Virtual actuality (VR) could also be seen as the way forward for studying, however lecturers are slicing themselves out of this ecosystem in the mean time. This was a elementary drawback when a bunch of researchers from IIT-Kharagpur began engaged on creating a 360-degree VR educator platform.
“The fundamental problem is that teachers are dependent on others to develop immersive content. We wanted to change that,” Kaushal Kumar Bhagat, assistant professor, Center for Advanced Technology Development, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, informed indianexpress.com In a video interview.
Bhagat and a staff of researchers got here up with the concept to develop a no-code 360-degree VR platform for lecturers in the course of the pandemic, after realizing that on-line lessons lacked interplay.
“What’s the guarantee that a student is actually going through the video and understanding the concept,” he questioned, underlining how on-line lessons may be lecture-heavy and generally require a collaborative studying method. Can be repeated with out specializing in creating the environment.
Bhagat is an assistant professor on the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. (Image credit score: Kaushal Kumar Bhagat/LinkedIn)
For Bhagat, VR has the potential to make studying extra interactive and immersive via computer-generated graphics in a three-dimensional setting, a greater technique of fixing complicated ideas than merely studying or listening.
But designing content material for 360-degree experiences requires loads of assets, manpower, excessive configuration workstations in addition to entry to high-end VR headsets that may go into the hundreds. Right from the beginning, Bhagat, who leads the undertaking, which is funded by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and the Commonwealth Educational Media Center for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi, wished to simplify the method.
It took Bhagat and a staff of researchers greater than 18 months to develop an open-source 360-degree VR platform particularly designed for lecturers and educators. The fantastic thing about the platform is that it doesn’t require prior data of coding, thus making it straightforward to create new content material, typically in lower than half-hour.
“Developing immersive VR experiences takes hours but for teaching purposes, 360-degree VR content should be easy to develop,” he mentioned.
Virtual actuality (VR) is a time period used to explain a three-dimensional computer-generated setting. (Image credit score: Anuj Bhatia / Indian Express)
No prerequisite expertise are wanted to develop VR content material. All they should do is shoot images in 360-degrees, observe directions, and create a ready-to-use textual content expertise in VR. Teachers can add audio, create quizzes or herald simplification parts to make the lesson fascinating.
The platform is designed for Android, however it might additionally run on desktop. With the rising penetration of smartphones in distant areas of the nation and the provision of reasonably priced cellular VR headsets, comparable to Google Cardboard, college students can visualize ideas taught in faculties. “The degree of immersiveness varies depending on the VR headset you are using, but then the idea has always been to make VR accessible so that even a student from rural India can experience VR.”
Bhagat not too long ago organized a two-day workshop at Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, wherein college lecturers have been educated to create immersive academic content material utilizing 360 VR Educator platform. Similar workshops have been organized in Cuttack and Malaysia up to now as properly. 360 VR Educator is already supported by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
The subsequent step for Bhagat is to take the 360 VR Educator platform out of India. Since the undertaking is funded by COL, which has 54 member states, the platform can empower lecturers and provides them a brand new approach to bridge the hole between concept and follow utilizing VR.
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
