Rebecca Quintana collaborates with CAI to design course using VR tech 

In an article posted on the U-M Center for Academic Innovation’s blog, SOE adjunct lecturer Dr. Rebecca Quintana notes that she has long asked herself questions like ‘How can you create spaces for exploration, collaboration, and discovery?’ and ‘How can you do it in an equitable way?’ Now, as advancements are made in the spectrum of extended reality—virtual, augmented, and mixed reality environments—there are many new possibilities to explore. 

Quintana wanted to take these questions into the classroom so students could explore these issues, and simultaneously immerse them in the technology under discussion to aid in evaluating its use. Quintana, who is also the associate director of learning experience design at the Center for Academic Innovation at U-M, collaborated with Jeremy Nelson, director of the XR Initiative at CAI, to design the course Educational Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality. Housed within the SOE, the course explores key topics each week around learning using extended reality, and the students utilize different platforms specially selected to highlight the thematic issue of the session.

The seven-week course was first offered during the Winter 2021 term, and appealed to both education majors who wanted to explore the pedagogical potential and implications of metaverse technologies, and also students in the XR Graduate Certificate program in the School of Information. 

“Learning experience design exists at the intersection of design, theory, and educational technology, and students were passionate about the implications of the metaverse in instructional design,” Quintana said.

By popular demand, Educational Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality will be offered again starting in February 2022.