New VR Development: A New Collaboration Project with Community College – a QEF Project

With a view to enhancing learning experience in natural sciences with the use of virtual reality (VR), the E-Learning Team collaborated with HKU SPACE Community College and drafted a proposal on setting up a CAVE* for five secondary schools in a bid to provide virtual field learning experience. This project proposal aims to enhance secondary school students’ interests in natural sciences and their understanding of the natural environment in Hong Kong.

The project proposal was approved by the Quality Education Fund in December 2018. The VR development will be a 30-month project starting in March 2019. The proposed VR development aims to enhance secondary school students’ learning experience in natural sciences through innovative, interactive and immersive VR learning content in the CAVE environment and to facilitate five secondary schools to develop their capacity for developing or adopting their own VR learning programmes.

* CAVE stands for “cave automatic virtual environment”. The CAVE system is an immersive and interactive visualisation system, allowing students to experience the developed 3D models virtually. The user wears 3D glasses with an antenna inside the CAVE to see 3D graphics generated by the system.