Immersive technologies for marine education
I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
My research focuses on the role that immersive technologies can play in promoting ocean and environmental literacies. I have one Masters in Marine Biology, another in Education and Information Technology, and a PhD in Education.
In 2018 - 2020 I was a Knut och Alice Wallenberg Stiftelse Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, in charge of the research on environmental education.
Latest publication
In this study, we invited experts in marine science and in learning science to experience a virtual dive while immersed in water using the waterproof VR headset from Ballast Technologies, Inc. Participants often described experiencing high level of presence as “not being in the pool with a chain around the waist, but actually experiencing the ocean”. Motion sickness seemed infrequent with, for example, a participant who “Had nothing at all” in UVR despite a tendency to experience it in VR. Underwater VR also triggered positive affect, especially awe, empathy, and flow, which can provide the emotional basis for improving ocean literacy and reduce psychological distance to marine environmental issues. Based on these findings revealing unique potentials of UVR, we propose a new seven-dimensional ocean literacy framework including the dimensions of emotions, attitude, awareness, ocean connectedness, behavior, communication, knowledge, and find UVR to be uniquely advantageous and most promising for the first four. This study has been published in Environmental Education Research.
