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Waddle: Developing Empathy for Adélie Penguins By Direct Embodiment in Virtual Reality

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Serious Games (JCSG 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14309))

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Abstract

Empathy is important for fostering social engagement with ecology. In this study we describe Waddle, a virtual reality (VR) experience designed to facilitate the direct embodiment of an Adélie Penguin moving through the key stages of their life cycle as an intervention to increase empathy. By collecting pre and post questionnaire data from forty-three grade 3 through 8 students attending a science festival, we find that Waddle was successful in facilitating an embodied experience and supported a significant increase in the participants’ empathy toward penguins. We also find that greater embodiment was correlated with increased empathy, suggesting a casual relation that invites additional research into designing embodied experiences using immersive technologies as a method for developing empathy and fostering greater social engagement.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (2028478, 2116046).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, 53703, USA

    David J. Gagnon, Kevin Ponto, Mitchell Nathan, Kaldan Kopp & Ross Tredinnick

  2. Institute for Learning Innovation, Portland, OR, 97217, USA

    Monae Verbeke

Authors
  1. David J. Gagnon
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  2. Kevin Ponto
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  3. Monae Verbeke
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  4. Mitchell Nathan
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  5. Kaldan Kopp
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  6. Ross Tredinnick
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David J. Gagnon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Mads Haahr

  2. University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Alberto Rojas-Salazar

  3. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Gagnon, D.J., Ponto, K., Verbeke, M., Nathan, M., Kopp, K., Tredinnick, R. (2023). Waddle: Developing Empathy for Adélie Penguins By Direct Embodiment in Virtual Reality. In: Haahr, M., Rojas-Salazar, A., Göbel, S. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14309. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-44750-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-44751-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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