Wearing a VR headset is often seen as a rather individual experience. And indeed, the immersiveness of the experience tends to seclude you from your environment and the people surrounding you. However, there are also different, exciting forms of collaboration in Virtual Reality. Some of these can be very interesting for collaborative learning, or for solving complex problems together. In this article we’ll discuss a few interesting projects, some of which are focused on local collaboration.
Research
SURF trendrapport 2016
Tonight SURF will officially release their ‘Trendrapport 2016’ at the preconference of the Onderwijsdagen. Robin was honored to be the author of the chapter on Virtual Reality, together with Lieke Rensink and Jan-Paul van Staalduinen. You can download the Dutch Trendrapport here, the English version will follow in the next few weeks.
Tomorrow, on the 8th of November, Robin will give a lecture on VR & education at the same Onderwijsdagen. On both days, the DinoZapp team will be present to show the Virtual Reality game they made in collaboration with Naturalis.
Virtual Reality project with Naturalis: DinoZapp
As part of the Virtual Reality for Science & Education course, the student team consisting of Gosse Mol, Roos Hoefnagel and Han Lie collaborated with Naturalis and created DinoZapp. This video shows a preview of the first prototype:
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Towards a theoretical framework for Virtual Reality in Education
For my current research I broadly explore the potential of Virtual Reality for education. As a part of this I try to form some sort of theoretical framework to describe the unique characteristics of VR as a medium and how it can be used to explain complex concepts and teach different skills.
With some googling you can find quite a few articles (both academic, popular and in-between) that describe the various ways VR could be used in education. There are even a few listicles out there, to use the parlance of our times. Now, who can resist the simplicity of a 5 point overview of this new medium and its role in learning?
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The dangers of techno-pessimism in education
I do research on the potential of Virtual Reality for education. Now, people generally find VR very exciting and because of this I get a lot of enthusiastic reactions. People can imagine all sorts of useful applications for education. Students could learn about our solar system while experiencing a space flight, or walk through ancient Rome and learn about its history.
Of course, I also receive a lot of reactions that are more critical of VR as a learning tool. We are at a point in time where there’s hardly any decisive research about learning performances in Virtual Reality. We don’t even know yet whether people will buy VR headsets. Shouldn’t we wait for these kinds of things before we invest in hardware and educational VR content? VR has been a hype before, can the technology deliver the promises that are being made?
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Virtual Reality for Science & Education 2016 – a Review
On the 10th of March 2016 we organized the Virtual Reality for Science & Education symposium at the Scheltema Complex in Leiden. I think we can safely state the event was a great success!
Over 125 people attended the event, causing a small shortage of chairs at the busiest time of the symposium. I have seen many familiar faces, but also met a lot of interesting new people. The list of attendees included researchers, professors, high school teachers, entrepreneurs, Virtual Reality developers, policy makers and artists. I think this mix of people led to very interesting discussions, thank you all very much for your input!
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Why are people enthusiastic about VR in Education?
During the past year I have spoken with a lot of people about the use of Virtual Reality for learning, which is the topic of my research. Surprisingly many people are really excited about this. But why is this? Why are people enthusiastic about VR in education?
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Virtual Reality for Science & Education
In May 2015 the Gratama Stichting and Leids Universiteitsfonds announced that my research project into the possibilities of Virtual Reality for the field of education will receive the Gratama research grant. Prof. dr. Jaap van den Herik helped me with the application procedure, the research will be part of my PhD work supervised by prof. dr. Bas Haring.
The research project includes an elective course where 30 students will explore the potential of Virtual Reality for science and education by creating experimental VR prototypes. More details about the course in the e-Studiegids.
My research project was mentioned in the Leiden University newsletter and Mare.
Art of Neuroscience talk – Virtual Reality visualization of live EEG data
On March 24th 2015 I gave a talk at the Art of Neuroscience symposium in the beautiful Eye in Amsterdam. More information about this yearly event can be found here.
In my talk I presented the Virtual Reality visualization of live EEG data I created with my team mates Eva Delincakova and Bert Spaan at the Hack the Brain hackathon in May 2014. I discussed the potential of Virtual Reality for immersive data visualization and how this could be used in the field of education.
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Embodied Vision Workshop: Augmented and Virtual Reality with Unity3D
On the 19th of June 2014 at 10.00, I’ll teach a workshop for the Embodied Vision course of the Media Technology MSc. program. Below you can find a short description of the workshop and the assignment. After the workshop I’ll post a summary of what we’ve discussed.
Embodied Vision Workshop: Augmented and Virtual Reality with Unity3D
In this workshop we will go through the basics of working with Unity3D, discuss interesting projects made with the software and experiment with creating your own Augmented or Virtual Reality project. I will explain about the Vuforia library which can be used to create mobile AR apps and get you started to develop for Oculus Rift. For the workshop you will need Unity Pro which can be downloaded from unity3d.com. Please install the software beforehand. You can make use of the 30-day trial version.
Assignment
Groups: 1-3 people
During the lectures you have learned about many different special and visual effects used in film and the different goals (such as: distraction, shock, spectacle, narrative, integration, immersion) that can be reached by applying these effects. For this assignment you are challenged to make use of the visual effects offered by Augmented and Virtual Reality to support one (or more) of these goals you find most interesting.
Since learning Unity3D is an essential part of this workshop, you should make use of this software for your project. Exceptions can be made however, if you can give good reasons for this.