Everyday Inclusion
An Interactive Mini Course
Everyday Inclusion - An Interactive Journey
This is a three-part VR blended learning course exploring Unconscious Bias, Inclusion, Microagressions and Intersectionality.
Everyday Inclusion has been co-designed with Diversity and Inclusion experts at an Ivy League University.
The VR interactive experiences give you a first-hand experience of bias. They also include wrap-around learning material on unconscious bias and inclusion as well as additional resources for self-directed learning.
In this experience you will step into the shoes of Tamara, the new hire.
"Hi, I am Tamara. I’m an organizational design specialist and I’ve been working at Cornell for 4 months now. I’ve worked really hard over my 20+ year career to hone my skills and I was excited to bring that experience to this team. So far my time at Cornell has been, uh, interesting... Everyone’s been nice for the most part and I really like my colleagues, but these little subtle and not so subtle things keep happening that make me feel… well.. you’ll see. "
Course Contents
VR Experiences. 3 x 3D interactive VR experiences
Learning Exercises. Learning exercises and reflection
Resources. Additional resource material
Certificate. Certificate of Completion
VR Experience flow
This course is broken into 3 parts which take an estimated 20 minutes each. Each part follows a similar flow:
Theory. To begin, you will learn a bit of theory about Unconscious Bias.
Experience. You will then experience for yourself a workplace meeting and encounter instances of bias in VR.
Reflect. Do a learning exercise to reflect on what you experienced, and how this might impact your workplace.
Commit. Take action and commit to strategies for mitigating bias and increasing inclusion.
Total Estimated Time for course is 1 hour
Learning Objectives
We learn better by doing. The main objective of this VR blended learning is to gain a more practical understanding and awareness of Unconscious Bias.
Importantly, this drives more empathy and gives more practical tools for behaviour change for better inclusion in the workplace.
More practical understanding of bias
Common shared experience (less imagination bias)
Greater empathy
More behaviour change
Understand what unconscious bias is, and recognize when unconscious bias occurs
Understand why it's important to understand unconscious bias and inclusion.
Explore how unconscious bias and inclusion are relevant in the working world.
Identify strategies to counteract potential unconscious bias.
Identify strategies for inclusion in the workplace.
Identify microaggressions in the workplace
Understand intersectionality.
Skills covered in this course
Communication
Work Relationships
Cultivating Productive Work Cultures
Empathy
Want Access?
Design up for the free demo on our website
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Design Notes
In a project led by a team of diversity and inclusion experts at an Ivy League University. From the beginning, we knew it was going to be one of our most important project yet and we needed to stretch ourselves to be more innovative than ever before. We completely reinvented our technology to reach new heights of achievement.
An important aspect of all of our projects is collaboration and partnerships with experts and people who experience discrimination. During the project, we wanted to build a virtual reality system for those with and without sight. We were privileged to work closely with Angela Winfield, and Dane Cruz. Angela who is the Associate Vice President for Inclusion and Workforce Diversity, and someone with first-hand experience of living legally blind since the age of 10. She was instrumental in creating our first virtual reality for people who are blind or vision-impaired by using voice recognition technology and 3D spatial sound to allow for complete experience reflecting sounds in the real world. Additionally, the virtual reality has been designed for people who are hearing impaired or deaf by using subtitles and high-quality visuals. Dane.. Write more here about Dane
We are really proud of this application that has reached an unprecedented level of quality that we hope will help even more people to engage with and benefit from the capabilities of virtual reality.
Everyday Inclusion is an application co-designed with Angela Winfield and Dane Cruz. The VR experience addresses the topic of Unconscious Bias, Intersectionality, including themes of Race and Gender.
The application is broken into two parts. Empathy, and Behavior Practice.
Oculus Start Pitch DeckMeet the Cast
Your VR Inclusion Guide
Meet Sarah. Sarah will guide you through your virtual reality experiences of everyday inclusion. She will help you get comfortable navigating the virtual environment, understand the situations you find yourself in and learn from the real-time data collected.
"Hi, I’m Sarah and welcome to Cornell University’s virtual reality learning experience on recognizing and interrupting unconscious bias. I’m your guide and will help you through the experience. In this experience, you will be in a common workplace situation. First, you will experience the situation from one perspective . Then, you will get to experience the very same situation from a different perspective and make some choices to see how different actions could have led to a more inclusive outcome. Now, I want to introduce you to the new hire, Tamara."
Empathy Experience
Step into the shoes of Tamara, the new hire.
"Hi, I am Tamara. I’m an organizational design specialist and I’ve been working at Cornell for 4 months now. I’ve worked really hard over my 20+ year career to hone my skills and I was excited to bring that experience to this team. So far my time at Cornell has been, uh, interesting... Everyone’s been nice for the most part and I really like my colleagues, but these little subtle and not so subtle things keep happening that make me feel… well.. you’ll see. "
Explore what it feels like to overhear exclusive behavior by your colleagues. How does it feel when they treat others with in a way that you know is unfair?
"In this experience you may come across non-inclusive behavior. If you recognize non-inclusive behavior, any subtle or not so subtle actions or comments, pull the trigger on your controller."
"So, you’ve just experienced an everyday workplace scenario from the perspective of Tamara. Now let’s reflect on the experience.
How did that feel?
Did you feel included?
Do you think the team could have done a better job of being inclusive?
Here, you can see how many times you recognized bias by pulling the trigger"
Behavior Practice
"Why don’t you try becoming the manager, Victor? Let’s see if you can make the meeting more inclusive."
Step into the shoes of Victor, the team manager.
"Hi, I’m Victor! I’m a team manager here at Cornell. I’m just about to head into a meeting that I’m running late for again. I’m always running late. It’s challenging juggling my own work, expectations from my supervisor and trying to support my team. Want to give my job a go and see how inclusive you can make this meeting? "
"Your goal, as the manager, is to direct the conversation to be as inclusive as possible."
"Now, let’s reflect on your experience as Victor.
How did you feel about the choices you made?
Do you think everyone was included?
Here you can see your decisions and their impact on how included others feel
This shows how included each team member felt at the end of the meeting, compared to how they felt at the beginning
Did the team member’s reactions to your choices surprise you? Why?
What challenges did you face?
Do you think you could have done better?"
Oculus Quest
The Oculus Quest is the most revolutionary progression of the VR industry in the last decade.
High End
It makes use of high-end VR experiences (with positional 6 degrees of freedom track).
We see the Oculus Quest as the most height end device available on the market today.
Portable
The Oculus Quest is completely wireless. Unlike other high-end device available, it does not require a computer. Making setup easier, and making portability simple.
Affordable
Even though the Oculus Quest, out performs all other headsets, it is 10 times cheaper that other recommended headsets. As the headset itself does not need a computer, a huge cost factor is removed.
Making the most of the Quest
Scale. Everyday Inclusion makes use of the Quest’s ease of use, and portability to run tens to hundreds of thousands of people training in multiple locations for organizations.
Embodiment. We make use of the spacial tracking & Oculus hands for body-transfer and embodiment to build affinity with the characters you are taking on. You embody the characters in a fully rigged 3D model. We make use the head and controller tracking to power the body animations and inverse kinematics. The body, hands and reflection of the user changes to match the character they are embodying.
Realistic. The entire application is real-time rendered, making use of the positional tracking to create a realistic interactive environment, while only requiring a small standing space to run the application.
AI & Accessibility. We make use of the microphone for optional voice interactions with characters and branching dialogue. The entire application can be navigated with a user’s voice for accessibility and inclusive design - co-designed with a blind partner.
Accessibility
This application was designed with Accessibility in mind. Leading the project was Angela Winfield - and we worked with her to ensure the experience worked for visually impaired users.
Visual Ability
We created a virtual world that works for visual impaired users through:
Speech AI voice interaction,
3D directional sound
Audio descriptions
Customization of coloring
Physical Ability
To be as accessible as possible we designed the VR interactions to be as flexible as possible to support different levels of ability or types of users, for example:
Users with one hand.
Users with some limited motor skills.
Seated or wheelchair use
Standing use, considering different heights.
Hearing Ability
Additionally, we designed and created closed captions in VR for deaf and hard of hearing users.
