South Dakota State University (SDSU) has announced it is one of seven “metaversities” selected by VictoryXR, which aims to bring a more immersive way for students to learn through virtual and augmented reality.
Focused on metaverse education, VictoryXR’s partners include Meta, Qualcomm, and T-Mobile. According to VictoryXR, the company pioneered the “metaversity” with Morehouse College in Atlanta. VictoryXR won the Viveport award in 2018 for the best global VR (virtual reality) education experience.
As a metaverse, SDSU said it will roll out a digital twin campus, a virtual replica to attend whether students are on campus or learning remotely. In addition, SDSU will receive 50 Meta Quest 2 (mixed reality) headsets for students this fall.
“The partnership with VictoryXR and Meta will allow SDSU to offer courses in the metaverse and become an institution at the forefront of VR in education. SDSU will have our beautiful campus green, the Coughlin Campanile, and numerous SDSU buildings and labs built to spec in the metaverse. These spaces will be available for multiple courses to have VR classes and labs starting in August,” said Greg Heiberger, an assistant professor and the College of Natural Sciences’ associate dean for academics and student success.
Heiberger added that SDSU faculty members will receive training from VictoryXR and the university’s Center for the Enhancement for Teaching and Learning and Instructional Design Services.
The partnership was funded, in part, by Meta Immersive Learning. Meta is providing the Quest 2 headsets during the proof of concept on each campus as well as funding for the digital twin build-outs. Each campus is built by VictoryXR on the EngageVR platform. To see a digital twin campus demo, visit https://youtu.be/-2hR5jSphsU.
“When the history of metaverse education is written, these are the schools that will be known as the metaverse pioneers,” said Steve Grubbs, VictoryXR CEO. “Remote learning is growing, and these schools have decided to look for something better than a Zoom class.”
Students will enter the metacarpus with other students and their professor using either a virtual reality headset or a PC. There, they will engage in classroom experiences like delving into human anatomy, history field trips through a time machine, or astronomy on a starship.
“SDSU was chosen to be a part of this elite cohort of campuses because of our faculty’s commitment to innovative, engaging, and research-supported educational pedagogy,” Heiberger said. “The work our faculty, staff, and alumni have conducted in the past year testing VR’s potential in the curriculum and our university’s implementation of VR in outreach and recruitment has placed SDSU at the top of the list of partners for VictoryXR and Meta. Because of the metaverse project, SDSU students will have the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning through VR on a digital twin of SDSU’s Brookings campus, led by SDSU’s premier faculty.”
Last year, accountancy firm PwC published research on the advantages of using VR for learning*. The findings showed that 40% of VR learners are more confident in applying what they’ve been taught and 150% more engaged. In addition, VR was found to be 400% faster than classroom-based learning.
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