603 Lessons from a Year of Cost-Effective Immersive Strategies in Higher Ed
12:45 PM - 1:45 PM Wednesday, June 26
Virtual Reality
Gold
Virtual reality offers instructors a high-impact tool for teaching and learning by engaging learners in a realistic 360-degree environment. While the instructional benefits are extraordinary, there have been two major challenges facing most collegiate classrooms; technology cost and instructional relevance. During this session, attendees will explore innovative VR assignments, utilized over the course of a year, and their evolution in online and in-person courses. Moreover, attendees will discover how to create effective and engaging VR assignments on a public institution budget.
This session will explore a faculty member and instructional designer's process to continuously and successfully incorporate VR in online courses and face-to-face labs at a public institution. You will learn how to get started collecting resources; utilizing free and open source technologies, and low-cost VR tools. You will be presented with common missteps and solutions when re-imagining budget-friendly and interactive immersive assignments for various subject matters. At the end of the session, you will have effectual guidelines for designing interactive 360-degree videos, as well as a proven method to integrate these immersive experiences in learning activities.
In this session, you will learn:
- Which VR experiences are most likely to create sticky learning
- The potential of interactive 360-degree videos and Google Cardboard for effective instruction
- How to locate and curate affordable VR tools and software
- Which tools and software you can use to design interactive 360-degree videos
Audience:
Designers, developers, managers
Technology discussed in this session:
Ricoh Theta, Samsung Gear, SeekBeak, OculusGo, Google Cardboard, Smartphone, Cenario VR
Maikel Right
Associate Director of Instructional Learning Technologies
FIU Online
Maikel Right is the associate director of instructional learning technology with FIU Online. With degrees from the UF and FIU in the fields of cultural anthropology, healthcare, and business; his main research interests and publications are in cardiovascular molecular biology, aging, social media, anthropology, and online pedagogy. Maikel is also a faculty fellow at FIU's Honors College where he teaches online and in-person upper division courses, the CDO for a digital consulting company based in Miami, and serves on the board of VirtueCo, which provides art programs and resources for underserved youth in South Florida, the Caribbean, and throughout Latin America.
Rodolfo Rego
Senior Instructor
Florida International University
Rodolfo Rego is a senior instructor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University, with an emphasis on STEM online course development and teaching. He is a geologist and an environmental scientist who specializes in the geology of South Florida and groundwater issues associated with petroleum contamination. He received his BS in geology in 1997 from FIU and his MS in geology in 2002 from FIU. He is also a member of the eLearning Guild and the faculty advisor to the Geology Club.