Dr. Allison Howard has received a Learning Technology Grant from the UGA Center for Teaching and Learning! The grant will cover a classroom set of virtual reality headsets, two augmented reality headsets, and a computer system to support development of virtual reality simulations. In addition, it will provide funds for an undergraduate assistant familiar with the development of virtual environments. Dr. Howard has previously used technology in the classroom to highlight concepts in comparative cognition, allowing students in her Physiological and Comparative Psychology class to view habitat degradation of nonhuman primates, cetaceans, and other animals. Students also used the headsets to immerse themselves in a variety of sensory illusions. Her co-PI, Dr. Sergio Bernardes has used this technology to develop virtual and augmented reality applications for remote sensing and geovisualization in the Center for Geospatial Research. The current project will be to develop a series of Open Educational Resource Modules for the interactions of virtual environments and the field of Psychology. Dr. Howard and other investigators intend to develop modules on Embodied Cognition and Virtual Environments; Immersion in Virtual Environments, Environmental Psychology and Climate Change, and Comparative Perception. They hope that those modules can be used in teaching of Elementary Psychology, Physiological and Comparative, Sensation and Perception, but the resources will be published openly for teachers and researchers from a variety of disciplines to use in their courses or their research involving virtual environments. Keep up the outstanding work!
