USF Sarasota-Manatee's Lindsay Persohn receives grant for virtual reality project

• Tyler Ennis, MS
• September 5, 2024
• College of Education News, Research

Lindsay Persohn, PhD, an assistant professor in the Literacy Studies Program at the USF College of Education has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the Florida High Tech Corridor Early-Stage Innovation Fund. While an Interdisciplinary Research Grant through the USF Sarasota-Manatee Office of Research will fund the development of a prototype virtual reality application that offers youth participants an immersive learning environment to solve real-world problems, this Florida High Tech Corridor grant will support the team to connect with VR industry leaders.

Describing her vision for the project, titled "eXploRe a Wonderland of Inquiry," Persohn said, "Imagine a world where Alice's Wonderland frames immersive learning experiences. Each area in this 'World of Wonder' offers opportunities for participants to explore, create, and collaborate to solve real-world problems. Ultimately, we envision multi-player, interactive spaces like a library, workshop, and gallery where youth participants bring the challenges they notice in their communities to the World of Wonder to develop and test innovative solutions they can take back to their real worlds."

The theme of Alice in Wonderland was inspired by Persohn's dissertation, in which she studied about 6,000 illustrations of the story and traced its cultural history. As a story with such a pervasive worldwide presence, Persohn believes Wonderland, coupled with Campbell's The Hero's Journey provides an ideal framework for the application's experience.

A group of middle schoolers will be invited to test the World of Wonder prototype and other inquiry-driven apps. Their feedback and experiences will be invaluable in informing the continued development of the application. The testing will occur in a collaborative space on the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus, equipped with 20 VR headsets.

Persohn will lead the project with co-principal investigators Dr. Cheryl Ellerbrock and Dr. Triparna De Vreede from the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus and Dr. Howard Kaplan from the USF Tampa campus, as well as Key Personnel Dr. Csaba Osvath of USF Tampa and Timi Hager of USF Sarasota-Manatee.

For more information, please contact Dr. Lindsay Persohn.