Virtual rendering of Fort Alexander Residential School. (Enacting Empathy project), Author provided (no reuse)
The Conversation: Can a virtual reality residential school, developed with Survivors, improve empathy toward Indigenous people?
As written in The Conversation by Katherine B. Starzyk, Dept. of Psychology, University of Manitoba and Iloradanon H. Efimoff, Dept. of Psychology, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Virtual reality is a rapidly developing technology. As the technology expands, becoming more portable and affordable, the potential uses have expanded as well.
One virtual reality creator calls virtual reality the “ultimate empathy machine.” Promising research shows that virtual reality can improve empathy toward groups such as people experiencing schizophrenia, children who are refugees and people who are unhoused.
Working with an interdisciplinary research team, we put this statement to the test within the context of residential schools in Canada.
Read the full store here.
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.