2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium
2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium
Collaborative Environment for Education in VR
Collaborative Environment for Education in VR
PROJECT NUMBER: 79 | AUTHOR: Colter Snyder, Computer Science
MENTOR: Sebnem Duzgun, Mining Engineering
ABSTRACT
Technology is an integral part of how we learn in our world today. Especially with the onset of COVID-19, more and more in the realm of education is being shifted online. In the same realm, virtual reality (VR) is used to bring engaging experiences to education that help students to learn in an immersive and hands-on way. This project aims to combine both spheres of learning experiences into one by creating a collaborative education experience in VR.
PRESENTATION
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
My name is Colter Snyder and I am a second-year student in Computer Science. Within Computer Science, my interests include computer graphics, video games, and high performance computing. I have assisted on research projects in the past, however, this is my first ever published work.
Nice presentation, Colter! Your research on using VR for educational experiences is really cool. This could be an awesome way for more effective safety training as well, since it would allow for people to “be in a scenario” without putting their actual health at risk.
Hey Kimberly, thanks so much! It definitely is a much safer and efficient way to put students right in the situation and I hope it will be used in more applications in the future.
I think this would have been awesome to have over the last year! I’ve really missed the feeling of working with others. In the long term, would this application be primarily for the oculus, or would it be compatible with iPhone VR and other setups as well?
Hey Hope! I’ve definitely gotten that feeling over this past year as well and honestly something like this in my classes could have definitely helped. For right now this is only designed for Oculus systems, however it wouldn’t likely be too much trouble to port it over to other setups in the future.
Hi Colter! This is a very interesting topic that I know has been on every student’s mind since last March. We all miss working together, studying together, and interacting with one another while we are at school, so I think that researching this subject was a great idea!
If schools end up going back to face-to-face classes soon, how would you see this interface being used (i.e. was it created and researched primarily for COVID circumstances, or so students can generally interact and do work together through technology more?)? Also, how would students without a VR set participate in this interface (playing off of Hope’s question)? Great job!
Hey Allison! I primarily see this interface being used in situations that are hard for the students to experience physically, such as the Edgar Mine in this instance. Other examples could be nuclear reactors for nuclear engineering students or being able to collaborate on physics concepts that would be difficult to explain otherwise. To answer your other question, the way we have it now is meant for VR labs within mines, however this could likely be extended in the future so students may use mobile VR solutions to interact with the simulation and not need an expensive VR setup.
Great presentation Colter! I had one question:
– What would you say was the most difficult part of implementing this system?
Hey Lodewijk! Thanks so much! I would say the hardest part about implementing this system was the testing and bug fixing more than anything else. It was honestly kind of difficult to get the headsets working at times and sometimes there would be just weird things that would happen when trying to interface the headsets with Unity.