When it comes to new innovations and educational technology, virtual reality (VR) is a rather new innovation for vocational education and training. So far just a handful of innovative teachers are experimenting it's use, seeing the potential of VR as the new renaissance. VR has potential to a wide range of students, such as students with special needs. VR will also have a major impact on the collaborative relationships between companies and educational institutions, also at a broader international level. VR has an unlimited capacity of virtual classrooms, the ability to share multiple experiences in 'real life' -kind of simulation. VR facilitates access to school for students living in remote communities, and allows students to choose topics based on interest and specialize in the areas in which they excel. VR in education can replace textbooks with interactive educational experiences. For materials such as math, crafts, and the general ability to communicate, this medium could prove to be much more suitable than printed books or even today's audio-video materials. Many possibilities are yet to be explored, and this is where the project steps in! The objective of this project is to use VR -environments Altspace and GLUE to create international meeting points and places to teach, learn, co-create and share with peers, colleagues, teachers, students, experts, visitors, companies. VR will not only enhance digitalization strategies of the partners, but internationalization and networking as well. The main target group are teachers in vocational education and training, especially math teachers, language/communication teachers, and teachers in electricity, for whom pedagogical models with will be developed and piloted. Another target group are students, who will be taught in motivating, exciting and fun VR -learning environments and -communities. A third target group are VET-teachers in urgent need of solutions for online and blended learning, the need brought upon us all by covid. Partners will present a set of minimum 10 best practices of online and blended learning -solutions. Presentations will be held in scheduled VR-events, and participants are supported by FIRST STEP -tutorials to enter into VR. On top of this, supporting partners and companies are invited to hold expert lectures on recent VR-developments, and partners are invited to share their VR-experiences from other sectors outside the project’s scope - such as automobile, forestry, or social and health care. These examples will provide more examples on the use of VR in teaching and learning. Finally, new energy, new ideas, new company co-operation, new ways of finding solutions, new partner and teacher networks, possibly new trainee places for students, more in-house internationalisation, and what else more will be the untangible results of this project. All of it will be presented via a website and social media channels, as well as in MURROS-event by Keuda, and in EfVET -conference, as well as via several professional networks - so please do follow us and get inspired!
The partners aimed at gathering experiences of using VR in teaching and learning, and foresaw to create a pedagogical model. Another objective was to create dedicated VR-learning spaces in the Altspace -environment, and make tutorials and events for interested teachers. Overall, the objective was to facilitate mainstreaming the use of VR in vocational education and training. The partners decided to focus on the beginner-level in using of VR. The original objective of creating a pedagogical model had to be changed, the change approved by the NA. Partners produced instead a set of recommendations that will help teachers, IT-support and managementin VET-schools, and in educational institutions at large, in their pursuit to use VR in teaching a learning. Some assignments of the different working groups were collected in order to provide other teachers with some concrete ideas and inspiration. The partners also wanted to create a VR-platform were beginners in VR could practise and learn together with their students.
Virtual reality was one of the solutions foreseen to help vocational teachers in their efforts to implement blended and distance learning at the time when covid forced VET-schools to operate only virtually. Keuda and the partners of the project foresaw a lot of possibilities and advantages, and wanted to pilot how VR could facilitate teachers. Not very many teachers at all had tried VR in their teaching back then. the partners took it on to pilot the use of VR in English communication, electricity teaching, and maths. It was also noted that several other blended learning solutions were being tested and taken into use during covid, and project partners decided to share best practices in blended and distance learning in general, to complement the project results.