Extended Reality in Open Online Education

I see XR technology enhancing education in a way that we aren't able to with online learning currently one of the real advantages and the opportunities that it brings is the ability to apply it into their real lives Learners are able to go places experience different environments interactions that they would not otherwise have access to XR has this incredible potential to revolutionize education giving people the option to experience some place or something that they never would have had the cha

nce to go and be and feel immersed in that space practice safely right to take on thing that you really want and need to learn and be able to practice that in a space without harm so think about high-stakes conversations or practicing a surgery or learning how to fly a plane all of those are incredible XR based learning experiences that we can begin to really develop what is XR or extended reality like catch-all phrase that includes a spectrum of augmented mixed and virtual reality Technologies

and we're exploring many of them so we're starting with which we think is the most accessible interactive 360 degree video These are experiences that can be accessed on a mobile phone on a browser or if you have a virtual reality headset you can experience them in a headset and look around and kind of interact with that question that we often get asked is how do you know this is good for learning we are intentionally doing research designed right from the beginning to understand what works for o

ur Learners what works for our faculty this is a co-creative process like we work together with the faculty to take that content they've been creating the ideas they've had about how they teach material and work to create an experience that's really meaningful this technology does come with its challenges it can be less accessible to Learners particularly experiences that require headsets or cell phone technology and I think that that's one of those things we're really cognizant of both in the c

enter for academic Innovation as well as at the University of Michigan likewise Coursera is committed to reach and impact in a way that makes this such a positive partnership being able to bring our two organizations together to support this initiative really just feels like an incredible opportunity and that's why we put so much care and attention into user testing how people are engaging where this benefits people who is it missing who can't engage with this technology XR is just scratching th

e surface about what the future of learning will be it's important to continue to explore how do we create new learning opportunities new experiences for Learners to access information understand the world in a new way find that perfect intersection the work we're doing at academic Innovation and at the University of Michigan is it's groundbreaking and it's exciting