 Hi, today we're going to talk about the Pen and Slavery Augmented Reality Tour. In particular, we're going to focus on the way that the project relied on empowering students in order to transform the university. And to that end, we want to begin by playing a brief video by Ben Jessica Gladney, a history doctoral student and creator of the Pen and Slavery project website, and Dallas Taylor, an undergraduate and project manager of the Augmented Reality App. Hello and welcome to the Pen and Slavery Augmented Reality App. The original intention of this project was to spatially locate the university's role and complicity in the institution of slavery onto the current campus. Over the process of creating the app, we decided that this history of slavery, though wedded to the institution, shouldn't be bound to its campus. You can participate from wherever you are and learn about the student research which helped to shed light on this history. The tour has six stops, each of which tells a part of the history of Pen's deep relationship to slavery. The university's founding, its history as an academic institution, and the experience of marginalized black and indigenous lives. This app has given us the opportunity to creatively present, manifest, and reveal the university's legacy in an informative and engaging way. Download the app in the App Store and Google Play Store to learn the role slavery played in the foundation of the university and the country and join the conversation. Hello, I'm Megan Moody, the Immersive Technologies Librarian for the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. I collaborated on the Pen and Slavery Project's Augmented Reality Tour as part of a former position with the Pen Libraries. In 2017, a group of students founded the Pen and Slavery Project to investigate the connections that the University of Pennsylvania and its early faculty, administrators, and trustees had to slavery and scientific racism, as the significant contributions of African-Americans on campus. Under the guidance of Dr. Kathy Brown and Dr. Alexis Broderick, students dove into archives and found troves of evidence. Slave ownership, donations from prominent slavers, certifying and promotion of scientific racism, buildings, and monuments seen for enslavers, and much more. Students participating in the course typically present on their research finances at the end of each semester. However, one of the students, Francesca Gladney, an undergraduate when the project began, wanted to share these findings beyond the small group. And Jessica reached out to library staff to create a website, which now exhibits these findings and features the student reports and archival evidence. Still she questioned how the legacies of this history could be more present and embedded on Penn's current campus. Why could trees on campus, for example, be mapped, but not this history? This is the easiest screenshot from the Penn Plant Explorer map, which in fact maps trees and other plants around campus. There are also these small physical signs that appear on campus such as this one. The conversations between the Penn & Slavery Project historians, Lori Allen and Kim Ekke of the Penn Libraries, Paul Farber of Monument Lab, and local development firm during syndicate, the idea for an augmented reality tour to spatially locate the university's role in complicity in the institution of slavery was born. The goals for the project were to engage an interdisciplinary team of student researchers and developers to co-create a project that has meaning for the whole campus, to create an air tour at Penn's campus that explores the role of enslaved people and the slave trade in the university's history, to expand capacities across the university for multidisciplinary and engage approaches to historical narrative and experiential learning. And lastly, to reach new audiences and further the conversation about repetitive work. The last point became especially clear after connecting with community stakeholders on which I will discuss more later. Use augmented reality or AR. As an immersive technologies librarian, I have to answer this question a lot. The value of immersive technologies is not always readily apparent. They are complicated, costly and sometimes seem gimmicky. At Penn Libraries, we had been experimenting with AR, VR tools and platforms through Penn immersive initiative to explore the efficacy of immersive technologies and teaching research and learning. The libraries held showcase events and workshops, provide a technology and serve as a hub to form a community of practice for immersive technologies. Having Penn immersive as a framework was invaluable to this project, among many others, is allowed us room to experiment and gain a frame of reference to see the possibilities for these tools. These technologies have the potential to connect the digital and real world in meaningful ways to transform the fields of education, entertainment, healthcare and beyond. Right now they're being used to perform surgery to reconstruct the past to create active learning opportunities and to imagine new futures. Establishing a base awareness for these tools and their capabilities is essential for inspiring experimentation, use cases and evangelists. We wanted the Penn & Slavery project AirTour to serve as what Vanjessica has called a virtual interruption on Penn's campus. With virtual reality, the user can disappear into a headset and go to another place. They can visit Mars, travel to the pyramids in Giza, or go to fictional worlds that exist only in dreams. We did not want users to escape. Instead we wanted them to see the space surrounding them in a new way. VR, sorry, AR enables the users to remain in the real world while also engaging with overlaying digital content that is not visible to the naked eye. At key locations on Penn's campus, users can engage with rich multimedia experiences that reveal the university's role in diversity and slavery. Each stop tells a different story that is rooted in archival evidence and is driven by student research. You cannot have this type of experience by simply visiting a museum, watching a video or attending a lecture. With the Penn & Slavery project ARF, the user can engage with archival documents, enter spaces not accessible to the public, and listen to personal stories like that of directorial student Breanna Moore, who recounts how her ancestors were enslaved by a Penn medical school alum. AR allows us to pull these threads together to provide a contextually rich and active learning experience, all while the user is situated in a bustling campus in the present day. We're going to shift gears a little and talk about the development phase of the app. In the spring of 2019, historians, librarians and a student fellow worked to prototype the first two experiences of the tour using the platform Zapper, an easy to use AR creation tool. These experiences were showcased at the Penn & Slavery project spring 2019 symposium. Attendees use their own smartphones to make these portraits that were placed around the event come to life with augmented reality. Moving into the summer of 2019, Lori Allen and I interviewed students to work as digital scholarship fellows to create the AR tour. The digital scholarship team at Penn Libraries has a robust summer fellowship program that brings together interdisciplinary teams of students from the School of Arts and Sciences, Penn Engineering and Penn Design to participate in shared training based on their skills and interests. So here is the summer 2019 student team. We were initially looking for two types of positions designers and developers who are outlined here. The app designers would work on content creation and would need video audio editing, 3D modeling and graphic design experience. The developers would focus on the app's framework and interaction and would need coding AR and mobile development experience. We also ended up hiring a project manager, which we hadn't initially intended, a medical anthropology major Dallas Taylor interviewed, because he was interested in the project. He didn't fit into the two positions we had imagined, but his enthusiasm for the project his experience as a creative and critical scholar, and his ability to learn quickly inspired Lori to ask him to join the team. This position ended up being absolutely essential to the whole project in that he not only was an adept project manager, but he played a critical role in communicating between the research and technical sides, and in translating this research into AR. He also initiated and let our user experience research, which again I'll talk more about later. Lori and I supported the digital scholarship fellows over the summer as they collaborated with two student historians who are outlined here, who were likewise supported by Kathy Alexis and Ben Jessica. These students work together to develop to develop the artistic technical and historical resources for the full tour. Following the example set by the Penn and slavery project. These students were also the driving force behind the app, and we're empowered to ask critical questions and push boundaries. During the first week, the digital scholarship fellows engaged with their peers research findings on the Penn and slavery project website. We shared conversations about what they found interesting or surprising, and how they might translate this research into AR. This was one of students response to a questionnaire, the students submitted that resonated with many of the others. I was surprised to find out how so many elements on campus are connected to slavery including the quad, which is one of the freshman dormitories. They're all familiar settings to me but hearing their, their history really brought the past away. As a group we also walked the sweet chariot AR tour in Philadelphia, which served as inspiration for this project, sweet chariot was created by Marisa Williamson and monument lab and as an air scavenger hunt that uncovers hidden stories of the African American struggle for freedom. So throughout the summer the digital scholarship fellows were closely with this student story and so conceptualize and begin building the final four stops using unity a real time creation platform that's used for all types of air and VR projects. Here's one rough sketch that became the fifth stop, which features the quadrangle dormitories which includes 10 residential colleges named after enslavers. So students created a portal with AR and 360 images. And then on the right here, we just have a few photos to demonstrate our very extreme whiteboarding process to flush out abstract ideas. Here, student Melchio catch is creating a three model of a spreading caliper and Maya, which is a 3D modeling software from a sketch that was found in pendants archives. We also consulted with the developers at dream syndicate, who initially served as technical advisors to the students. For example, one developer spent a full day on the apps architecture with students and you can see here. How excited they were about that experience and how much they learned just from the joy on their on their faces. Dream syndicate later helped finish the project in certain insuring high quality design and production of the our app. Here we are walking the locations together on the left and on the right you can see Catherine one of the student designers. Walking dream syndicate through the apps user interface and articulating our vision for that. This example shows the progression of the third stop, which focuses on pens medical school and its history as a center of scientific racism. Student developers started with the research findings and sketch an experience that aim to encircle the user with a variety of artifacts related to Samuel Morton, who is considered to be a father of scientific racism. We also converted the images of archival documents 3D modeled instruments and more into unity and experimented with interactions such as magnifying and isolating objects, dream syndicate fine tuned the design and added this geometric background, and you can see the final version on the right. Both the research and technical sides continue to work on the project into the fall and well beyond. They felt truly committed to bringing this project to fruition, and Katie will now elaborate on that conscious on the collaboration for that. As you can see this app involved many different types of people faculty students librarians and XR professionals. While the value of the first teams is a common talking point in literature on higher education and libraries. I want to focus on how this group cultivated consensus descent and deferral over the course of the project. The student reality development was new to all of us and we were grateful to have the expertise of dream syndicate who had done this before. At the same time, the stories we were telling and the student led nature of the project was new to them. We were all learning together. Because of this, the project was infused with an ethos and practice of revision. The development took multiple versions and revision in the initial design process after the walking tour after the beta version and in final testing. The process though also cultivated buy in with those on the team with community members and researchers beyond our core team, and with university administrators. I want to share three stories about how our collaboration work. The first story is about the basics of working together, drawing on expertise and pitching in. The sixth stop generations tells the story of Brianna Morris family and the history of unequal access to education at Penn. We decided to 3D scan a quilt that had been in breeze family for generations, in order to create the stop experience, which stands at a key bridge and site of fundraising for the university. Megan and I had used small 3D scanners in the past, but they weren't going to work for this project. Luckily, our colleagues at the Penn Fisher Fine Arts Library had several high end scanners that could be used for large objects, and a fellow Elegar side to train and support us. After talking with Matt at Dream Syndicate, we knew we wanted to scan the quilt hanging, which would make it's rendering easier and more realistic. I bought clothes pins. Ben Jessica brought the heirloom quilt that Brianna entrusted her with. We worked with the Fisher Fine Arts Library staff to figure out how to hang the quilt safely in their materials lab, which ended up being a bigger feat than any of us expected. Ellie worked with us to make sure the scanning adequately picked up the shape, texture and color of the quilt and rendered it properly. It took two tries. We shared the files with Dream Syndicate, who then put them in the final scene with Breeze film clips. It was an all hands on deck process that ended with us gaining skills and knowledge in 3D scanning, as well as creating the stop itself. This second story is about changing patterns around expertise and deferring to students. Once we had the content of the app and the user interface established, we realized that we wanted a different color and pattern scheme than we had initially used. We also realized that we would probably have other graphic design needs. And so our first thought was to hire an established professional graphic designer that we had worked with before. He was a white man with an impressive portfolio, and we also knew he was invested in what the app was about. However, as with all decisions, we decided to talk about it as a team. The first time was part of a collective of students working in art and design, and he wondered if it made more sense for us to continue empowering students by hiring one of them to do the design work. We agreed. And we found Jordan Andrews. During our design brief with her, Ben Jessica raised the importance of having a palette and set of patterns that conveyed the gravity of the content, and also engaged a black aesthetic. Jordan brought us this beautiful work that has a rich range of color and a powerful design. The third story I want to talk about is about debate and consensus. The app has a variety of voice over narration designed to make it both accessible and engaging. This raised the question of whose voices should be on the app. During our meetings with the administrators, they suggested that the entire app be voiced by black members on the team. It turned out to be a complicated question. On the one hand, we understood the power of having black voices tell these stories. However, we questioned whether it would seem like the team had more black voices than it actually did. What it meant to have the black members of our team be the people doing all of this labor. And whether it would be a ignoring or downplaying or somehow making it so that this story didn't seem to be a story about white people, which it emphatically was about white people as agents of violence and oppression. The burden of understanding and articulating this history shouldn't fall only to black labor. Our country and our university are predominantly white. We need all people to be involved in this work. And so with that kind of argument, we ultimately opted to include black and white voices in our voice over. As with many questions we encountered, including word choices, imagery and layout, we talked through our decisions with people being willing to voice their descent and people being willing to change their minds. It was an atmosphere where people would say, but what about, and others would listen. Because of the trust the group built, it also meant that when significant things happen, we had two people who left their jobs at 10 and went to work at other places. We also had a number of people who had kind of dramatic personal events in their lives. And then of course there was the ongoing experience of COVID-19. But through all of this, we stayed together and everyone continued on through the project. Another critical intervention that our students made was in making sure that we were engaging with expertise beyond our core group. Sometimes we drew on professional expertise like dream syndicates knowledge of user experience or professors feedback on our research or the media labs really awesome production prowess. However, we also sought the knowledge and experience of people in our local community so that we could design for and with audiences beyond pen. Prior to building the app we shared conversations about user experience and incorporating community input into our building process. These efforts were spearheaded by several members of the summer student team who felt very strongly that we needed to connect with black community members both on and off campus. Located in West Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania shares a complicated relationship with its neighborhood and has played a major role in gentrification and the displacement of black residents. Students organized several focus groups with West Philadelphia community members, many of whom were activists and organizers, as well as my co the university's black cultural center and mother Bethel historic black church and congregation in Philadelphia. Students surfaced critical questions related to repetitive work and access. This led us to consider access broadly to think about who is welcome on campus who feels safe there, and who has access to required smart devices to do the tour and much more. The conversation spread to like many issues that cannot and will not be resolved with the app and revealed how much more work still needs to be done. Students pondered these questions together thoughtfully, they revisited the goals and scope of the project to articulate that the app is not a solution itself, but rather aims to engage new audiences and further the conversation about repetitive work. From those early conversations, we kept an eye on usability and accessibility for accessibility. We made sure to have voiceovers and captions and to plan and map out an accessible tour. However, in terms of usability, we were left with significant problems. How do we deal with the challenges of physical and technological access that had been raised during the focus groups. We only partially succeeded in solving these problems. We implemented solutions that mitigated some of their effects. So for technological barriers, we made sure that there were enough instructions that were simple and often visual. We used visual cues for some of the more novel physical gestures that the app required. And we created detailed instructions that would be online. The question of physical access, we created a tour path that was accessible and also made sure if people couldn't or didn't want to come to campus, they could do the entire tour from their living room. This also really helped when the pandemic arose. However, most of these solutions were insufficient for the considerable problems that the focus groups surfaced. During the pandemic, we have been working on a plan to lend devices to anyone so that the tour would be accessible to people without smartphones, and I think we'll probably return to that in the future. However, to the question of campus climate, we started conversations about who is welcome and who is harassed in our spaces, especially after the movements this summer, those discussions have gained steam. We've been having conversations about campus policing and anti-racist training for staff, faculty, and students. Still, we believe these are inadequate to assure that people trying to take the tour would not be accosted. Our goal is that the app will add fuel to the fire for real change on our campus. In this presentation, we foregrounded the human capital needed for this project. However, we don't want to ignore the institutional infrastructure that it required. The project relied on technology access at the library, in particular through the Media Lab. We made use of their audio and video recording and editing software, their 360 cameras, their recording studio, and their expertise in audio and video editing. The staff there made much of our work actually possible. In the same way, the university archives and library special collections and the staff there made the research possible. However, in addition to these resources that people might associate with library-supported AR, I want to mention two other vital pieces of infrastructure. Meeting and workspaces, including Slack and Zoom accounts, and a system for payroll. Having a variety of spaces for students to work with tech access to record, to whiteboard, to meet with partners and constituents really empowered them and allowed us to work collaboratively. The Provost Office also put a lot of money into the Penn and Slavery AR app. Our contract with Dream Syndicate was tens of thousands of dollars, and we had students, staff, and postdoc labor for two years. We were able to invite community catered events and to pay participants in our focus groups. We met with high level administrators regularly, and they were so supportive. They listened to the students and also contributed their perspectives and expertise to the conversation. When we shared the tour route with them, which tells about the wrongs of the university, its trustees and teachers in the flagship spaces of our campus. They simply said yes and allowed us to go forward. When we invited community members to be part of the conversation, they supported that decision. In turn, the project has changed our campus. I'll mention just three outcomes of the Penn and Slavery project. We hope to continue to see and push for this kind of work. The faculty working group on slavery at the University of Pennsylvania was established in response to the work of students in this area in order to make sure that there was ongoing institutional attention. Penn Medicine and the After Lives of Slavery project developed in response to student research on race science, the medical school, and the museum's skull collection. In addition to continuing to document these histories, the faculty and fellows from the School of Arts and Sciences and the Med School are also working on repairing and reconciling the consequences of these histories in contemporary medical practice. And finally, in July, the university announced its plans to remove the George Whitfield Statue from the Quad based on research that was done by our students. While the intervention in this landscape is only the first step, it's still significant. So we want to end by clearly giving credit to all the people who have been part of this project. And if y'all want to get in touch with us, you should feel free to contact me, Katie Rawson, or Megan Moody, or anyone on the team. And if you want to visit and learn more about the project, our web address is pennenslaveryproject.org. Thank you.