Conceptualizing the Remote Site Experience through Immersive Technology: Unraveling the Santa Marta Favela from Students’ Perspectives

Danielle Oprean is Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies. She completed a joint postdoc research position at Pennsylvania State University in the department of geography and the Stuckmen Center for Design Computing in architecture and landscape architecture. Her research focuses on understanding the role of immersion in immersive technology as learning and training tools from a human–computer interaction perspective.

Debora Verniz is a PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University. She has a bachelor’s in architecture and urban planning and an MS in architecture, urban planning, and technology, both from University of Sã o Paulo. Debora has experience in teaching and research. Her research focuses on understanding the urban morphology from Brazilian informal settlements located on steep hillsides and the potentialities to use this urban morphology to design affordable housing settlements.

Jiayan Zhao is a PhD candidate in the geography at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in geological engineering from Central South University, China, in 2014. He earned his MA in geography from the State University of New York at Albany in 2016. Starting in 2016, he has been working on virtual reality application development and using it as a tool to benefit geoscience research and education and to assess spatial learning in virtual environments. His research interests lie in spatial cognition, wayfinding, mobile development, and VR/AR integration in Unity3D.

Jan Oliver Wallgrün is an independent senior researcher in the areas of GIS and spatial cognition, affiliated with the ChoroPhronesis group at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his doctoral degree in informatics from the University of Bremen, Germany, for his dissertation, “Hierarchical Voronoi Graphs: Spatial Representation and Reasoning for Mobile Robots.” His research is focused on spatial and spatiotemporal modeling and reasoning problems as well as spatial data integration and matching applications. In his most current work, he is investigating the application of immersive technologies (virtual and augmented reality) for spatial data analysis and GIS education.

Timothy Baird, FASLA, PLA, is a licensed landscape architect and Professor and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University. He previously held tenure-track positions at Pennsylvania State University, where he is Professor Emeritus, and Texas Tech University. Before entering academia in a full-time capacity, he practiced landscape architecture for 25 years on both coasts of the United States and in the Middle East with a variety of firms.

José P. Duarte, a Professor of architecture and landscape architecture at Pennsylvania State University Stuckeman School, holds the Chair in Design Innovation, and directs the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing. Duarte holds a professional degree in architecture from the Technical University of Lisbon and master–s and a PhD in design and computation from MIT. He was Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon, and president of eCAADe, a European association devoted to education and research in computer-aided design. His research focuses on using computation and artificial intelligence to support context-sensitive design across different scales.

Alexander Klippel is Professor, geography and information sciences, at Pennsylvania State University and the first Director of the Center for Immersive Experiences. His research interests lie at the interface of technology and cognition and address questions such as immersive learning, immersive decision making, and the centrality of space for cognitive processes.