Congratulations to Eileen McGivney, Assistant Professor of Art+Design and Communication Studies, and her University College Dublin collaborator on being awarded a UC Dublin Global Engagement Seed Fund to further support their project XR-LEARN 2035: Virtual Reality for Learner Experience and Learning Design!

Eileen explains, “We plan to use the funding support for a series of workshops across our campuses on the future classroom related to XR. This means we’ll plan two virtual exchanges this summer, they will visit us in the fall, and I will go there in the spring (of 2027).”

Eileen McGivney conducts design-based research on how people learn with immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR). In her work, she draws on learning sciences, educational psychology, and media studies to investigate the affordances and limitations of VR to situate learning in environments that are difficult or impossible in traditional classrooms. In particular, she is interested in the process of learning with VR and how the design of virtual environments and activities affect how learners use and experience them, and ultimately how that helps or hinders their learning. In her current work she is studying such processes related to learners’ sense of agency, emotions, self-beliefs, and identities, and how they are affected by design features like varied types of interactivity. Her work crosses many different populations and contexts, including university health profession students, high school STEM education, workforce development training, and game-based learning to teach problem-solving skills.

Eileen completed her Ph.D. in Education at Harvard University where she also served as an instructor and a researcher in Project Zero’s Next Level Lab and the NSF-funded EcoLearn projects. Prior to Harvard, Eileen researched technology and innovation in education systems around the globe at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and the Education Reform Initiative in Istanbul, Turkey. She holds an MA in Public Policy Analysis from Sabanci University and a BS in Media Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Learn more about Eileen’s XR Education Design Lab