Designing for Empathy

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Atlas webinar.

Today we are thrilled to have Tyler Gaspich with us.

He is the Director of Information Resources and Technologies at Academy of Notre Dame Day de Mure, and he is going to talk about designing for empathy, how virtual reality and design thinking can transform learning.

Tyler, we're super grateful to have you here and go ahead and take it away.

Great.

Thanks so much, Kelsey.

Uh, I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to talk about, um, some of my favorite things, uh, designing design thinking, empathy, research, and virtual reality.

So, um, yeah, this is a really grateful, I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Um, just a little bit about me to kind of frame this whole conversation.

Um, you know, like Kelsey said, my name is Tyler Gaspich.

I'm the Director of Information Resources and Technologies at the Academy of Notre Dame.

We're an all girls school, uh, just outside of Philadelphia, so in Villanova, Pennsylvania.

Um, my background is actually in education, so while I'm a tech director there, um, I was a math teacher for, for many, many years.

I currently am the design thinking teacher at my school.

I also dabble in personal finance, which if you're in Pennsylvania, is a very hot button topic right now.

Um, but I'm, I'm an educator through and through, so much so that I'm actually getting my PhD in education, um, with a focus on science, math, and educational technology.

And I bring that up because this presentation is really focused on my dissertation research.

Um, so I will happily talk shop, literally for 200 pages worth.

Um, at the end of the day, I also will say, and because I will shamelessly plug this program at any opportunity that I can, uh, I'm a proud ECAD member too.

Um, or a graduate in 2019.

I know it's a LI now.

Um, but any opportunity to shout out that program I will happily do, um, when I can.

Um, so, uh, like I said, we're gonna talk about design thinking, um, empathy research and virtual reality, and how all of these things kind of intermingle.

Um, and I wanna do it within a context of independent schools.

Uh, so before I really dive into that, I think it's helpful to kind of frame what is this conversation looking like.

So over the next roughly half hour, I want to first highlight what is design thinking specifically as a teaching and learning model.

So as a pedagogical model, the benefits of it and what research has said around it.

Um, I then want to pivot into actual language around empathy within, um, problem solving and within educational research, because we have a common understanding of what empathy is, but it actually can be much more granular, and there's a lot of different nuances within it.

Um, there's one particular kind of empathy that we're gonna focus on in this presentation.

We're then gonna pivot to virtual reality and see how virtual reality can actually be the driver for empathy within this problem solving process.

And then I'm gonna actually outline my dissertation and show an example of how virtual reality can be used alongside problem solving to solve a problem that's really difficult for a lot of people.

And then I'm gonna finish up with some key takeaways, some highlights of, um, what should independent schools be thinking about when they're actually talking about things like design thinking, virtual reality and empathy research.

So, lot of language, I'm gonna try and minimize the educational jargon throughout it.

Nice example of it in, in, in action.

And then some key takeaways that you, that everyone can hopefully take away with at the end of this presentation.

Um, so with that being said, let's get to it.

Um, so I, I wanna start off by first kind of putting, uh, this sort of image in your mind that instead of a traditional kind of educational model where someone is standing at the top of a room and is lecturing about the Pythagorean Theorem or about Beowulf or some sort of topic, but to actually go with a more project-based approach where students are actively engaged in the learning process, but they're doing so from a social justice perspective.

Um, this notion of being driven by a problem to help them solve how they go about solving that problem is really the thing that drives education.

So let's say for example, um, a school is about to have a new student enroll who is blind.

Um, and now this class has been tasked with fully understanding their experience in order to solve this problem of creating an environment that suits this person.

Um, and what's cool about this kind of problem is that you can really adjust the curriculum to, uh, accommodate this in so many different ways.

So like, you can have, for instance, an English class, have literature that's focused on the blind experience.

Um, you can have math classes looking at ramps and angles and, and, and sort of setups within spaces using the math that they're learning in class to help provide the environment that they may need.

You can have a social studies class looking at the historical challenges that, that people who are blind, um, might experience or have experienced in the past.

Um, for science class, you can look at the, the physical creation of the eyeball and how people become, like, what is it that makes some folks blind or give vision issues.

Like there, there's a lot of curricular opportunity by just saying that, here's a problem, let's try and solve it, and let's look at it from numerous angles.

And that's a really interesting kind of approach to education that, that is somewhat expected within our independent schools, is that we are not beholden to a prescribed curriculum, but are actually, um, sort of driving some sort of change.

We are able to look at curriculum in a much more holistic kind of way.

Um, and this focus on people living their experience and understanding their experience, um, is a really unique kind of opportunity for all of this.

Um, but if you're solving a problem on behalf of somebody else, it it, it kind of leads to two main questions and two things that I think, you know, I'm really thinking about within this conversation is, um, so the first one is, if we're trying to solve a problem, we're building a curriculum out, um, or as techbook we're trying to support a curriculum that is problem oriented.

Um, how do we actually create that environment for these what are called wicked problems? Like how, you know, we're, we're not gonna be able to solve blindness or we're not gonna solve homelessness, but how do we actually start to even talk about this problem? How do we create people's awareness of this? Um, wicked problems I think, are a very interesting concept in design thinking.

It's this notion that, um, that big societal problems are actually really tricky to solve.

Um, unlike our math problems where it might be like, Hey, factor this, and you get a very concrete answer.

Wicked problems are the problems that societies face that usually are existing on a spectrum of correctness.

So you might have a solution, and the solution to that actually brings up three or four more problems.

You know, those are very tricky kind of things to work with and navigate.

So how do we as educators prepare our students for this world of solving these wicked problems, um, within this whole conversation? Um, and then interestingly enough, once students have that kind of basic awareness of a problem, how does it start to change then? So once students can start to understand a little bit more of the, uh, experience of being blind, um, even though they themselves are not, like, how do their tactics change? How does their motivation change? And then how do we as educators and we as schools continue to foster that moving forward so that it doesn't just peter out? Um, the other big one, and I think that as tech leaders, this really, i, I, this is the thing that kind of keeps me up at, at, at night is, is really thinking about this sort of, um, counterbalance in the technology conversation.

So I, you know, I, I know personally I see a lot of conversation around technological advancements and things like, um, you know, we're using AI in all these places.

We have to use technology, technology continues to grow.

But then the counterbalance to that is, well, wait a minute, what about those sort of quote unquote soft skills? What about those, um, skills of like empathy and critical thinking and creativity, those sort of human centered skills? How are we actually teaching those things here? And what's interesting, I think about that is that as independent schools, that's one of the biggest differentiators of us compared to our public school counterparts, that people come to us with the expectation that you're going to teach those skills and you're going to foster that in a way that is not gonna be seen in the public schools.

So how do we actually talk about that? Because that's gonna be something that we are gonna really be the thought leaders on and, and our, our families are gonna expect us to be the thought leaders.

So with those two problems in mind, that's kind of the driving force for this whole conversation at, at least for me.

Um, so I wanna start by first that talking about that first problem, how do we actually add, address, address those wicked problems in society? Um, I might be slightly biased, but I think that this is a fine, fine pedagogical model, the design thinking model.

Um, I know it's been kind of, um, it's become much more popularized in the past, really like 10, 15 years.

Um, but this idea of design thinking as a means to solve problems is actually not, is not really new.

There's literature dating back to beyond the 1970s around it.

Um, that riddle and wetter riddle and Weber article around wicked problems is actually from 70, 75, 76.

Um, that was their first real introduction into design thinking as a process to solve problems.

Um, here though, I'm really referring to design thinking as, um, the Stanford model.

Um, IDEO, the design firm tends to use this.

Um, there are a lot of different design models, but they all kind of have the same sort of flow.

I really like this one because I think it's very straightforward and the educational literature leverages it the most often.

But if you're not familiar with design thinking, um, it's a non-linear process to solve problems with an end user in mind.

Um, and it really is beholden to these kind of five steps that we'll often talk in a linear manner, but are really designed to kind of be bounced around.

Um, so very briefly, the empathy stage is if you're trying to solve a problem on behalf of somebody else, the first stage is to understand what that experience really is.

Um, so understanding, um, through interviews, observations, um, primary research of, um, um, uh, focus groups.

Um, we'll see virtual reality will come into play here, but these are all measures to try and understand what is the experience of the user, what is the historical background of the user, um, that then pivots into this defined stage, which is then saying, all right, you have all of this information, now let's synthesize the experience, you know, as straightforwardly as possible, um, or straightforward as possible, I should say.

Uh, that might be things like clustering sessions where you're kind of collecting this qualitative data into groups of, of commonality, um, point of view statements or caricatures, identifying what is the common lived experience for someone who's experiencing this problem.

Um, that's a definition phase that then pivots to an ideation phase, which is more of a brainstorming session.

So based off of these point of view statements, how do we actually now solve this problem? There's usually a degree of creativity and a focus on quantitative measure.

So a lot of good solutions that we can hopefully whittle down to something that you then prototype and test out.

Um, and this is a great process, not only just for, um, education and, and for, and for teaching and learning and for problem solving, but I use it pretty regularly as a, as a tech leader too.

Um, if there's a big problem that I'm facing within my department, I'll oftentimes try and take this approach.

If I'm deciding on things like new technologies or I'm deciding on, um, a transition for a new space or whatever it may be, I tend to start with this following process.

I'm also a qualitative researcher at heart, so I feel like it's a little more natural for me, but it's nice to have this kind of structure to say, all right, I gotta talk to some people first.

I gotta whittle down these ideas.

I gotta brainstorm some stuff.

I gotta test some things out.

I gotta try this out.

Go back and see what worked and what didn't work and toggle around within here.

So the, the structure is nice.

Um, I will also say that design thinking as a whole is actually a very sound pedagogical model.

So the ability to use this as a teaching tool or use this framework as a teaching model has been backed by educational research.

So I try and inc cite these things whenever possible, but there's a lot of emphasis on this notion of constructionism or, um, or constructivism, I should say, the belief that, you know, we are very active learners as, as people.

We are not folks who are oftentimes just reading information or just being given information.

We have to take a very active role in our learning.

We have to take into new information, and we have to assimilate it to what we already know, or we have to change how we think about things in order to accommodate new information.

Um, that's the, that is the, the, the foundation of constructivism and design thinking leverages that pretty much at a one-to-one mapping at this point.

Um, so if you are doubting whether design thinking can actually be something that is implementable and successful in a classroom, there's a lot of good research out there that argues that, no, you can do this.

Um, and, and you can do it well.

I can speak from firsthand experience from myself and other teachers who have done it.

So just a, again, another, another little bit of a shameless plug for everyone, for everyone out there.

Um, but within this process, the, I think the real crux, the most important part of this is that first stage, that empathy stage.

And before I go into the virtual reality piece, I wanna dive into that one section a little bit, because this notion of empathy, I think is, is not only crucial for this conversation, it's really gonna be crucial for our schools overall.

Um, like I said, as technology continues to advance our notions of empathy, um, are gonna become even more prevalent.

Um, our conversations around empathy and education are going to be more and more focused.

So I think we have to have clear language around what is empathy, um, what does it look like in research, and what does it look like in education, and how do we actually talk about it? Like, what is our goal of empathy? Like if I want my students to be empathetic people, what does that mean? Um, and it might mean different things, but having that clear language, I think is really important for anything that we're talking about in this space.

Um, so overall, I think when we think about empathy, I think this definition does a great job of highlighting the overall, uh, framework around it.

Um, but empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of other.

So this is this idea of I have my own set of life circumstances and experiences.

You have your own set of experiences and how we engage in understanding the differences between those two takes on a, a little bit of a different role.

And the reaction of me, while I'm trying to understand you, is going to be very different depending upon which type of empathy we're doing.

And in the educated, sorry, in the educational literature, there's really three kinds of, of empathy that we talk about.

The first kind is called cognitive empathy.

Um, this is this, uh, you, you might often hear this as, uh, perspective taking, or this is a, a sort of a cognitive understanding of someone else's lived experience.

Um, so this is, now I can see that someone is grieving, let's say like someone has experienced a death in the family.

I know mentally that, that has these kinds of emotions to them, sadness, frustration, sorrow, fore longness, what, what, what, whatever it may be.

But mentally, I have this awareness that this is what this person is experiencing.

It's a purely mental thing, though.

There's no real emotional side of this.

It's just a cognitive awareness.

Um, one researcher, Ackerman would argue that there requires a degree of, of reflection within that, um, where someone is, uh, partially immersed in an experience and then has to actually drift back away and reflect on how that feels.

So if someone is, let's talk about grief again.

If someone is experiencing grief, they have to be with someone who's in that experience, but then has to scale back and actually reflect themselves on that experience.

Um, that separation is really where the work gets done, and it's strengthened through that kind of diving back in, scaling back out, diving back in, scaling back out.

Um, so cognitive empathy is still an important part of this process.

It drives an awareness to what a problem may be, and it's an important part of this conversation.

I think when we start thinking of real empathy, I think we actually start to pivot more towards this idea of effective empathy, which now introduces this emotional component.

So in cognitive empathy, someone was grieving and I had an awareness of what their grief was looking like.

I could identify it cognitively in effective empathy, not only are you now empathizing with someone, um, and understanding what they're experiences, but now there's a part of you that is also experiencing an emotional response.

Um, that's the biggest difference here, is that originally in cognitive empathy, we could almost count that as like sympathy to some degree, where I know you're feeling this way now, an effective empathy, you have an emotional response to this too, so you are grieving.

And that triggers maybe something in me who had an experience and can understand the feelings of grief and maybe feeling a little bit of that too.

And what's interesting about that emotional response that you now take on is how you respond to that becomes, um, can really go one of two ways.

You can, in one sense have compassion, which is this idea of, I see that someone is experiencing a negative feeling, so now I can try and remedy that with a positive experience.

Um, and that can be done either from like an altruistic standpoint, where it's like, oh, you're grieving, you're feeling upset right now.

I wanna do something that's gonna help you, or I can understand your emotional state and then say, you know what? This is actually making me feel weird and I need to remedy my own feelings on this.

So that's still an empathetic response, but it's not really the best response because you're not understanding the person who is experiencing the problem at that moment.

It's more of you trying to get that through.

Um, so we have this idea of cognitive empathy, this mental awareness of what's going on, effective empathy, a mental awareness, and an emotional response to it.

And this is where I think the empathy research is still kind of nation, but is I think what the goal is for schools.

When we talk about empathy research, um, this notion of cognitive empathy, cognitive empathy, or often kind, it's also called, um, compassionate empathy is understanding a problem, having an emotional response, and now conducting some sort of follow-up action that helps remedy the problem.

Um, so it's that third action step that is differing from the other two.

Um, cognitive research would argue that you need to have cognitive and effective empathy in order to actually do this.

Um, but it's essentially thinking about that grief example, we're now saying, I know what it's like for someone else to go through grief.

I am feeling something like that in myself as well, and now I want to do something about it that's gonna benefit people.

So now that's the, I'm gonna start a charity for this person.

I'm going to run a 5K, what, whatever it may be.

There's some sort of action that is then following up with that, that is encouraging people to continue on with solving the problem.

Um, and the goal of design thinking is really to get to that third stage, is to not only understand what the person is experiencing, but then start to have some degree of emotional connection to it, to the point that there's an action that's worrying, that's warranted, not too much where there is now an overwhelming feeling, but enough to be like, I need to do something about this, and I wanna do something about this.

So then this comes to the big question is that if we're trying to empathize with others, we're trying to solve a problem on behalf of somebody else.

How can we actually do this when we don't truly know their experience? How can we, how can we get to that particular point? It's clear that there's a good educational benefit to doing this.

Um, and it's clear that there's an action orientation that aligns with many of our school missions, but how do we actually then get to that point when many of our students won't experience those big problems? That's where virtual reality in my, in my perspective, comes into play.

Um, so documentarian, Chris Milk argues that virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine because it gives us that opportunity to experience what someone else is experiencing without having to physically be there.

So the time constraints that have come into play when we're talking about trying to understand and experience the location, um, if you're trying to solve a problem for someone in Malaysia, it's gonna be really difficult from the United States.

Um, the safety concerns, if you're talking about understanding crime and, and some of the natures of that, you know, some something more dangerous, um, can you do that in a safe manner here? Um, and virtual reality provides that experience when they talk about virtual reality, this notion of presence is really oftentimes what they're talking about.

Um, so when you're talking about experiencing and almost treating a virtual environment like you are, actually, there is this notion of presence, um, and the more realistic something feels to someone, uh, the higher the presence will be.

Um, so if you go into a virtual environment and you want to engage with things like, oh, I want to pick up this thing, even though you're not physically picking it up, that's still this notion of presence, the feeling of being there is strong.

Um, and you can do that in a number of different ways in a virtual environment.

Um, there's a lot of different types of media that I think come into play here.

Uh, for the study that we're gonna talk about, we're actually talking about an immersive environment, and that's where if you put on a virtual reality helmet or you, you go into a virtual reality space, um, you are engaging as if you are the person in that environment.

So there's usually a first person perspective.

Um, you can engage with the environment and what you do in the environment manipulates the broader environment.

So it's really a high degree of presence here that's different from a non-immersive experience where you can still put on a VR headset and you can still cut off certain senses from the outside world.

You can still be in the experience, but the degree of responsiveness is, is somewhat dwindled.

Um, I think of something like a 360 degree video in here where you might put on a headset and you can be planted in a space and you can look around in the space there, but the video is still kind of playing out to you.

So there's some responsiveness, there's some separation, but it's not as detailed as, oh, I'm gonna pick this thing up here.

And both of those are compared to traditional medias, which is what we think of when we think of like news articles, documentaries, um, videos, just freeform written articles, things like that.

Things that are purposely static and designed to not really to be interactive.

Um, and really what roots, all the things that we're talking about when we talk about the effectiveness and the presence of virtual reality is this notion of grounded cognition.

In very, very brief, um, because I know I will lose a lot of people on this one here, the idea of grounded cognition is the thought that when we think, we actually think mostly with our sensory motor system, we think with how we engage within the environment, and we do a lot of stuff in our day-to-day life that actually highlights this.

Um, the use of gesture, for example, is a sort of cognitive offloading of our thought processes into the outside world.

Me, them doing it right now to highlight that, like, my progression in time is being exemplified by my gesture, like my action and my senses and my feelings and my body around me are contributing to my learning and my understanding.

Um, we use this in language all the time, so things like, um, exem or describing time, which is kind of an abstract concept as a spatial distancing.

So I look forward to hearing from you.

Um, you know, is is saying that time can actually be portrayed in space.

Um, so those kinds of things are really what roots, virtual reality in our, um, in our research here, being able to say, I'm engaging in this environment, even though the environment is not real.

I'm still leveraging my sensory motor system to learn and engage in the environment just as if I was doing it in real life.

Um, that's where the educational benefit comes into play here.

Um, and that's why a higher degree of presence is, is is really better in here because it is more grounded then it is more rooted in our sensory motor system.

Um, again, not to say that the other sides won't, but it will certainly help the more grounded you can be, and I say grounded as if it was a verb, but like, that's the idea that the, the higher degree of presence you have, um, the more realistic it's going to feel similar to how you were engaged in the, in your normal day-to-day.

So I think it's helpful to kind of outline how can this actually look.

So if you were trying to incorporate design thinking, empathy, research, virtual reality, if you were trying to incorporate all of these things, what could that look like at your school? And I'm gonna essentially highlight what my dissertation is going to be about.

So if you see me at Atlas in the next couple of months, or if you see me, uh, you know, in January of 2026, note that I'm writing a dissertation, please say hi to me and bring me up for water every now and then.

Um, but this is essentially what I'll be working on and, and I hopefully give some ideas of what's, of what this might look like.

Um, so in my study, what I do is, so I'm a design thinking teacher.

I have a group of students that have gone through the design thinking process.

So in my class, I have individually taught those skills.

So what does it mean to conduct a good interview? What does it mean to empathize? What does it mean to define so on and so forth? Um, you don't have to do all of those things, but I think it helps to give some sort of framework first.

Um, what I'm now arguing is, so at the end of the design thinking course, their last project is essentially solving a wicked problem.

Uh, they won't solve the whole problem, but they'll solve a part of it, of their choosing, which is kind of the point of of life and what, what we really want to do as a school.

Um, the problem I'm choosing is homelessness, in part because Stanford has created a very interesting, um, simulation of someone becoming homeless.

Um, and the whole design of this, the whole reason that the simulation was created was to address something called faulty attribution, which is this idea that people become homeless solely because of, um, bad decisions that they've made.

Like, oh, this person has taken drugs, or This person is lazy, and so now they are homeless because of that.

And this is designed to actually show that, now wait a minute.

There's actually a lot of different ways that someone becomes homeless.

Um, so I think it's actually helpful to talk a little bit about the simulation because we can see how it unfolds is the teaching tool itself.

It's, so the notion, the idea is to get to cognitive empathy, but the only way we do that is by understanding the problem and eliciting some sort of emotional response.

So the simulation, more or less, is in four main stages of four main scenes, uh, in the first scene here.

So it's an immersive experience you put on the headset.

You are now sitting at a desk, um, it's in your apartment.

You have a narrator who's saying that you've been unemployed for a number of months, you've tried to find a job and you've been unsuccessful.

Unemployment rates are at an all time high in the space, like wherever you're living.

Um, and there's a landlord who says that, Hey, your rent's overdue.

You can see that there's an eviction notice.

You see that there's bills on your table if you look around in the space.

Um, but your apartment is furnished and it's just like you're just a normal person.

I also love that it makes you choose your skin color at first too, so that it kind of adds another degree of relatability to your experience.

Um, and you can see that your controllers are really the hands that you're doing.

So the first scene is you have to try and sell some of your things in order to make rent.

'cause you haven't been employed for a number of months.

Um, so the first scene is you are clicking around your apartment and saying, all right, I'm gonna sell the couch.

I'm gonna sell the tv, I'm gonna sell the bookshelf.

Um, the punchline is, is that at the end of it, you sell all of these things and you still don't have enough money to make rent.

That then leads to the second scene where now you are clearly out of your apartment and you are now living in your car.

So you can look around in your car, you see that it's, it's very dirty.

The narrator says that, all right, you're now sleeping in your car.

The radio then overplays and says that police have been cracking down on people who have been sleeping in their cars, because that is illegal in whatever city you are talking about.

Um, so you're now immediately kind of faced with this conundrum of saying, well, I just got kicked outta my apartment.

I'm living in my car, I'm not doing anything to anybody.

I'm just trying to live here.

And I'm overhearing these laws saying that what I'm doing is now illegal.

So while you're sitting listening to this, the scene closes with a police officer essentially turning on their sirens and then walking up to the side of your car door, the narrative there goes on to say that, alright, you've now, um, had to sell your car because you've been issued all of these citations, and to avoid jail time, you needed to pay off those tickets.

So you sell all your possessions, you sell your car, um, and you are now living on a city bus.

So the next scene starts off on a city bus.

And in this scene, you have to actually toggle between two different tasks.

Uh, on one side, on your left hand side, there is a backpack that contains all of your possessions that you have to keep near you as it slides away while you're on the bus.

And on the other side, on your right side, there is this very imposing looking man who the narrator says, has been known to, um, harass homeless, uh, at night.

So the scene is now you are keeping your possessions near you while also looking off this person, all with the reality of you are now living on this bus more or less.

Um, and it's a pretty harrowing scene.

So for about a minute or so, you're kind of pulling the backpack and looking away at this person that if you don't look close enough will actually come very, very close to you as you can see, um, after that scene.

Then it then finishes with, I think the most important part of this whole conversation is, um, the last scene is now the narrator instructs you to click on different people who are on this bus and hear their stories of how they became homeless.

And none of them are focused on things that are like drugs or laziness, but it's a, you know, it's a woman who, um, one woman's story is she's escaping domestic violence.

So she had the option of either staying with a abusive partner or living on the bus.

Um, one is a, a, a homeless veteran who came back and didn't have the, uh, you know, the services required to acclimate 'em to society.

Um, another person is a father and son who have, you know, increased medical bills after the passing of the boy's mother.

Like it is, it's really harrowing kind of stories that exemplify the fact that people becoming homeless are not just because of decisions that they've made, but actually extra, you know, societal factors that have kind of passed them aside.

Um, and this is all done from this first person perspective.

This is all done from this immersive environment where you are positioned on the bus looking around and engaging with these people.

You can see the graphics are not super intense, but the messaging is very clear.

And the perspective of you talking to all of these people, i is really the whole point of this.

Um, and it's about, as you can see, about a seven minute video in, in, in total, um, if you run through everything from beginning to end.

Um, so, so that's really the, that's really the experiment then.

So in, in short, like if we were really doing this whole study and, and how this would be implemented is you tend to start off first by saying, all right, if I'm going to engage with a problem that is a wicked problem with a certain class or a certain group of people, you really start off by that empathy stage.

And that, to me, comes in two different perspective, or, uh, comes in two different styles.

Um, the first part is I tend to try and, um, ground students a little bit more in the problem itself.

That's often done, that's oftentimes done through traditional media.

I actually have another published paper around the benefits of having a more static media to kind of ground the problem.

Um, in this particular study, it's actually gonna be a New York Times article on homelessness.

So before they even see the virtual reality, they're first gonna understand that homelessness is a pretty complex problem, and it's not just what you're thinking about.

Um, and that's really where that cognitive empathy begins.

So I start off by saying, all right, let's start to understand a little bit more about this problem and about these experiences, not without the emotional piece.

Um, that then transitions to really the, the, the, the, the, the, the crown jewel of this whole thing.

Um, the virtual reality is a means to spur cognitive empathy.

So now not only do you have an awareness of what problem you might be interested in regarding homelessness, 'cause it's a pretty wide problem, but now you're starting to get the emotional component that follows suit with it.

Now you're starting to understand, all right, let me actually get into this experience a little bit more and see how visceral this can be.

Now let's actually get an emotional piece.

Um, and as I mentioned, really the driving factor behind this is this notion of attribution theory, um, which is a, is a, in short, it's a motivational theory that talks about how if you believe that something is essentially your fault, if someone else, like, if, if if someone believes that, like let's say you are homeless because of bad decisions that you've made, outside observers won't be likely to support them.

So if you believe that homelessness is because of people being lazy or because of drug use or things that were under the control of someone, you may not be inclined to support them.

Um, as opposed to the other side, which is causal controllability, this idea that if you believe that a problem is caused by something outside of someone's control, let's say homelessness is caused by societal factors that are outside, like unemployment or, um, um, biased regulations like bias rules and regulation, um, someone else might be more inclined to help.

So the idea of introducing virtual reality to kind of de-stigmatize this idea of homelessness and incorporate causal controllability in a more positive light, um, is really the crux of this whole thing.

And that's done through this lived experience of someone.

Now someone is actually in their shoes saying, oh, wow, I, I'm not homeless right now.

But I had that experience where it was like, I tried to do all of these things and I still ended up having to look out this person and see these other people who tried to do their best, but still ended up here.

Um, so now you have this emotional tie and this desire for action through this theory, this attribution theory, this motivational theory.

Now you then pivot into the rest of the design thinking.

So now you've got an understanding of the problem at a high level.

You have an emotional response and a desire for action.

Now you actually have to execute through the problem.

Um, and like I said, that it's a, it's a viable pedagogical strategy.

So as students engage in this design thinking process, um, each one of those stages is providing a life lesson.

Each one of those, not a life lesson, but is providing some sort of lesson, is providing some sort of instruction.

Um, and how they navigate that is really the learning that's, that's the learning understanding that your final solution, your your original prototype solution, that's gonna be your test.

Um, understanding or being able to synthesize your data is your summary of understanding, um, testing things out and then going back into the process and tweaking and adjusting is the feedback that you're receiving just like you would in a normal classroom.

Um, so that's what I think makes it such a powerful learning experience is that the engagement within it is really the thing that drives all of the education here.

Um, and then finally, after it's all said and done, it ends up creating a very powerful end product.

You have a student now that has learned about a very detailed topic like homelessness through this very active engagement.

Um, and the end result is a contribution to the community.

The end result is now something that they can really get behind and, and they can understand and say like, I know this is a deep problem, but I can solve this one piece by doing this one thing, and I know it works because I did all of these other things.

And all of that really started with that cognitive empathy piece that was done through reflection and done through, um, that sort of, that static media and the cognitive empathy piece, that idea of, I'm going to have this virtual experience and I'm gonna get this emotional response now that's gonna drive me to do something about it.

Um, which is where the virtual reality came in.

So I recognize that I threw a lot of jargon out into the world, and I recognize that there was a lot of different ideas here, but I would still wanna then just, I just wanna highlight what are the key things that I think we should be thinking about? So as independent school tech leaders or as independent school employees in general, what are the things that we should really be focusing on in this? Um, so if you had, if you need to take away slide from anything, I think this is really gonna be the one here.

Um, first things, first education is really gonna increase its need for empathy research.

Um, education is not going to veer away from empathy and those soft skills, it's going to lean into it even further.

And as independent schools, we have to be thinking about this.

Um, we have to be think we have to be thinking about this.

Um, as technology continues to advance, the conversation's only gonna grow louder, both from the outside world and from our families.

That expectation of independent schools teaching those things is not going to go anywhere, and we are all part of that conversation, especially technology who's gonna be driving a lot of it when we keep talking about ai.

Um, also this idea of wicked problems are only going to increase as we become more and more globalized, either through the internet or through just the ability to travel and engage with different places in the world more easily.

This is going to create more and more complex problems and a greater desire to understand others in a more active and a more intentional way.

So empathy research is really not gonna go anywhere.

Plus, I can guarantee almost every one of our mission statements in some way, shape, or form, talks about understanding, talks about creative problem solving, talks about critical thinking.

These skills are rooted in everything that we do.

So the fact that our schools are not actively talking about this on a very contentional and continuous manner is, is probably a sign that we need to do some adjustment.

I would then argue that if you're looking to try and incorporate a different pedagogical model that's easy to implement across the board, design thinking is one that makes a lot of sense.

Um, the fact that it is rooted in constructivist undertone and project-based learning is, is really impactful.

It allows it to be implemented in numerous subjects, not just academic, but also within your departments.

We also have the added benefit of being in an independent school where we have a little more curricular flexibility.

So while our, again, our public school counterparts are forced more to do a prescribed curriculum and have to say, on this day I'm doing this thing, we have a little more flexibility to try something different, to incorporate different styles and strategies to teach the skills that we wanna teach beyond just within the curriculum.

Um, and it also meets the needs of our constituents.

So, you know, our families are expecting independent schools to be more dynamic.

They're expecting us to be more cutting edge, and design thinking provides that kind of experience for our students.

It creates a more dynamic experience, it creates a project-based experience that, again, a lot of families are coming to us to expect because of that.

Then they're also expecting that we're teaching not only empathy, but also a social justice oriented empathy.

I know for my school, there is a, there is a service component, there is a service requirement for graduation.

Um, and I can imagine that I am not alone in that experience.

I would imagine a lot of our schools that tend to be more affluent have a degree of expectation of giving back to the community.

So this notion of action oriented empathy, um, is probably something that is appealing to a lot of us in a lot of different ways.

But in order to do that, that requires a lot on the backend.

That requires us to have that understanding of what other people are experiencing, including the historical backgrounds that led to certain problems, including an emotional response from our students who are trying to navigate their own worlds and see their places within it too.

It's a really tough line to do it, but it's something that every one of our schools likely argues.

You know, I would imagine, like I said, many of our mission statements probably have an action orientation within them.

So this notion is baked into all of our schools.

And how is the, you know, what, how can we do that then? Like, how can we do that within tough time constraints? I would argue that virtual reality has a really good potential to foster that.

Those notions of grounded cognition and learning through our senses are something that we can really tap into in virtual reality, can truly help with that without having to go out into the space.

I would love it to then encourage someone to then go out into the space.

I think that's really the next point of escalation.

But if we're looking to start the conversation, virtual reality is a great place to do it.

And I think as independent schools, we have the, usually we have the resources in order to afford this relatively affordable technology, knock on wood, compared to the 650 laptops we just bought.

Um, but to be able to buy a couple of headsets or a couple of Google glasses, um, and again, the curricular flexibility to implement it within our classrooms is really something that, you know, is an incredible opportunity that I don't think should be passed up.

Um, because I think that the end result could be really, really powerful both for, um, our mission statements and the purposes of our school, but also the educational experiences, um, especially the educational experiences of our, of our students moving forward.

Um, so with that being said, I, I know that it's a little more, um, I, I'm just really open to questions then, or any sort of comments that anyone may have.

Um, I would love to hear what you're thinking about.

Um, I also can happily share my contact information, so if we want to continue this conversation afterwards, like I said, I I, I'm gonna be writing a dissertation on this next month, so if you would love to stay in touch and talk shop, I'm always welcome to to, to hear you out and have a good conversation.

Um, also, I have a nice little work side list, so if there was anything that you were interested in learning more about, please feel free to check out those resources.

I'll happily pass them along to you as well.

Um, but are there any questions, comments, anything I can exemplify? Take a little bit of sip of water While you're doing that, Tyler, this was incredible.

Thank you so much for sharing.

Thank you.

I'm inspired by the work that you're doing.

Have you done any of this in your school yet? Yeah.

Yes.

So the one study, I forget the, um, which slide I was on, so the New York Times article, um, and that identifying one facet of homelessness through traditional media.

We did a study on that, um, uh, a couple of years ago.

So I incorporated a 360 degree video into, uh, my design thinking class.

And I wanted to see how that, um, how that would impact the design thinking process.

And it, it led to some very interesting studies.

Um, it was less immersive than the study that I'm about to do.

Um, but even that, that sort of non-immersive but still kind of immersive experience, um, actually did inspire a little bit of cognitive empathy.

So when I followed up with some reflections afterwards from my students, they were much more active in talking about their emotion to it.

They were like, oh, I, you know, that that study was about, um, water scarcity and how Cape Town was running out of water at the time.

This was a couple years ago.

And they were like, oh, wow.

Being in that experience made me feel like I needed to do something a little bit more for these folks.

Like there was a much more tangible and emotional reaction.

They were speaking more of like, I felt like blank or I was, um, I was distraught by seeing that, like it was something that there was a much more of an emotional tie compared to when I would show them a documentary on the same topic and they'd be like, wow, I think that's a really interesting thing.

Or, wow, I think we really need to do something about it.

Like their language changed to reflect more of an emotional state.

Wow.

Um, and I think that was then the motivator that actually kept them going.

So the, the paper talks about how the traditional media inspired them to solve the problem and help them define what the problem was.

But the immersive media or the virtual reality in that case was, um, more focused on the emotional, the emotional side of things that kind of gave them the motivation to get started or to continue.

Um, that language kind of kept coming up in their reflections as time went on.

Um, so that was really the biggest, I think the most impactful and intentional use of it.

Uh, we've also had English classes that have incorporated it into their curriculum, so they would potentially, I had one class that read, oh, it was a seventh grade book, and I'm forgetting the name of it right now.

But essentially they were, they would read the book, they had the students then, um, create like a very bootleg version, and I think I actually have the photo of it.

Um, so the students in that class there, they created essentially their own virtual environment that reflected the book.

The book had like two different worlds.

There was like a dystopian kind of world, and then there was like a utopian kind of world, and they created this sort of 360 degree model reflecting the two worlds.

So if you look to the left, you saw the utopia, you looked to the right, you saw the dystopia, um, and then they had to like kind of problem solve through that.

Like, so that virtual experience allowed them to highlight, like, these are the nuances within literature that they had to then demonstrate in the vr.

And then they had to see if it actually appeared in their vr.

Um, and we purposely used like a really low, like a really low resolution, low, um, low entry point VR to, to really exemplify that because the focus wasn't on creating the vr, it was like creating the experience.

Um, and that worked out.

That worked out really, really well.

Um, a lot of students, again, very similarly said, they had an emotional reaction to it.

Um, and I think that the feedback that they received while they were looking at it was, I mean, better than anything that they would've gotten on some sort of essay or something like that.

Um, so those are the two biggest ones that we used Yeah.

In, in our school.

That's incredible.

Awesome.

Do we have any other questions? Well, Tyler, thank you for sharing this work.

Good luck on your dissertation.

You've got this, um, you clearly are passionate about this.

Um, please keep the Atlas community up to date, um, as you go through this and as you continue to do more of these projects, um, and implement more at your school, we love to hear it.

And, uh, thank you again.

Great.

Thanks so much again for this opportunity.

I had a blast.

Awesome..