Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a virtual reality environment to train drones to fly fast around obstacles. Dubbed "Flight Goggles," the software causes drones to "see" virtual obstacles in space that is actually clear of physical objects — giving drones a way to fail during flight training without being involved in repeated, time-consuming accidents.
Many postsecondary professional schools are recognizing that they must develop innovative programs to address the changing environment that surrounds them as well as the new requirements their graduates currently face. Here, CT talks with Dean and Professor of Information Thomas A. Finholt at the University of Michigan School of Information to find out what changes UMSI is anticipating.
This summer, 16 institutions across K-12 and higher education will receive furniture, design, installation and on-site training for a new active learning classroom, thanks to Steelcase Education's fourth annual Active Learning Center Grant. Valued at about $67,000 per classroom, the grant "supports active learning strategies in classrooms where teachers are already striving to implement related practices by installing a learning space with furniture designed to encourage student engagement and success," according to a news announcement.
An active learning space at Dawson College in Canada has taken interactive display tech to the extreme. The classroom walls boast 56 feet of digital workspace where students can collaborate on coursework. The room is outfitted with eight Nureva Walls from Nureva, a Calgary-based maker of visual collaboration and audio conferencing technologies.
A new facility at Florida International University will give students hands-on experience with the creative, administrative and business aspects of virtual reality. Part of the institution's College of Communication, Architecture and the Arts, the new STAR Labs is described as a studio for altered reality, and will house a lab, theater, classrooms and offices.
When MOOCs generated a huge demand for video production at Princeton University, the institution responded with organizational change, an AV upgrade and a new commitment to sharing campus resources.
Oral Roberts University built a Global Learning Center that combines anytime, anywhere access to information, course materials and streaming media with a deep dive into augmented and virtual reality.
Augmented and virtual reality headsets will see a compound annual growth rate of 52.5 percent through 2022 despite a lackluster year in 2017, according to a new forecast from International Data Corp. In 2017 the market saw a decline, largely because of reduced shipments of screenless V.R. viewers, which in turn was a result of vendors ceasing to bundle the viewers with smartphones. Following last year's poor showing, however, I.D.C. predicts strong growth this year, with shipments surging to 12.4 million units on a 48.5 percent C.A.G.R.
A new whitepaper from personalized learning nonprofit KnowledgeWorks explores how wearables, augmented reality and virtual reality could play out in education. Vignettes drill into how educators could use these technologies in and out of the classroom to add "digital depth" to physical reality to increase student engagement, enhance the personalization of learning, help people understand others' experiences and perspectives, generate greater levels of self-awareness and foster critical thinking.
As Washington & Lee University has found, there is no best approach for introducing virtual reality into your classrooms — just stages of faculty commitment.
