Social work in Virtual Reality

At a glance

Project leader : Dr. Joel Gautschi
Project team : Linda Bürki, Haoyang Du, Songkai Jia, Prof. Dr. David Lätsch, Prof. Dr. Xueni Pan, Dr. Julia Quehenberger, Raphael Theiler
Project budget : CHF 60'000
Project status : completed
Funding partner : Internal
Project partner : Goldsmiths, University of London / Department of Computing
Contact person : Joel Gautschi

Description

Virtual reality technologies allow users to immerse themselves in computer-generated worlds. For social work, this offers new possibilities for practice, teaching, and research. With our study we want to explore the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) for a specific scenario concerning the topic of couple conflicts in the context of general social services. We aim to contribute to the discussion about the possibilities and limitations of VR in social work and contribute to the development of the use of VR technology in teaching, research, and practice. In addition, we want to better understand what assessments in social work depend on and thereby obtain indications of how they can be optimized.

The findings of the study will be published in scientific and professional journals and inform the use of VR technology in training of social work students and professionals.

Publications

Gautschi, Joel; Quehenberger, Julia; Lätsch, David; Du, Haoyang; Jia, Songkai; Pan, Xueni,

2023.

Is professionals’ empathy associated with safety-oriented decisions in child protection? : findings from an experimental virtual reality study.

In:

17th International Conference of the European Scientific Association on Residential & Family Care for Children and Adolescents (EuSARF), Brighton, United Kingdom, 12-15 September 2023.
Du, Haoyang; Jia, Songkai; Gautschi, Joel; Quehenberger, Julia; Lätsch, David; Pan, Xueni,

2023.

Towards more child safety-oriented decisions through VR [poster].

In:

Du, Hoayang, ed.,

2023 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW).

30th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, Shanghai, China, 25-29 March 2023.

IEEE.

pp. 687-688.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/VRW58643.2023.00186

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