GLASGOW-based digital realities specialists Sublime are joining forces with Scottish academics to deliver virtual reality (VR) teaching in schools.
University of Glasgow academics, from its Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience in the College of Arts, were awarded £1 million from Innovate UK to build Project Mobius – a higher education VR platform – in collaboration with Sublime.
The platform will allow students studying topics such as physics, chemistry, geology, anatomy, philosophy and history to learn through VR teaching.
Martin McDonnell, CEO and co-founder of Sublime, said: “Our aim as a business is to transform the worlds of learning, work, and more using new digital realities technologies, and Project Mobius aligns perfectly with that.
“Not only is it our second Innovate UK funded project to commence this year, but it will present a unique challenge to us as creators of software for broad audiences.
“We want to better connect those audiences to their projects, subjects, and the data they both use and generate.
Dr Neil McDonnell, Lord Kelvin Adam Smith research fellow in virtual reality and augmented reality (philosophy), added: “This is a very exciting project which will help us gain a deeper understanding of how people learn and retain information.
“This technology will allow students to travel inside a human body or take a visit to an important geological area from their lecture.”
A total of 10 VR teaching resources were picked to go forward to the pilot after being championed by lecturers teaching in these subject areas.
The resources will now be developed and tested by the lecturers and students.
The three-year university pilot will create teaching apps or lectures which will be housed on a bespoke higher education VR platform.
Initially, the university will build two VR labs with capacity for 15 students each at a time.
Partner institutions will benefit from these apps, and the platform, within two years.
The aim is to translate the resources into other languages and have students around the world benefit from the project.
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