VIRTUAL REALITY AND THEATRE TO CHANGE DEPARTMENTAL CLIMATE

As a part of a federally funded project, we created a virtual reality (VR) simulation that leverages the strengths of both VR technology and human conversational intelligence. This proposed symposium will feature a live 15-minute demonstration of the VR simulation with one participant from the audience so that all attendees can witness how authentic these scenarios are for geoscience contexts. The presenter will also show quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the effect of our intervention on participants’ self- and collective efficacy beliefs to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Bandura (1997) defined self-efficacy as the belief in one’s capabilities to perform specific tasks at a specified level of competence. He defined collective efficacy as a group’s shared belief in its collective capabilities to organize and execute courses of action to produce specified levels of attainment.

Results of our program have been published (Author, 2020). Using Bayesian analysis, we showed that participants (n=29) evinced a large growth in self-efficacy from Time 1 (M=3.45) to Time 2 (at 5-months; M=4.38), with a notable decline by Time 3 (at 1 year; M=3.78). However, Time 1 to 3 growth was credibly greater than zero (99.9% probability of mean difference greater than 0), with an effect size of 0.46 SD units. There was a similar trend in collective efficacy, with a rise between Time 1 (M=3.14) and Time 2 (M=3.96) and subsequent decline at Time 3 (M=3.28). Results showed that Time 1 to 3 growth in collective efficacy was not greater than zero.

We have implemented this program in other settings since publishing the aforementioned results, and will present data from those implementations also, which reveal similar trends. In these implementations we started institution-based cohort coaching to build collective efficacy through social network analysis so that participants could gain a deeper understanding of how to leverage social relationships to effect systemic change. We will illustrate the use of this social network analysis during the symposium. Through our live demonstration of the simulation, our discussion of the results of our intervention, and our illustration of social network analysis we show a promising way forward in professional development that has a demonstrated track record of success.