A Proposed VR Platform for Supporting Blended Learning Post COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in teaching practice towards blended learning for many higher education institutions. This led to the rapid adoption of certain digital technologies within existing teaching structures as a means to meet student access needs. This paper is an attempt to summarise...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Simon Colreavy-Donelly, Alan Ryan, Stuart O’Connor, Fabio Caraffini, Stefan Kuhn, Salim Hasshu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-06-01
Series:Education Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/12/7/435
Description
Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in teaching practice towards blended learning for many higher education institutions. This led to the rapid adoption of certain digital technologies within existing teaching structures as a means to meet student access needs. This paper is an attempt to summarise and extend pre-COVID-19 pedagogical research to leverage digital immersive technologies for blended teaching in the post-pandemic era. This paper forms both a review of these methodologies and a case study of the <i>I-Ulysses Virtual Learning Environment</i> as an example of a platform that leverages such immersive digital technologies and employs instrumental use of VR. To further clarify, the purpose of the paper is to describe and propose a distance learning solution with immersive VR qualities; this is what the <i>I-Ulysses</i> environment represents, as the main obstacle to learners of site-specific information during the pandemic has been lack of on-site accessibility. Furthermore, this is of key importance, because Joyce’s novel takes place in historical Dublin, where access to the physical location of the story is indispensable to a reader.
ISSN:2227-7102