Carleton community members gathered yesterday to mark the official opening of the Experiential Learning Hub (ELH) — Carleton’s dedicated space for students and instructors to engage and experiment with emerging immersive technologies.
“The Hub is an exciting enhancement to our Future Learning Lab, which opened earlier this year,” said David Hornsby, Vice-Provost & Associate Vice-President (Academic). “These two spaces enable teaching and research innovation, collaborations, and scholarship and promote teaching practices that foster student success.”
Located in Southam Hall, the Hub includes an Active Learning Classroom, Creation Suites featuring a variety of Extended Reality (XR) and media creation tools, and two state-of-the-art XR Experience Studios — made possible thanks to $1M from the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities Training Equipment and Renewal Fund (TERF), matched by the university, and with the partnership and support of EON Reality, a leader in augmented and virtual reality.
“The Experiential Learning Hub is positioned to influence curricular change and have a meaningful and transformational impact on the teaching and learning culture at Carleton,” said L. Pauline Rankin, Provost and Vice-President (Academic).
“It will enable students to acquire important skills necessary to prepare them for a whole range of their future careers, while the new immersive technologies provide instructors with the opportunities to innovate and enhance their curriculum.”
Teaching and Learning Services’ Future Learning Fellows have already begun piloting new pedagogical concepts and utilizing immersive extended reality tools provided by the Future Learning Hub. Their projects include building virtual reality mind maps and using XR labs to explore complex, hard-to-visualize phenomena.
The Experiential Learning Hub represents another milestone supporting Carleton’s Transforming University Education report and academic plan, recognizing that the future of teaching and learning is empowering, collaborative, flexible, and sustainable.
Are you interested in exploring XR technology?
On October 18, the TLS Immersive Learning Team will be on-site to discuss Virtual, Mixed, or Augmented Reality in the classroom. Register now to attend.