The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred technology adoption in an incredible way. Almost every area of work and life today is connected online with their target audience or consumers. Education is also a booming field with more and more students learning online and institutions trying new ways to teach in blended classrooms. The adoption of technology has now become an inevitable reality. Moving in this direction, Stanford University has launched a class that will be made entirely of virtual reality (VR). This was the first VR class in the university’s history.
Communication professor Jeremy Bailenson take a gamble when he formats the class. He didn’t know if the required software and technology would be ready for him to teach it as a summer course. Bailenson, who taught the subject for 20 years, but good luck. Finally, the software he chose to teach his classes was ready by the end of May. With software called Engage – students and teachers can interact in a virtual environment.
Cyan DeVeaux, a teaching assistant for the class, said VR allows people to imagine the impossible. “The only limitation of this exercise is the imagination of the students,” said the teaching assistant, referring to the setting exercise.
Classes are designed in such a way that each session is limited to 30 minutes to avoid mock learning. Another concern is privacy. Bailenson asked Facebook to allow students to use fake accounts to protect their privacy, and in return he suggests using headphones from Oculus, a subsidiary of Facebook’s parent company Meta.
Bailenson and DeVeaux have taught two classes to date and collected more than 3,000 hours of data. Now, they hope that the data gathered from the course will fuel discoveries about behavioral adaptability to VR and its educational applications.
