WHAT VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE GREAT EXPERIMENT REVEAL ABOUT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY скачать в хорошем качестве

WHAT VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE GREAT EXPERIMENT REVEAL ABOUT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

November 2025 General Meeting — THE ROOM WHERE – AND WHEN – IT HAPPENED: WHAT VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE GREAT EXPERIMENT REVEAL ABOUT AMERICAN DEMOCRACY Mohammad F. Obeid - Mirza Endowed Chair in Global Learning and Associate Professor, Director of the Virtual Reality Design Program, Co-Director of the Shenandoah Center for Immersive Learning Shenandoah University Warren R. Hofstra - Stewart Bell Professor of History, Shenandoah University "The Room Where – and When – It Happened: What Virtual Reality and the Great Experiment Reveal About American Democracy" Borrowing from George Washington’s famous letter to English historian Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham in 1790 observing that the “establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness,” The Great Experiment is our experiment in exploring this constitutional moment of great creativity and consequence within a virtual reality experience. Set in a meticulous, historically accurate, digital reconstruction of the Assembly Room at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) as it stood during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, The Great Experiment invites users to encounter and participate in the original debate over how a republic should choose its chief executive. The experience progresses through staged levels: observing richly documented exchanges among delegates, studying their principles and life histories, embodying delegates in arguing from scripted positions, speaking in one’s own words, and concluding with a free debate on a related contemporary question. This talk examines what immersive learning environments reveal about history scholarship, pedagogical potential, and civic reasoning—how the phenomenon of presence illuminates the spatial and multi-sensory nature of evidence and elucidates rational discourse as a means of deliberative practice within a bespoke and curated environment.