ABINGTON, Pa. — Two Penn State Abington students earned an award for the most innovative presentation at the Greater Philadelphia Asian Studies Consortium (GPASC) annual undergraduate research conference. The virtual reality (VR) tour they developed for a research seminar was a hit with conference goers, who donned the headsets to explore six historical sites in China including Shamian Island and the Muslim Quarter at Xi'an.
Health humanities majors Kazi Morshed and Jiovani Santiago created the 360-degree immersive experience along with four other students from the raw videos and images Pierce Salguero, professor of health humanities and history, captured in China.
“We built our sites and troubleshooted any issues with the technology with our VR tech support at Penn State. Jiovani and I wrote the project proposal for GPASC and brought the VR headsets from campus. A few of the people who used it told us that it had felt like actually traveling to the locations,” Morshed said.
Presenting research and attending conferences are invaluable professional development opportunities that are open to Abington students generally with faculty in courses and through the undergraduate research program.
“Presenting gave me experience in using virtual reality professionally, and I enjoyed meeting students and mentors from different colleges and universities,” said Santiago, a fourth-year student.
Morshed said she plans to keep pursuing this line of research.
“In our ever-changing world, I believe VR has a lot of potential as a therapeutic tool," Morshed said. "Finding something to focus on for work has been a challenge, and I feel as though I've taken a big step closer! I know I want to keep learning extensively about Asia, VR and how it all can work in health care."
Salguero’s goal with the VR project is to enhance the students’ skills through hands-on experiences.
“It's a combination of learning how to build VR on the tech side but also learning the humanities research side of it. They built the tours of these locations that a user can walk through and the user can touch topics that explain the item, which the students researched and wrote,” he said.
Salguero praised the students and their work.
"Jiovani and Kazi were motivated, engaged, very professional and competent," Salguero said. "They didn’t come into the project with IT backgrounds. In addition to building the site, they helped users at the conference with the tech end. They acquired professional skills through this experience."
Morshed, a third-year student, initially enrolled in Salguero’s seminar for practical reasons including fulfilling a requirement for her major.
“But once classes began, I loved the structure Dr. Salguero set for our class. He allowed us to research freely, to go on tangents when researching to find what interests us, while also giving valuable feedback in each step of the process” she said.
This is the second iteration of Salguero’s research seminar, with the first focusing on developing VR tours of historic sites in Japan. He received funding to travel to Asia through a Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology Impact Award and a grant from the Japanese government.
About Penn State Abington
Penn State Abington provides an affordable, accessible and high-impact education resulting in the success of a diverse student body. It is committed to student success through innovative approaches to 21st-century public higher education within a world-class research university. With more than 3,100 students, Penn State Abington is a residential campus that offers baccalaureate degrees in 26 majors, accelerated master's degrees, undergraduate research, the Schreyer Honors College, NCAA Division III athletics and more.