One of the most common reactions that I hear after giving someone their first VR experience is “Oh my God! This is going to change everything. Imagine how this will change education!” David Whelan & Mike Armstrong are doing just that with Lecture VR, which is a social multi-player edutainment platform that they’re building starting from the Riftmax Theater social VR technology stack. Their goal is to recreate the educational system that was portrayed in the sci-fi novel Ready Player One.
David is probably most well-known for his Virtual Reality Reviewer website, but after watching and reviewing hundreds of VR apps he’s starting to create his own experiences with Immersive Education company.
One of first experiences that they are creating is The Apollo 11 VR experience that was successfully funded through Kickstarter.
David and Mike talk about their vision for creating both live lectures in VR as well as pre-recorded lectures that may have a live interactive Q&A session afterward. David says that they completion rate for the online open courseware classes are actually pretty low, and they’re hoping that recording the more of the body language of the lecturer will make it more immersive and engaging.
They’re also hoping to create a much more social learning experience. Whereas a lot of open courseware classes have online chat forums, they’d like to have ongoing classes where the students have a chance to interact with each other in real-time.
To me the educational opportunities with VR is one of the most exciting potentials for what VR has to offer, and the team at Immersive Education are certainly on the leading edge of creating a platform for social learning experiences. It’ll be exciting to see how their efforts will evolve, especially when I see reactions to their Apollo 11 experience like this one from YouTuber “Hoopermation”
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Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
