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The Game-Based Education and Advanced Research Studies (GEARS) Lab is a multidisciplinary group made up of students and faculty that conducts research focusing on using games and simulation to study areas related to personality, motivation, training, education, performance and teamwork.

In the GEARS Lab, games are used as a platform to study and understand human behavior. Faculty, graduate students and undergraduates work together in the lab to develop research ideas and to study these ideas using experimental methods. GEARS Lab work is grounded in psychological and human factors disciplines.

Current projects include a teamwork study using a starship bridge simulator and a study exploring empathy using different communication technologies to examine how they impact connectedness across individuals.

Past projects conducted in the lab include a Tank ID study using "Arma 3," a study of human relatedness utilizing "Portal 2" and a team interaction study utilizing the puzzle game "Don’t Stop Talking and Nobody Explodes." In addition, lab members have developed a psychometrically validated tool to measure “enjoyment.”

Studies are also conducted to investigate how people perceive virtual reality, react to experiences in virtual reality, interact with others and virtual objects in virtual reality and compare how performance in virtual reality differs from the same behavior in the real world.

Equipment

• Four high-end computer workstations for running virtual reality applications
• Four computer workstations
• Four HTC Vive VR systems
• Four Oculus VR systems
• Two Samsung Gear VR headsets
• One LulzBot TAZ 3D printer