Rate My Professor Erica Southgate

Associate Professor Erica Southgate serves as Associate Professor of Emerging Technologies for Education in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. She holds a PhD and a Bachelor of Education (with distinction) from the University of Newcastle. Southgate is a leading researcher in immersive virtual reality (VR) for education, ethical use of emerging technologies, and equity in higher education. She leads the VR School Study, the longest-running investigation into embedding immersive VR in primary and secondary classrooms across various subjects, with teachers as co-researchers. Her work emphasizes student VR content creation, ethical guidelines, and health resources for VR deployment in schools. She authored the first book providing evidence for VR learning in secondary schools and developed serious computer games for literacy—Sentence Hero, Apostrophe Power, and Robo WordQuest—freely available on app stores. Southgate also led the Uni Tune In app for university transition.

Prior to her current role, she was a research academic at the National Centre in HIV Social Research at UNSW and worked in community development at Lake Macquarie City Council. She founded the Teach Outreach volunteer program for pre-service teachers. Recognized for her contributions, Southgate was appointed the 2016 Equity Fellow by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, producing reports on career connections for disadvantaged youth and a roadmap for technologies in career exploration. She won the 2017 ASCILITE Innovation Award for her literacy games. Commissioned by Australian governments, she led the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Schools Report, creating the first AI ethics framework for education and infographics. Key publications include "Virtual reality in curriculum and pedagogy: Evidence from secondary classrooms" (2020), "Widening higher education participation: A global perspective" (2016, with M. Shah and A. Bennett), "Teachers Facilitating Student Virtual Reality Content Creation" (2023), and "Artificial intelligence and machine learning: A practical and ethical guide for teachers" (2021). Southgate has secured numerous grants for VR, AI, and equity projects, influencing policy and practice in educational technology.