In the post Dr Sam Nolan, DCAD Assistant Director, discusses a trip to discuss using immersive realities in learning and teaching with colleagues in the US.
During my recent trip to the States to speak at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference, I was lucky to spend a day with Stephan Caspar, Assistant Teaching Professor in Media Creation & Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Having met Stephan early in the year at the Playful Learning Conference we had agreed to meet up so I could learn more about his work and ruminate on possible collaborations between Durham and Carnegie Mellon in the space of Immersive Realities (e.g. Virtual and Augmented Realities).
Since meeting Stephan earlier in the summer, Durham bought a couple of Occulus Quest headsets, which are now available for use in the Education Laboratory and I’d done some initial trials using Google Earth. Google Earth in particular was interesting using voice command you could be instantly transported to where you asked to go. To test it out, I asked for Macha Picchu and found myself instantly standing upon a ridge looking down at a several 1000 metre drop. My brain reacted to this image quickly and I felt momentarily dizzy and a little bit queasy bit this soon subsided.
My own interest spanned from the notion of using virtual reality to teach the laws of Physics, say for example by looking at simple systems and changing the law being modelled might give students new insights into how mathematics and physics interact, which I’m hoping to work up for funding under our new collaborative award grant scheme.
Stephan’s work was also equally fascinating. At CM they use Immersive Realities to teach students about language and Intercultural communication. Some examples include:
- Understanding the use of language in context, by having students walk around streets in Paris on Google Earth, looking at the use of language in the signs and advertisements on the streets.
- Testing our tacit assumptions about people based on the way they look, by using an immersive cave to listen to recordings of student volunteers and assessing how far your initial thoughts on who they are and what they know are from the truth. This work is known as the Kaleidoscope project and more information can be found here https://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/kaleidoscope/
In the afternoon, Stephan and I visited the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) (see https://www.etc.cmu.edu/play/current-projects/ )
Their aim is to provide leadership in education and applied research that combines technology and art, to explore learning, storytelling, innovation and entertainment and to create experiences that educate, entertain and inspire.
This is achieved through project led learning which makes up almost all of their Masters Program. Student groups work with clients (companies, film makers, academics) to develop a solution to a client defined problem over 15-18 weeks. Examples include museum installations, virtual reality systems and mixed realities for example the students developed a system for building atomic models in VR, along with the aforementioned Kaleidoscope project and many more. A lot of their work is for the entertainment industry and many famous actors are on their faculty, plus the corridors are full of iconic movie props.
The University also has a cut down version Ideate (see https://ideate.cmu.edu ) run out of their Library for UGs. This program also carries degree credit and speaks to the core principle that all Carnegie Mellon degree programs embed project based learning.
Since the trip, I’ve began to wonder whether we could operate a similar scheme at Durham, perhaps initially as Maker club to allow student access to facilities to develop hardware and software based solutions to real world problems. If you’re interested in working with me on this or anything related to the use of Augmented or Virtual Realities in your teaching, just let me know.