Biology

BIOL 144L course is designed to present and explain basic organization of the brain and its functional anatomy. Brain structures identifications, 3D visualisation, neural pathway tracking are main challenges that students experience. As an intervention, the instructor integrated VR in the last learning module of this course: research projects. Instead of having students develop a project on one of the nervous systems and do comparative research on different animal models, students had to explore the VR app, create a project from available data sets, and present it to the class. Students used their class lab space to use custom-designed syGlass app with three different data sets. They have been assigned to the three to four student groups. Each group had the use of one headset and had access to one laptop compatible for the external app. Students took turns to use the headsets, the app, explore tutorials and try to do analyses, measurements, video recordings within the app and write down the narratives. In total 20 licenses for 30 days have been used during five classes. Students spent 25+ hours on their projects.   [Poster]   [Report]