Experience Seneca’s New Virtual Reality Lab | The Teaching & Learning Centre

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by Linda Facchini, Professor in the Teaching & Learning Centre

Have you ever wanted to travel to space? Look inside a cell? Experience the world through someone else’s eyes? Now you can through the magic of virtual reality!

Virtual reality simulations can bring training to students that is dangerous, impossible, counter-productive, or too expensive to set up in real life. Virtual reality (VR) for learning creates a sense of presence, establishes context, and provides students with the agency to act out decisions in a safe space. Students can also meet, communicate, and collaborate in immersive virtual worlds when gathering in person is not possible.

The Teaching & Learning Centre, in partnership with ITS, is excited about our new VR classroom at Newnham Campus. Equipped with Meta Quest2 headsets, this facility enables groups of students and their instructors to engage with high-fidelity virtual reality simulations for experiential learning and research.

This past March, 1st year students from the Honour’s Bachelor of Aviation Technology degree program visited the lab to perform a pre-flight walkaround of a virtual Cessna 172 aircraft, using a custom simulation designed and built by Seneca faculty and students.

Here’s what they had to say:

“There really is no way to learn better than to see something in front of you and to interact with it, and this simulation allows for that without being on the flight line.”

Faculty are invited to experience the VR lab for themselves at one of our weekly orientation sessions this May and June. Registration and more information is on MyPD.

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