Project Details

Client

Nathan Williams, Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, College of Natural Resources

Team

Caitlin McKeown, Lead Instructional Designer (Project Lead)

Mike Cuales, Director of Digital Media Innovation

Arthur Earnest, Instructional Media Producer

Grant Eaton, Multimedia Designer

Ben Huckaby, Lead Interaction Developer/Designer

Dan Spencer, Research Scholar

Chris Willis, Associate Director, Research and Analysis

Technologies

Insta360 camera

PICO NEO-3 VR headsets

Wonda VR

Timeline

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

PRT 152: Exploring and Creating Inclusive Virtual Recreation Experiences and Environments

PRT 152: Introduction to Parks, Recreation, Tourism, and Event Management provides students with foundational knowledge of the role of recreation and leisure in our society through exploration of human views and practices of recreation and leisure behavior. Assistant Teaching Professor Nathan Williams, a longtime advocate of inclusive outdoor recreation, wanted to use Virtual Reality (VR) as a means through which his students could better understand their environments and the sociocultural factors impacting the experience of outdoor recreation for everyone. Williams wanted his students to engage in experiential learning through co-creation of their own VR recreation environments using technology supported by DELTA and the libraries. The students would then publish their work in an interactive VR map of North Carolina recreation spots, which is open to the public. In order to facilitate this experience, Williams turned to DELTA by applying for an Exploratory Grant with the goal of scaling this project for current and future student success.

Instructional Challenges

Helping a large number of students with no prior experience using VR to acquire needed skills to keep up with the pace of the projects
Creating an open-source and user-friendly platform for posting and browsing student-created experiences.
Encouraging students to see VR experiences as a form of recreation.
Encouraging students to explore recreation activities throughout North Carolina.

Highlights/Solutions

Partnering with the VR Studio in the D.H. Hill Jr. Library, Williams and members of the DELTA team hosted an open VR workshop mid-semester, helping with hardware and software questions that would inform the next iteration of the course.
By offering multiple modes of interacting with VR content (web, headset, the Visualization Lab), students were able to engage with the experience and with each other in a meaningful way.
The DELTA team continues to refine the process for using VR technology in the classroom and strategize the scalability of the project for other courses at NC State.