Admission requirements
This course is an Honours Class and therefore in principle only available to students of the Honours College. There are a few places available for regular students. The course is aimed at third-year Honours College students. Because of the nature of this course the goal is to have at least half of the participants with some coding experience.
Description
Over the past few years, developments in Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have skyrocketed. Anyone who has tried a recent VR headset can imagine the enormous potential VR has for gaming and cinema.
VR is also very promising for the field of education. By wearing a headset, students could for example:
explore archeological sites;
analyze atoms and molecules in 3D; or
see 360 footage of political protests.
In this course, you will study and experience state-of-the-art Virtual Reality content, analyze the possibilities of VR for education, and learn basic skills for VR development. You will work together with students from various disciplines and together create a Virtual Reality prototype that could actually be used in educational practice.
Course objectives
In this experimental course students will:
experience state-of-the-art VR technology and study its current limitations and near-future developments;
identify how Virtual Reality can help to understand and solve complex problems;
analyze the impact VR can have on the field of education
obtain skills to create interactive VR content using Unity3D and 360˚ film technology;
create a VR prototype that could potentially be used in educational practice.
Timetable
Wednesday evenings from 19:00 – 21:30
Dates: October 11, 18, 25; November 1, 8, 15, 22, 29; December 6, 13, 20
Location
HUBspot
Langegracht 70 Leiden
Programme
This course will consist of lectures, workshops, guest lectures, project presentations and a final symposium.
11-10 – Introduction course + History, state-of-the-art & future of VR
18-10 – Virtual Reality as medium + Augmented Reality
25-10 – Why Virtual Reality as tool for learning?
1-11 – Guest lecture
8-11 – Workshop: making a virtual tour
15-11 – Workshop: Unity3D, CoSpaces and other tools
22-11 – Spatial knowledge representation
29-11 – Project kick-off
6-12 – Project work
13-12 – Project work
20-12 – Project presentations
Course Load
This course is worth 5 EC, which means the total course load equals 140 hours.
Lectures and workshops: 10 sessions of 3 hours = 30 hours
Group counseling = 5 hours
Literature reading & practical work: 3 hours per session = 30 hours
Final assignment: 60 hours
Final essay: 15 hours
Assessment method
Final assignment (Virtual Reality prototype): 70%
Essay: 30%
Students must pass all assessments to complete the course.
Blackboard and uSis
Blackboard will not be used in this course.
Please note: students are not required to register through uSis for the Honours Classes. Your registration will be done centrally.
Reading list
The reading material will be announced during class.
Registration
Enrolling in this course is possible from August 21st until September 6th 23:59 through the Honours Academy, via this link