Bringing Virtual Reality into the Online Classroom

[valentinesking]

At FIU Online (based in Miami, Florida International University) we are blessed to be able to participate in a variety of professional development opportunities, such as leading conference presentations or attending at conferences. For the past two years, Maikel Alendy (FIU Online's newly appointed Learning Design Innovation Manager) presented with FIU Earth & Environmental Dept. Professor Rodolfo Rego at Realities 360. The annual conference addresses the latest developments in the use of virtual reality (VR) for training and education. Beyond being a great presenter, I'm always learning new things from Maikel; he raises "my bar."

 In their 2019 presentation, "Lessons from a Year of Cost-Effective Immersive Strategies in Higher Ed" they covered the two prominent college classroom challenges: technology costs and instructional relevance. Specifically, they addressed how to create VR assignments using tools like Cenario VR, Seekbeak and GoogleEarth. An example of a solution they demonstrated was a interactive laboratory orientation. Often when students would arrive in labs, they were unsure where materials were located and "wasted" valuable lab time. Additionally another example shared was a tour of FIU's Nature Preserve (link is website, not the example) with great interactions to explore and learn more about its features.

If an image is worth a 1000 words, what is a 360 image worth?

[Unfortunately the embed for SeekBeek is not working here once I publish the article, but it works in Canvas & also WordPress. See an example in one of our articles on our Faculty news source.]

*Blog article written with assistance from Charles Roig (FIU Online)

Keep Learning,

Sky V. King
Senior Instructional Designer, FIU Online
Adjunct- Marketing & Logistics, FIU