Congratulations to our own Andrew Bell and Scott Pennington for their featured “Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: Separating Technology Hype from Educational Usefulness” presentation at this year’s New Media Consortium (NMC) annual conference, held in Rochester, NY. Their presentation focused on whether virtual reality (VR) is, or will be, educationally useful. They identified classroom use cases as well as addressed the limitations of the current VR technologies. Their central conclusion was that, as a medium, VR has the potential to be an effective educational tool but only if VR content is engaging, immersive, and interactive.
Back from the conference, Scott and Andrew are excited about creating a virtual reality focus group here on campus. Already, a number of faculty have integrated Google Cardboard into classroom projects and we are excited to have purchased both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive for faculty and student projects. If interested in joining the virtual reality focus group or if you’d like to use VR tools in the classroom, email Andrew at abell4@richmond.edu.
