Browsing by Author "Interrante, Victoria, committee member"

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Open 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.
Open Access
Exploring the role of biomass design in virtual reality forest bathing
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Masters, Rachel A., author; Ortega, Francisco R., advisor; Interrante, Victoria, committee member; Lionelle, Albert, committee member; Moraes, Marcia, committee member; LoTemplio, Sara, committee member
Stress is an increasingly prevalent problem that has severe health consequences if not managed properly. Every day, people are surrounded by work, health, financial, economic, and a variety of other stressors that deplete cognitive resources and put their nervous systems on high alert. Forest bathing, or nature immersion therapy, has been shown to reduce stress while restoring attentional resources, but despite these benefits, many people lack access to nature for a variety of reasons, including distance and health. VR has the potential to support access to virtual nature environments (VNE's) for people who cannot get into nature, yet the optimal design of biomass or plant life in VNE's is still an active area of research. Additionally, most of these VNE's require high end headsets and computers to run, which is not accessible technology for the everyday consumer. Given the current limitations of popular VR technology such as the Meta Quest 3, it is important to understand the relationship between plant asset realism and a VNE's restorative potential so that a balance can be achieved between a VNE that is deployable on everyday consumer headsets and a VNE that offers restorative benefit. This study was an initial exploration into high and low-realism VNE comparisons, accomplished by a mixed design study that compared two groups of participants, high and low-realism, against each other as well as against their own performance in a control condition where they closed their eyes. Through psychological and physiological measures, stress reduction and perceived attention restoration was assessed as a baseline, after a stressor test, then after the experiment condition to observe potential decreases in stress and increases in attention after the environment. Overall, there was only a significant increase in General Restorativeness in the high-realism environment when compared against the control and the low-realism environment, but trends in the data call for future research on this topic.