Q) Use of virtual reality in higher education. What tools are there? What context and how it can be used?
It is important to know what virtual reality is before knowing how it can be used in the higher education. Virtual reality is an extraordinary technology that has been growing rapidly in last few years. It has tremendous potential to change the way we use computer, interact with it and have completely a unique experience. So what is virtual reality? And why is it so exciting?
Virtual reality is made up of two words, “Virtual” and “reality”. It means near-reality experience. It is a type of reality emulation that makes us believe that what we see is actually real even though it is not. We perceive this world through our five senses like …show more content…
With virtual reality there are endless possibilities. Teachers and students alike can watch a beating heart pumping blood around the body or explore the volcanic surface or go to Jupiter’s moon to watch planet’s great red spot. In architecture, students can create virtual structures and manipulate their designs real time. This level of interaction and immersive experience which was only seen as science fiction few years ago is now a reality. There were many trials conducted on students and it was an overwhelming success. The student described the experience as exhilarating and the experiment was an astounding success. Time and again it has been proven by the scientists that audio-video learning across all the age groups were able to memorize what they have experienced compared to normal lectures. Brain is tuned to retain more information this way because more parts of brain are activated. Students learn best visually than hearing or any other way. Another major change that can happen due to virtual reality is may be in the future, there won’t be any need for physical class rooms. Students can put on their virtual headset from anywhere and join the virtual classroom to attend the lecture. So how does this help the universities? It means more students can enroll from anywhere in the world. A student living half way across the world can attend the lectures in the UCM by …show more content…
The basic virtual reality experience needs a smartphone running on Android or IOS with internet connection and virtual reality headset. The smartphone is inserted into the virtual reality headset and the special software’s are used to take advantage of the virtual reality experience. K-12 schools are using Google cardboard which is a basic virtual headset designed by Google. There are many virtual reality applications available on Google play store for free download. Using these, they can start taking advantage of virtual reality right away. The price of headset can start from 7$ to 150$ or may be more depending on the features it provides. Let’s say university has 5 sections for a program and each section has 40 students. So there are a total of 200 students studying one semester for a certain program. The investment university might have to make is around 10 to 12$ for a decent virtual reality set and they can ask students to use their smartphones inside these virtual reality headsets and install the software application developed by the university or they can use the already existing ones on the Google play store. AltspaceVR and LectureVR are two VR platforms available that give immersive VR education experience. Educators are also using program called OpenSim.They make new possibilities available for teachers and students alike. This technology allows
It is important to know what virtual reality is before knowing how it can be used in the higher education. Virtual reality is an extraordinary technology that has been growing rapidly in last few years. It has tremendous potential to change the way we use computer, interact with it and have completely a unique experience. So what is virtual reality? And why is it so exciting?
Virtual reality is made up of two words, “Virtual” and “reality”. It means near-reality experience. It is a type of reality emulation that makes us believe that what we see is actually real even though it is not. We perceive this world through our five senses like …show more content…
With virtual reality there are endless possibilities. Teachers and students alike can watch a beating heart pumping blood around the body or explore the volcanic surface or go to Jupiter’s moon to watch planet’s great red spot. In architecture, students can create virtual structures and manipulate their designs real time. This level of interaction and immersive experience which was only seen as science fiction few years ago is now a reality. There were many trials conducted on students and it was an overwhelming success. The student described the experience as exhilarating and the experiment was an astounding success. Time and again it has been proven by the scientists that audio-video learning across all the age groups were able to memorize what they have experienced compared to normal lectures. Brain is tuned to retain more information this way because more parts of brain are activated. Students learn best visually than hearing or any other way. Another major change that can happen due to virtual reality is may be in the future, there won’t be any need for physical class rooms. Students can put on their virtual headset from anywhere and join the virtual classroom to attend the lecture. So how does this help the universities? It means more students can enroll from anywhere in the world. A student living half way across the world can attend the lectures in the UCM by …show more content…
The basic virtual reality experience needs a smartphone running on Android or IOS with internet connection and virtual reality headset. The smartphone is inserted into the virtual reality headset and the special software’s are used to take advantage of the virtual reality experience. K-12 schools are using Google cardboard which is a basic virtual headset designed by Google. There are many virtual reality applications available on Google play store for free download. Using these, they can start taking advantage of virtual reality right away. The price of headset can start from 7$ to 150$ or may be more depending on the features it provides. Let’s say university has 5 sections for a program and each section has 40 students. So there are a total of 200 students studying one semester for a certain program. The investment university might have to make is around 10 to 12$ for a decent virtual reality set and they can ask students to use their smartphones inside these virtual reality headsets and install the software application developed by the university or they can use the already existing ones on the Google play store. AltspaceVR and LectureVR are two VR platforms available that give immersive VR education experience. Educators are also using program called OpenSim.They make new possibilities available for teachers and students alike. This technology allows