Promoting Student Engagement and Flexible Learning at a Low-Cost: A Collaborative Project Exploring Open Educational Resources and Virtual Reality
Abstract: In today’s modern learning environment, lecture-style teaching can sometimes be a barrier for the digital learner. To combat this problem, professors from two North Carolina universities have partnered to explore best practices for increasing student engagement and flexible learning. The vision is to have others join the project in an effort to create a collaborative community that will build a repertoire of low-cost digital resources for student and instructor use. Though virtual reality (VR) and open educational resources (OER) are not new, it seems that these technologies are gaining massive attention in both K-12 and higher education. When instructors embed these technologies in the classroom, they are exposing students to current and innovative content material relevant to the 21st-century digital learner.