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| Bryan Williams |
During an open house for RIT’s CollaboRITorium, professors expressed
their interest in what has been called an “immersive learning environment.”
The CollaboRITorium, billed as “RIT’s mixed reality collaboration
space for interdisciplinary creativity,” operates under Wallace Library and
is available to students of any discipline.
While still a work in progress, several classes are already using this space,
such as Human Anatomy, Tangible Computing, and Frontiers of Science. The
center’s goal is to create a “trans-institute facility where collaborators from
different disciplines can develop and display multidisciplinary projects” to
“help develop a new culture of collaboration at RIT and elsewhere.”
Dr. Jon Schull, professor of a class called Innovation and Invention, described
his involvement with the CollaboRITorium with particular emphasis on
the technology: “14 months ago, I got involved with the Dean of the College
of Science [Ian Gatley] to help the science museum and planetarium
replace their carousel projectors with digital projectors. I got very excited
about that project because I realized that the planetarium was to become
the world’s largest immersive computer,” Schull said.
This marked the beginning of RIT’s interest in this technology. With regard
to cost and how the project has changed, Schull commented, “Our
immersion technology systems...can be put together for less than $10,000,
which is about a 10th as costly as commercial tele-presence systems and
is arguably more versatile, though currently less polished-looking.”
This technology has been used in several RIT classrooms. Dr. Richard
Doolittle, Head of the Department of Biological Sciences and Professor of
Human Anatomy (which uses the technology) stated, “It’s been a terrific
experience for me and my class of human anatomy students. I have no
doubt in my mind that such an approach helps to improve student comprehension
of material. In my opinion, any discipline that relies on the
need to display images, video clips or animations from a variety of perspectives
could benefit from such an approach. In teaching about human
anatomy, this technology has helped improve the learning environment
for students in dramatic fashion.”
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