Project explores how virtual reality can help students learn
A multi-disciplinary research team, led by Alexander Klippel, associate professor of geography, and including members from the departments of Geography and Geosciences, the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing, and the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, received a Research Initiation Grant from Penn State's Center for Online Innovation in Learning (COIL). Their proposal is titled "Immersive Virtual Reality (iVR): The Printing Press of the 21st Century and How Learning About Place and Space will Never be the Same."
Here's how it works: You slip on the display goggles and enter a virtual launching chamber, defined by a blue grid. Say you're going to explore the dormant Iceland volcano, Thrihnukagigur,in a project developed by co-PI Peter La Femina, associate professor of geosciences. First, you can walk around a miniature three-dimensional scale model. Next, it expands to a full-size replica of the 700-foot-deep magma chamber—a little more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty. This replica shows the true three-dimensional structure of the volcano, as measured using a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS). Look and move up, down, sideways. Crawl into a side conduit. Thanks to the millimeter precision of TLS, you can explore and experience every surface and perspective, essentially as if you were there. You can even activate tools that measure diameters of the structures and volumes of the spaces you see.
See the full story here: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-explores-virtual-reality-students.html