Extended Reality Initiative (XRi)

Context

XRi was part of NSF-funded research at Kent State focused on immersive educational experiences. The platform used interactive and multi-perspective video experiences to support teacher education and research into classroom observation and learning behavior.

My Role

As a Graduate Student Developer, I helped build full-stack web and mobile experiences that translated research goals into usable product workflows.

My contributions included:

  • building application features for immersive educational experiences
  • supporting secure authentication and multi-role access patterns
  • contributing to video management and viewer experiences
  • helping turn research requirements into working software for real academic use

Technical Challenges

The challenge here was not just media playback. It was building a system that could support:

  • immersive 360-degree educational experiences
  • role-based access for different user types
  • video management and shared access controls
  • usage tracking and analytics that supported research outcomes

This work required moving comfortably between product thinking, implementation detail, and research-driven constraints.

Stack

  • React
  • React Native
  • Node.js
  • Python
  • Babylon.js

Outcomes

  • Contributed to an NSF-funded platform supporting immersive teacher education workflows
  • Helped bridge academic research goals with production-minded application development
  • Strengthened my experience building systems with analytics, interactive media, and structured user roles

What This Proves

XRi shows breadth beyond commercial apps. It demonstrates that I can work on technically interesting products in ambiguous environments, collaborate with interdisciplinary teams, and build software that supports both users and institutional goals.

Learn More

For more details, visit xri.kent.edu.