Educational virtuality: cognitive benefits, design processes and new frontiers

Abstract

Virtuality, often expressed via technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) has become a staple of media news, cultural artefacts (e.g. Ready Player One) and much research in universities and IT companies. Since the inception of the Oculus Rift as an accessible head mounted display (HMD) for building VR applications the industry has exploded into a potentially $108 billion industry by 2021 [1]. Australia has industry and research communities as well performing research into the use of VR in entertainment, video, cultural heritage as well as low level hardware topics such as implementations of wireless VR HMDs. Various groups in Australia are collaborating and forming a robust presence in the research and startup spheres. We wish to establish with this workshop a focus for the research community in Australia in the direction of education, in particular, to deal with issues local to Australia in areas of inclusiveness and diversity. In particular, this workshop aims to draw together a group of VR/AR researchers to explore the boundaries of immersive virtuality in education and to push into new territories identified from the workshop.