Now, please try to image this: A professor wears a specially-designed “helmet” for teaching. Students in different places of the world, e.g. China, France, Egypt attended the session simultaneously. They interact and cooperate with each other on real-time idea exchanges and the completion of complicated tasks, just like sitting in the same classroom. Medical school students can have the opportunity to see the close-ups of real-time 3D manikins demonstrated by the teacher and observe skeletons, blood vessels, muscles, etc. Such kind of immersion experience that links visual, auditory, smell and touch senses greatly stimulated students’ interest in learning. All of the above teaching practice is no longer science fiction, but a reality!

On the afternoon of October 24, SJTU-GDI Virtual Reality(VR) Creative Education Innovation Centre held its opening ceremony and “Creating Future” – the First VR Innovation Education Symposium in USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI). Guests from over fifty colleges and universities and educational institutions gathered together to discuss the innovative education practice, content creation and cultural fusion with scientific and technological innovation.

The SJTU-GDI VR Creative Education Innovation Centre is the nation’s largest VR creative education centre, which is co-established by ICCI and GDI Digital. The centre operates through three major functions: education innovation laboratory, innovative technology training class and innovation application and content creative studio. Meanwhile, ICCI and GDI will join hands in developing VR courses with the aim of advancing the application of VR technology in education and teaching by creating a good model in this field.

Not only limited to experimental teaching, the centre will mainly focus on exploring the application of VR technology in four areas:　teaching, training, practice and research.

Edit: Yarong ZENG