Get immersed in the Soil Sciences: the first community of avatars in the EGU Assembly 2015!
Virtual reality and immersive worlds refer to artificial computer-generated environments, with which users act and interact as in a known environment by the use of figurative virtual individuals (avatars). Virtual environments will be the technology of the early twenty-first century that will most dramatically change the way we live, particularly in the areas of training and education, product development and entertainment (Schmorrow, 2009). The usefulness of immersive worlds has been proved in different fields. They reduce geographic and social barriers between different stakeholders and create virtual social spaces which can positively impact learning and discussion outcomes (Lorenzo et al. 2012).

We propose a PICO session in a virtual building to celebrate the International Year of Soil with an interactive meeting to promote the importance of soil functions and its conservation. In a virtual room, the avatars of different senior researchers will meet young scientist avatars to talk about: 1) what remains to be done in Soil Sciences; 2) which are their main current limitations and difficulties and 3) which are the future hot research lines. The interactive participation does not require physically attend to the EGU Assembly 2015.

REFERENCES:
Lorenzo C.M., Sicilia, M.A., Sánchez S. 2012. Studying the effectiveness of multi-user immersive environments for collaborative evaluation tasks. Computers & Education 59 (2012) 1361–1376
Schmorrow D.D. 2009. “Why virtual?” Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science 10(3): 279-282.

Get immersed in the Soil Sciences: the first community of avatars in the EGU Assembly 2015!
Why virtual? Because geographic and social barriers are removed. Because people feel different with their avatars. In virtual social spaces, you feel comfortable which positively impact outcomes. Because it is simply fun.

Imagine attending an EGU meeting in a virtual building with incredible rooms where a group of avatars, senior scientists, from different places around the world are going to talk you about what remains to be done in Soil Sciences. In fact, you should choose your avatar to participate in the PICO session that we propose, thought to make questions and to discuss on the future hot research lines. Only your laptop is needed to attend. This is the International Year of Soil so come to its immersive world.