UB School of Social Work set to unveil a first-of-its-kind VR app at national conference

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo School of Social is preparing to launch a pioneering virtual reality (VR) app it has developed that will allow students, social work practitioners and other health care professionals to understand how trauma-informed principles can be integrated into an actual physical setting.

“Trauma-Informed Spaces,” a first-of-its-kind VR experience, moves users through 11 interaction points of a virtual human services agency to experience factors in that environment that can affect client experiences and treatment outcomes.

Already in its pilot phase in the School of Social Work’s three-year Doctor of Social Work (DSW) degree program, “Trauma-Informed Spaces” will officially roll out on Oct. 24 with a presentation by School of Social Work faculty and staff members at the annual conference of the Council on Social Work Education.

Agencies, educators and students can access the free download for Android or iPhone. There is also a more advanced, fully immersive version available for the Meta Quest platform that utilizes standalone 3D headsets and controllers.

Trauma-informed care is based on understanding the complexity of trauma’s effect on people. Applying a trauma-informed perspective safeguards against the possibility of inadvertently retriggering past trauma. At its essence, trauma-informed care asks, “What happened to you?” rather than “What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s that risk of retrigging earlier trauma that led to the development of this app, as well as a need to help organizations understand how to structure their environments to reduce this risk,” says Louanne Bakk, PhD, a clinical associate professor and DSW program director. “‘Trauma-Informed Spaces’ enables our DSW students and practitioners to improve their ability to identify and evaluate aspects within a physical space that can retrigger traumatic events.”

The VR experience fits well with the DSW program, which has been fully remote since it began enrolling its first students in 2019.

Combining virtual reality technology with a trauma-informed perspective was among the considerations when the DSW program was being designed.

That’s when Steven Sturman, instructional designer in the School of Social Work, started thinking about how the two might come together.

Sturman’s background in experiential learning and his understanding of the educational capabilities of VR sparked the idea for “Trauma-Informed Spaces.” The Meta Quest platform came first, followed by the smartphone versions, made possible in part by a $50,000 State University of New York Innovative Instruction Technology Grant.

To build the right team, Sturman relied on Bakk; Mickey Sperlich, PhD, associate professor in the School of Social Work; and Samantha Koury, EdD, co-director of the school’s Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care, as content experts. Additionally, Kristin Heffernan, PhD, co-chair and professor at SUNY Brockport’s Department of Social Work, engaged her students as part of the pilot testing for the initiative.

Working with an outside developer, schematics came next, followed by many detailed steps required for turning that design into reality—or more accurately, into virtual reality.

“For this app, we didn’t start with a real space,” Sturman says. “We instead developed 3D images for how an agency would be laid out, thinking about things like the seating area, traffic flow, lighting, noise levels, signage and accessibility, both physical and cultural.”

Students walk through this virtual agency, like they’re in an actual space, and rate the different aspects based on the degree to which they adhere to trauma-informed principles.

“This is cutting edge and we’re the first school of social work in the country to offer something like this,” says Sturman.