Students at Albertus Magnus College taking part in new immersive learning program

NEW HAVEN, CT. (WFSB) - Students at Albertus Magnus College are taking part in a new immersive learning program that uses virtual reality.

“We do a class that was in thermodynamics and it was able to teach us how heat in a closed space can fry certain hardware or cyberware and it was able to destroy most of a data center and we had to go across the world finding where this rogue AI was,” said Ethan Casscella, a junior.

It was all made possible through Dreamscape Learn’s technology. The program transports students into interactive, story driven lessons.

The students still go to regular classes and labs to learn the curriculum. Then, a few times a month, they visit the virtual environment.

The experiences range from exploring ancient temples to getting up close with the building blocks of life.

“When they are in the VR specifically when it’s so narrative driven, they are engaged by the story. They’re actually engaged by the chemical reaction. It’s not just the words NA and CL written on your textbook or your note book, but it’s in fact those atoms coming together in VR and showing you this is what atoms actually do when they get together,” said Dr. Tarishi Verma, Director of Immersive Learning Collaboratory, Albertus Magnus College.

The school is the first and only in New England to bring the technology to campus. Right now, it is used in science and humanities classes, but president Marc Camille says there is room to grow.

“I think the early research that has shown that students who are able to do Dreamscape Learn, VR learning, they are more engaged, they’re intellectual curiosity is heightened and grades and performance are all improved and therefore if we think about things like retention and graduation, I think we are going to see great results from this,” he said.

The college hopes to expand how the technology is used across majors and disciplines and eventually bring it to New Haven Public Schools.

Casscella, a cybersecurity major, says the biggest advantage is how much the experience pulls him into a lesson.

“I was actually able to touch things, I learned more,” he added.

Students at Albertus Magnus College taking part in new immersive learning program

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