Reorienting Toward Queerness: Learning with Virtual Reality and Multi-Agent Simulations of Gender and Sexuality
Date
2023-07
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Abstract
In the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and STEM education, the predominant body of technoscientific scholarship is largely cisheteronormative, leaving queer and trans perspectives underrepresented. The new technology designs presented in this dissertation, across virtual reality and multi-agent simulations, offer productive ways to reorient technology design toward queer and trans perspectives while developing public understanding of critical perspectives in gender and sexuality. This manuscript-based dissertation explores the design and research of technologies that aim to reorient computing education from its roots in cisheteronormative ideologies and toward addressing LGBTQ+ marginalization. First, in a critical review of the literature, I highlight the historical cisheteronormativity in computer science, queer and trans theories of computing, queer game studies, the technological regulation of LGBTQ+ bodies and identities, and possibilities for queering computing and computing education. I offer ways forward by proposing queer coding and computing architectures, working in active solidarity with LGBTQ+ people in designing computational artifacts, and foregrounding LGBTQ+ embodiments, epistemologies, and axiologies in designing virtual reality and computational simulations. Next, I investigate how participants engage with a VR experience designed to deepen their understanding of gender and sexuality-based marginalization in STEM learning environments. The findings reveal how participants, in interaction with the VR experience, produced ideological stances and emotional configurations that reoriented them to marginalized perspectives grounded in critical queer and trans perspectives. Finally, I analyze how the design of a multi-agent simulation of gender and sexuality-based marginalization and resilience can support conversations about the complex, emergent nature of marginalization. The findings demonstrate how the simulation supported multi-level, emotional, and embodied sense-making about emergent experiences of harm and support. I also show how Flocking QT Stories is an essential departure from previous work on multi-agent systems by analyzing how stories in the simulation served as scaffolds to help participants make sense of the simulation and encourage personal storytelling to make deeper, personal connections. Across these papers, this dissertation offers insights into how we can design and research queer technologies that foreground queer and trans embodiments, epistemologies, and axiologies and better support learning about gender and sexuality and encourage learners to challenge cisheteronormativity.
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Keywords
virtual reality, multi-agent simulation, gender, sexuality, queer, trans
Citation
Paré, D. (2023). Reorienting toward queerness: learning with virtual reality and multi-agent simulations of gender and sexuality (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.