A California university and a Florida senior community are teaming up to see whether virtual reality can help the emotional well-being of older people.
VR in universities a welcome addition, but not yet plug-and-play
Danny Milisavljevic, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, has been using VR headsets to immerse his students in the study of supernovas. (Purdue University)
Share May 26, 2021 | EDSCOOP
The coronavirus pandemic prevented students, professors and administrators from conducting in-person classes and meetings, enhancing the popularity of virtual and augmented reality-based tools on and off campus over the past year.
Professors have used headsets for immersive lessons in nearly every discipline and to train faculty to recognize their unconscious bias when dealing with students from different backgrounds. But despite a growing community of advocates and use cases, professors told EdScoop they believe the technology’s unlikely to be more than a complementary teaching tool for the foreseeable future.
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The program comes from MyndVR, which aims to improve quality of life for older adults. MyndVR has collaborated with Stanford University s Virtual Human Interaction Lab to study VR s effects on people for two decades. Stanford selected Maple Knoll Village as one of the retirement communities to participate in this study.
Vice President of Marketing and Development for Maple Knoll Megan Ulrich knows VR is improving lives. Where we really see this having a huge benefit is also in our assisted living and in skilled nursing, she says. So those individuals have been on restrictions because of COVID over the past year and a half so they have not gotten a chance to go out.