GVSU explores Extended Reality in the Showcase

Photo Credit: Amanda Pitts

Extended Reality (XR) is a frequent topic among those in higher education. XR is about engaging students across a wide array of digital experiences, including: virtual, augmented, mixed, and haptics-based interactions.

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of the physical “real world” environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory.

In the showcase we have multiple Augmented Reality experiences including the MERGE CUBE and the CURISCOPE AR T-Shirt. The Merge Cube includes multiple apps that can transpose various three dimensional holographic applications a user can experience, while the Curiscope T-Shirt pairs with an application named Virtual-tee to provide an anatomical visualization of the human body.

Justin Robinson, student assistant in the showcase, is currently developing an app for the Merge Cube to assist GVSU medical students in the study of Moro Infant Reflexes.

The app will project a “virtual” baby that will respond to the movement of the cube in the same way a baby would respond tilted in a given direction. This provide students with the understanding of infant reflexes without having to use an actual child.

Here are a couple of photos of the AR experience that Justin is developing in collaboration with Hunter Bridwell, digital media developer, in eLearning and Emerging Technologies.

    

“The Technology Showcase gives me and other students the ability to experience and develop the future of learning and entertainment and I’m blessed to be a part of it.” – Justin Robinson

GVSU uses Augmented Reality to help Students Experience Vision Loss in Medical Education

This post by Hunter Bridwell, Digital Media Developer in eLearning and Emerging Technologies at Grand Valley State University.

 

 

Update:  The app developed by Hunter Bridwell will be presented at the American Occupational Therapy Association AOTA Annual Conference in April 2019! Carla Floyd-Slabaugh, will present the left visual field cut app in a session entitled: “Augmented Reality to Simulate and Instruct on the Topic of Left Visual Field Cut and Left Neglect in Context” on April 6, 2019 at the conference from 1:30 – 3:00 in New Orleans, LA. 

As Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies develop, the market for apps and their various uses has begun to broaden, particularly in education. Even two years ago, the selection of applicable programs was slim and considered by most to be very gimmicky. Faculty often have very specific needs from lesson to lesson and while the platforms are currently picking up steam, a prepackaged app often doesn’t have everything that faculty may need and can have a lot of things they don’t need. Instead of waiting for someone to make an app and bring it to market, I worked in Unity to create it myself.

First, I was presented with a problem. Students in Carla Slabaugh’s Occupational Therapy courses have no effective way to experience what a “Left Field Cut” is without putting tape over glasses. It’s a simple solution but it doesn’t really meet the needs of the lesson. A Left Field Cut occurs after someone has a stroke: a large, left part of their vision is essentially cut out, but the brain doesn’t register this as blackness like the tape on the glasses would. Instead, it realigns the vision altogether. This affects patients’ motor skills. It often causes people to run into walls and door frames when they thought they were walking through the door. By programing a camera with a visual field cut in the Unity software, I used augmented reality to help students bridge the gap of understanding from what is being described to them to what a patient is actually experiencing.

“It worked great to simulate the field cut,” said Carla Slabaugh, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy. “With the fuzzy edge you made it let the student better understand how information on the left side can be missed. It is a huge improvement over the tape on glasses method.”

Learn more about the plethora of possibilities available through the Digital Studio at GVSU by visiting our Digital Studio Projects page.

Emerging Technologies: Augmented Reality Round Table

On Thursday, April 19, Eric Kunnen and Hunter Bridwell from eLearning, along with Kristofer Pachla, director of the GVSU Regional Math and Science Center, attended a round table discussion focused on augmented reality at Miller Johnson offices in Grand Rapids.

The round table was an outstanding morning of conversations and possibilities that augmented reality and bring to education, government, and commercial applications such as:

• Interior Design
• Facilities Viewing / Models Onsite
• Asset Management
• Complex Assembly and Error Reduction
• Realtime Data Visualization
• Learning / Experiential
• Healthcare
• and more!

Hunter and Eric had an opportunity to share how GVSU is exploring augmented and virtual reality through the Atomic Object Technology Showcase. They also were able to  experience the innovative DAQRI helmet and smart glasses first-hand!