By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
As part of a two-hour workshop, students pop on a virtual reality headset (most recently, that’s the $199 Oculus Go) and attend a virtual meeting that brings together a small group of people from the United States, China, India and Singapore. In the opening scene of “First Impressions,” the user observes a global business meeting taking place in an office in China. It’s apparent as the meeting progresses that the interactions among the various characters are leading to tensions. All of the students see the same thing, remove their headsets and go through a bit of discussion. They’re asked simply to be observers first, “and not apply any judgment to what’s going on,” said project lead Ilin Misaras, assistant director for the university’s Global Training Initiative (GTI). “Don’t tell me that [somebody] is weird. Tell me what he said.” Following that, the headset is pulled on again to watch the same scene repeated. But this time, each user has been assigned to one of three people in attendance at the global meeting and assumes his role from a first-person point of view.
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