Spatial Computing Tech Gives Students Real-World Experience in Virtual Environments

Northeastern University Innovates with VR in Academic Settings

Leanne Chukoskie, an associate professor at Northeastern University and director of the school’s ReGame-XR Lab, says that VR provides an environment in which researchers can precisely control and measure variables that are nearly impossible to quantify in the real world.

In her own work, for instance, Chukoskie has used VR applications to analyze social interactions. “I can measure your hand, trunk and head movements, as well as your eye movements, in response to stimuli that are very precisely defined in the space,” Chukoskie says. “We have two people playing a game together, and we can look at how they move with respect to each other and to elements in that game.”

Chukoskie says there is a “lot of power” in the technology, and she notes that researchers are increasingly using VR headsets and applications to support their work in fields other than computing.

RELATED: What’s the difference between virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality?

Eileen McGivney, an assistant professor at Northeastern, has studied VR for education among K–12 students and prison populations, often leaning on commercially available headsets such as the Quest 2. Although the commercial sector has pursued highly scalable applications, including social VR and virtual meetings, McGivney sees more utility in niche use cases, such as virtual field trips or replicating hands-on medical education. Because academic institutions don’t face pressure to generate profits, she says, they are uniquely positioned to both develop and validate these sorts of applications.

“I actually think that the academic sector is in some ways being a lot more innovative,” McGivney says. “We are starting from the position of what it is you’re trying to accomplish, not what is going to make the most money for a company. I see faculty all over Northeastern who are thinking about how something like virtual reality helps address their work. You see much more interesting applications versus on the commercial side, where I think VR really still comes down to a gaming device.”

Even as the technology evolves, McGivney sees VR being used in college classrooms occasionally rather than every day — more akin to an instructor showing a video a couple of times per semester than to using an overhead projector for all lecture slides, she says. Still, she notes, these use cases can open up new worlds for students.

“You can do things that you can’t do in real life,” she says. “That helps students see themselves differently, because it gives them the kind of experiential learning that can be really transformative.”

Sacred Heart University Uses VR Across Campus

At Sacred Heart University, the NeXReality Lab serves as a hub for students and faculty across disciplines to access mixed reality technologies. It’s also the heart of the university’s immersive media and mixed reality (IMMR) degree program.

“Students in the major can use the space to learn about a range of VR, augmented reality and extended reality applications and platforms,” says Shanshan Wang, director of the lab and an assistant professor of IMMR at Sacred Heart. “But we also open up the space to the larger university community. Any faculty who are interested in using these new technologies can integrate them into their own research. We are implementing more courses every year, with topics including artificial intelligence, innovation and entrepreneurship, social media management, and physical computing.”

The NeXReality Lab is home to a wide array of technologies, including VR cameras, VIVE Focus 3 VR headsets, Afinia EinScan Pro 3D scanners, Dell Alienware laptops and iPad Pro tablets. The lab also keeps older headsets — and even Google Cardboard viewers — to help students appreciate the “genealogy” of the technology, Wang says.

Students have used the lab to develop new games and product prototypes. One used a Microsoft HoloLens headset to create a motorcycle helmet that provides the wearer with data on speed, weather and road conditions. Social work students and professors have used lab equipment to create VR footage of a service trip to Guatemala, allowing others who were unable to join the trip to participate in the experience.

“It’s more interactive than regular video, and it provides more opportunity for interaction,” Wang says. “Once you can record a space, the possibilities of how you can use that virtual space are endless. And when students put on the headsets, they really feel like they’re there.”

Southern Methodist University Focuses on the Future of VR Tech

At Southern Methodist University, the Center for VR Learning Innovation provides infrastructure — including more than 100 headsets — to support interdisciplinary research in AR, VR and game-based learning. Candace Walkington, an education professor, uses the technology in her work with K–12 math teachers in Dallas, providing them with immersive experiences in both pedagogy and their content areas.

Walkington’s students use Microsoft HoloLens headsets to learn about geometry in three dimensions, rendering geometric shapes in a virtual space and then collaboratively interacting with and manipulating those shapes. They also use Quest 2 headsets to simulate real-world scenarios, such as stopping a train or responding to a pandemic, that call for applied mathematics.

“It was really when the hand-tracking capabilities came out for these platforms that I felt like it was time,” Walkington says. “Being able to control things with your hands allows you to gain an embodied experience of the mathematics and what it means in a way that just clicking with a mouse or a keyboard does not.”

Although some see VR headsets as an isolating technology, Walkington prefers experiences that give students the chance to work together. “All of the applications that we design at SMU are meant to be collaborative,” she says. “That’s something that really resonates with the teachers. They can experiment together, and it generates conversations.”

LEARN MORE: Universities libraries evolve to support future needs.

SMU created the Center for VR Learning Innovation in 2020 after winning $2.3 million from an XPRIZE competition, and the center specifically aims to advance education, health and human development.

“Our center is focused on leveraging the latest and greatest features and capabilities of commercial extended reality technology,” says Anthony Cuevas, director of the center. “We’re not necessarily developing new technology, but we’re using these technologies in innovative ways.”

Cuevas says the center has collaborated with faculty across departments, including art and world languages, to offer experiences such as virtual field trips. He likens VR to the way computer labs were once used, giving instructors the ability to bring advanced technology to students when a project or learning experience calls for it. Although Cuevas doesn’t necessarily see VR headsets becoming everyday computing devices the way PCs eventually did, he says that educators are nowhere near unlocking the full potential of the technology.

“We’re focused on the future and what features and functionalities these commercial technologies will provide to help students learn more effectively,” Cuevas says. “Over the past few years, we went from being able to manipulate things with controllers to being able to manipulate things in the environment with our hands, which changed things dramatically from a learning perspective. Now, being able to collaborate is changing things. The opportunity is in looking ahead and thinking about what’s coming next.”