest environment would result in the most stress reduction, while the abstract art would result in the least, with additional comparisons to a still forest environment and a control condition. The control condition took place outside the virtual headset to simulate what stress reduction would look like without a nature intervention. After working with 78 participants, we found an increase in statistical significance for stress reduction and perceived restorativeness in the moving forest condition compared to the control, as measured by the Zuckerman Inventory of Personal Reactions (ZIPERS) positive affect and the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS). Additionally, the PRS and heart rate measures showed greater restorativeness in the moving forest condition than in the abstract art condition. Heart rate measures also showed statistical significance between the forest image condition and the control and moving forest conditions.