Exploring the Use of an Avatar-Based Online Platform to Facilitate Social Interaction in Laboratory Sessions

Online conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have been widely adopted as substitutes for physical classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This dramatic change is accompanied by many challenges for educators to keep their students engaged online and promote live interactions to mimic a real classroom environment. While progress has been made in teaching theoretical concepts in the online setting, teaching laboratory skills online remains challenging. Such skills are usually taught and learned and require a high level of human interaction. Here, we share our experience in designing Gather.town as an online learning space for a laboratory course to facilitate social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gather.town is a video conferencing platform that allows educators to construct individualized 2D spaces and interact with other people through their avatars. The use of avatars is hypothesized to be the key difference that distinguishes it from traditional video conferencing platforms. Gather.town has also been explored by researchers from other fields to be able to enhance online learning through improved interaction between students but not yet in the chemistry education space. Empirical evidence shows that students agree that the designed Gather.town has increased social interaction in the time of online learning.