The Future of Virtual Reality for Colleges and Universities
Introduction
While being in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and having all university operations online, it made me think about what the future could hold for colleges and universities. Many people today either go to school online, attend a university and commute, or live away from home to get the most out of their college experience. With universities making their programs available all online, there has never been an easier way to obtain your degree that works around you as being the more affordable option. Although not being at a campus takes away the social aspects of college by making new friends and developing new connections, why not make the best of both worlds? What if we decided to allow students to have the full college experience while being online and doing it in virtual reality? This is just a crazy idea I have thought about that is just based on an idea and has not really been researched or put into practice yet. It is like a childhood dream of escaping to another world or a video game world.
How it works
How it would work is students can use virtual reality goggles, enter their university credentials, and once they are signed in they can be opened to the campus environment where students can explore campus, go to campus events, attend classes, and other things that makes the on-campus experience special. You can think about it like a real-world simulation game such as the Sims except for college campuses. In a sense it is like moving between two worlds. In terms of housing, there is a menu you can choose where you want to live on campus. It is almost like the Sims, or Animal Crossing. Students can choose their housing from the dashboard and what roommates they would want. This is free of charge. You can also connect and chat with other students as if you were physically present with them and develop friendships. When in the virtual reality world, you will also have sensors around your body to make you feel the world physically around you. For example, you could feel the breeze if it is windy, feel the cold air in the winter, and feel the heat in the summer. Having sensors around the body around students to be able to use most of their senses while being around campus almost like you are there and present. You can also walk into classrooms as you would at the physical university where your instructors are logged in and present as well.
Benefits to Students
As students, we all know college is very expensive. Today, paying for college is like taking on a mortgage for a house. The cost of college is rising much faster than the rate of inflation leading to even more student loan debt. Taking on this amount of debt just as you enter in your adult life is crazy. This has happened because these Universities want to expand, build new buildings, look into new research opportunities, and many other operations. All of this is paid for by us the students. Most of your tuition money goes to ongoing construction and maintenance of the university. With the university being in all virtual reality, the operations would cost far less with not having to worry about the physical university costs with having to pay for all the construction costs. This means student’s tuition would be much more affordable and that means less debt they would have to take on. Another expense you would not have to worry about is housing. You have the option to sleep in the real world or sleep in the virtual reality world at your campus housing. Really, the only thing students would need to invest in is the virtual reality gear which is significantly less than the cost of college. You could choose to change between the real world and the virtual reality world. For example, if you are tired of the campus world and need a break just turn off the virtual reality goggles and come back to the real world. If you want to just escape the real world, turn on the goggles and hop into the virtual reality world. It is similar to living in a video game like you see in movies such as Ready Player One, Tron, and some others.
Drawbacks
Although this idea of having a virtual reality campus sounds cool, I have considered a few major drawbacks. The first is, in the back of your mind you know you are in this fake world and lack the physical presence of others around you. You may meet new friends that you may hang out with a lot in the virtual reality world but may never get to see or interact with them in person. If friends would want to go get food or something, there is really no way to replicate that in a man made virtual reality world. There is this missing piece of being around the physical world, and there is nothing that can replicate that. There is really nothing like staying up with your friends late at night and ordering a bunch of food and energy drinks to keep you up. It does take away some of the fond college memories you would like to have. No matter how many sensors you attach to yourself, it will never be completely real. College is not just about going to classes and cramming a bunch of information into your head, it is also about the connections and memories we make along the way. The virtual reality college experience just makes this experience feel more like a video game simulation than the real world.
Where it can be improved upon
I believe this concept is something to test the waters in, but not something that we can rush implementing. There is a lot of research, testing, and evaluation that must be done that may take some time to do before we even think about moving to something like this. Currently, virtual reality is in a relatively early stage being out for only a few years and mainly used for video games, engineering, business, previews, medical operations, amusement park ride simulations, and others. Although virtual reality has changed the way we do experiments and tasks, they are only being used for hypothetical or theoretical situations and not practical. Many students should also experiment and familiarize themselves with the technology and virtual reality world. I believe there is this goal of having universities in a virtual reality world, but there is also an ongoing process of maintaining the world and improving upon it. Overtime, the world is going to have to expand, fix bugs, improve on user experience/interaction design, and many others.
Conclusion
Who knows what the future holds for this kind of technology? The concept of a virtual reality university sounds unique and can give students a whole new experience for college. It combines the best of both online university while being able a have something that is close to a face-to-face experience with improvements implemented along the way. It is far from a perfect idea, but it is something worth trying to do. It may or may not work. All we can do is see where this idea goes and if there is any potential research about this topic.
