One of our two department dedicated VR stations is housed in the Art Department. As well as building digital design skills within the subject teachers, this collaboration has also led to an increase in the fluency of IT/VR skills. Darren Trebel (Head of Visual Arts) has been trained so successfully that he can now take the device home and set it up from scratch. This fluency is also being shared across his department and is also spreading within students studying Visual Arts. The success of VR in Art is an excellent model and case study for other departments and both Darren Trebel and Jessica Russo-Scherr are excellent ambassadors that we can turn to to help convince others to participate.
Darren and Jess’s thoughts on the impact of VR have been documented in the proposal for purchasing the dedicated VR station for Visual Arts, here is what they wrote at the time:
“There are innumerable benefits to employing Virtual Reality in situations where students are involved in visual learning. All three main aspects of art education can be impacted by the introduction of this technology. Students can engage in making art via the many virtual painting and sculpting applications it features. They can experience more intimate, detailed and authentic looking at art through its variety of virtual visits, libraries of high definition dimensional art and architectural reproductions. And they can appreciate, evaluate and analyse art through many of those same functions as well as share in the experience of others by observing the VR in action. Planning and development of ideas and visual concepts could conceivably be tested, reviewed and revised in the virtual environment as well. The impact on student learning could be tremendous.”
Darren Trebel