Virtual Reality (VR) Room in the Library

As part of its Scholar Studio initiative, Hunter Library’s has created and now expanded the Virtual Reality (VR) Room offerings.  Its new location, HL 184, is located beside the library electronic classroom (HL 186) and was previously the Interlibrary Loan office.

The goal of the Hunter Library’s VR Room, like that in the Scholar Studio, is to bring patron-centered makerspace technology to faculty, staff and students.  The VR Room’s mission is to raise awareness of new and emerging virtual reality technologies in education.  This service is targeted towards members of the university community, primarily faculty and students.   Reservations for each station are required at https://wcu.libcal.com/reserve/VR.  Once the confirmation email is returned acknowledging your agreement on the terms and conditions, the controllers for the station can be checked out at the Circulation Desk.

The VR Room will have 5 stations.   Come explore the equipment and experience the state of the art virtual reality technology!   The room currently has two Oculus Rift stations and one PlayStation 4 VR station.  We will be adding two HTC Vive stations in the near future.  These devices come with a large amount of free software and plans are in the works for ordering more titles.  Your input is welcome as we explore this new educational technology for WCU.

The library also has two Oculus Rift headsets available for checkout for those with their own high-end computers.   Other VR equipment available from the library includes 2 Ricoh Theda 360 cameras, a GoPro Fusion Action camera (coming soon), and several Google Cardboard headsets that are available for a weekly checkout period from the circulation desk.

Mid-Semester Assistance with Online Courses

Sometimes online courses don’t go as well as we’d like, and as faculty, we aren’t sure why. The CFC established a service for all Western faculty last fall in order to help faculty determine the experiences of their online students in case mid-semester adjustments are needed. The service is similar to what we have offered in traditional courses for years, but it is tailored for online students and courses.

The service works like this:

1. Any WCU faculty member contacts Terry Pollard in the CFC.
2. A date is set to deploy a Qualtrics student survey in the instructor’s class.
3. The instructor notifies the students that another individual (the CFC) will be contacting them to request participation in a survey.
4. Students are notified by the CFC and are invited to watch a two-minute video explaining the process. The goal in this step is to encourage rapport building, trust, and student capacity to be candid during the survey process.
5. Students are sent a Qualtrics survey. The survey asks the following questions:
   • What is helping you learn in this course?
   • What suggestions do you have (for the instructor) to improve your learning in this course?
   • What are you doing to improve your learning in this course?
   • What is hindering your learning in this course?
6. The results are aggregated, coded, grouped, and discussed in a confidential report.
7. A meeting time is scheduled between the educational developer and the faculty member to discuss the findings.

We piloted this service last fall and faculty were pleased with the service. The process is intended to solicit student’s experiences and feelings about the course. Questions pertaining to student regulation, procrastination, preparation, etc. tend to emerge as themes that faculty can then address in ways that are helpful.

In order to be most effective, online SGAs need to be conducted between March 4-8. We will not conduct any online SGAs past the date March 22.

To schedule a session for an online SGA contact Terry Pollard.